PlazaJen: Passion Knit

Today is "Bulky Item Pickup" in the neighborhood, and you see people cruising the streets, scavenging for treasure, da da da. I spent a chunk of time yesterday, working on the garage (filled with allllll my stuff from storage), in the effort to clear off & drag out the antique couch for BIP Day.

It was a mixed deal. It's a gorgeous piece of furniture, yet it would have cost me at least a grand to have it reupholstered, and another few hundred bucks to have the leg repaired properly (broken off). I also know my mother spent $500 for it, and she gave it to me my senior year of college for my apartment. It's always been the couch she gave me, in my mind. There's a lot of shit in the garage she gave me, products of shopping, mostly for herself & then clearing out her old things & giving them to me. The process of working through the boxes in the garage is a lot like confronting all of your past - reminders of my own bad decisions & purchases - and then all the stuff given to me by my mother, with whom I haven't spoken in two years.

So. It felt cathartic, throwing a ton of stuff away, putting old clothes that don't fit into a charity bag, and then before JWo got home, I dragged that couch to the curb. I felt like I needed to do it, by myself. There's still a lot of stuff to go through, and I still struggle with getting rid of things, but it's astounding just how much of it I've held on to out of a sense of obligation and duty - not good reasons to keep them.

And by 9 p.m., the couch was gone. Someone else's treasure. May it serve them well.