I know I’m treading on dangerous territory here, but I’m trying to be careful not to give-away / throw-away things that I have no use for, but that belong to other family members. The easy person was our niece, Linda, (right) who cooperatively visited from out of town to go through several boxes of family memorabilia stored at our house. One of our children said “Don’t give anything of mine away. Period.” Another said, “I think this whole giving away craze you’re on is silly.” Two others can’t take their stuff because of their own storage issues. Linda took a box of stuff and I’m waiting for e-mail confirmation before letting go of the following items:
Likely to be approved
- Motorcycle helmet – OK’d
- 2 insulated lunch bags – OK’d
- 88 music cassette tapes (I thought this would be a no brainer since cassette tapes lose their quality over time and it’s getting harder to find something to play them on. I thought I was being generous by not getting rid of the 451 music CDs, but one son wanted to at least check out the tapes before we pitched them. 27 vinyl records are already gone. I’m waiting for approval on 25 more.
- High School papers. Really now, I think even college notes that are over 10 years old are not worth keeping. I think the high school stuff is an easy call.
- 23 Guitar and Skateboarding magazines from 1999-2003.
- Computer motherboards (or at least I think that’s what this box of boards with little tiny shiny metal pieces protruding from it contains). They’ve got to be at least 10 years old and obsolete even if they work.
- 2 unused obsolete/broken computers (missed during my electronics purge).
- Box of baseball cards from 1980’s
Other items I’d like to get rid of but am less likely to get permission for are:
- 34 Play Station games, 4 World of Warcraft sets, and a Nintendo Game Cube (worth $2 on Gazelle)
- 75 adventure/fantasy novels (Brooks, Jordan, Grisham, Cook, Goodkind, Adams, Chrichton, etc.)
- Roll playing game paraphernalia
The one thing I’m keeping is the TV that belongs to one son. We substituted it for our TV since it has a larger tube screen. Since flat screens are the rage now, my guess is that if he ever wanted a TV, he wouldn’t go for our adopted monster TV anyway. I think it’s safe.
PS: In the trivia department I found 35 non-working pens. That leaves only 155 working pens/pencils in the house. Why would anybody need that many if you’re not a teacher? Well, we do lead programs and often ask people to write their thoughts down, so having extra pens and pencils is handy; but 155 people who don’t have a pen on them? Really!
