moving progress (not a complete list)

[redbird]

*I just filled out and mailed a change-of-address form for the post office.

*We carried a broken bookcase to the curb this afternoon, for pickup tomorrow. I'd called to arrange the pickup last week, and discovered that while our actual collection was delayed by the Memorial Day holiday, that didn't change the deadline for calling to ask for that pickup.

*I tried to drop some clothes in a town clothing donation/recycling bin. "Tried," because when I got to the location, I discovered that the donation box had been removed sometime last winter. (I have never used this box, but I found the location on the town website a few days ago. It's still listed.) So I carried a parka and a bag of other clothes through the supermarket produce section, and back home on the bus.

*In looking through a pile of papers that had been in my desk for years, I found the photos of me and Velma that I thought I had lost. I carefully labeled the envelope before taping it closed again. (I want to scan some of the prints; I am not assuming I will get to that before we move.) I am recycling most of the other paper in that stack, which included some job evaluations from the 1990s, for a job I was laid off from in 2001.

I did move some things from that shelf to a different bit of my desk, mostly so I won't try to examine them three more times before the movers come to pack everything next Friday.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

May ev erything go well!

Perhaps it's just as well you didn't find that donation box

[ng_moonmoth]

I recall reading one of those "dirty little secrets no one says out loud" articles not too long ago, in which someone who had done the legwork was able to track what happened to the contents of those boxes. Turns out the vast majority of the contents gets shredded and dumped into a landfill. Not at all what I suspect you were hoping for.

The only way to be sure is to know who you are donating it to, and find out what they do with it. Sort of a shame that's the way it is, but reality triumphs again over fantasy.

Re: Perhaps it's just as well you didn't find that donation box

[redbird]

The problem is that at this point, even if I think something belongs in a landfill, Massachusetts has banned cloth from the regular trash collection. There's no distinction between "this coat doesn't fit me anymore," single socks, and things that are too damaged to be used except as cleaning rags.

I would frankly prefer some of this stuff to go to a landfill here, rather than be exported, using fuel in order to eventually undercut local producers in the developing world. There are second-hand/charity shops that will take some of these things, but they don't want worn-out socks either, and I have doubts about that parka I bought at least ten years ago.