Out of the Landfill. Creating Hoarders.

                     

I used to hate getting rid of certain things. I'd hold on to them in tucked away locations praying that I would eventually find a use for them. That rarely happened, so I was left to eventually toss the items in the trash and have them sadly carted away to add to the never-ending landfills. My green guilt surfaced. My heart sobbed for adding to the problem. And I was completely torn over a handful of twisty-ties or scraps of wood or bags of half-used pens. Goodwill wouldn't take them. Family didn't need them. What was option was left other than toss them? There often was no other choice, at least not until a couple years ago. A single website lightened my house and my heart--Craig's List.

Oh, my dear, sweet Craig's List full of haters, sweet elderly people, young college kids, homeless neighbors, and your run-of-the-mill suburbanites. I've met them all through my journeys traversing the free section of Craig's List. That's an especially neat part of Craig's List--you become connected to your community. You buy things from another mother three miles away only to find out your kids go to the same school. You sell things to college kids who barely have two nickles to rub together, but appreciate the affordable and well cared for Ikea furniture. You giveaway random items to families with little, people with talent and skill to re-purpose items, school teachers who can't afford even more supplies for their classrooms that the school won't cover, and so many more interesting community members. Through my postings, I've seen the good, the bad, and the extremely rude. But at the end of the day, Craig's List has been my savior to get rid of items and give them to people who may be able to use them instead of allowing them to sit in a landfill for eternity.

What's the problem then? I can't help but wonder if I'm giving items away for people to hoard. Although I can't use the items, will this person really be able to use them instead? Are they just going to fill up another person's yard or garage or drawers? Of this, I am unsure. I often wonder that if we were all to re-home our random items, would they really go to use or would we all come to a place where we just have too much? Is keeping items out of the landfill serving ourselves or is it encouraging us to find value in items for fear of ruining the world? As you can tell, I'm pretty torn on this. On the one hand, I love that I can give items a new home, but I hate to think that I'm adding to the idea that we need many items. I've been trying to consider what the world would be like if we re-homed and re-purposed all of our items. Took them all out of the landfill and redistributed them world wide. Even with spreading all the items through out the world, I have a sinking feeling that everyone would have more than would be needed. And companies are continuing to produce and produce and produce. Where's the solution? We don't want to add to landfills, but we don't want to encourage taking more than one needs. There's also the problem with items being made poorly and technology evolving so rapidly, that there's almost a need to upgrade frequently. Solutions? Anyone? Anyone?

I'm unsure of the absolute solution, but I have a few ideas:

-Buy used
-Learn how to re-purpose items
-Give items away through Craig's List, Freecylce, etc. (and pray they will be used!)

But truthfully? STOP BUYING. Stop buying into the "new" technology, "new" formulas, trends in clothing, housing, design, etc. It's hard. It truly is. As I write this, I'm battling with wanting to finish our home renovations when truly no renovations had to me made. They are purely aesthetic. I'm trying, though, to lower our list of home renovation tasks and be ok with the here and now. I often feel that if we can just find contentment with what is, this drive for bigger, better, and newer would slow down. Buying would diminish, and therefore, companies would stop producing less. We are slightly seeing this trend in the US, but there's still a lot of work to be done. And all I can do it sit here, try and avoid buying for the aforementioned reasons, and ponder this Catch 22.

What are your thoughts? Do you think it's better to re-home or chuck in the trash? Any other solutions you can think of?

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