Remember me? I'm half of a couple with the apartment that's a freakin' mess. It still is. In fact, if you looked at our apartment this evening and compared it to a week ago, you'd be hard-pressed to note any significant change in the mess. On the contrary, although the improvements are subtle, they are there, and we have good friends to thank for it.
Sometime during the Carter administration, Tori (with help from Yours Truly) cleared out a massive chunk of old wardrobe. These ended up in trash bags and left on our back porch for shipping to the Brown Elephant as soon as possible. ASAP mutated into three years, by which time Jack came along and clawed the bags into near-oblivion. In the meantime, Tori and I plotted the donation of more than just clothes: we wanted to walk through every room in our abode and clean out unwanted materials. We pulled off a mini-cleaning coup a few months back when we culled our book and CD collections and donated the goods to the nonprofit I volunteer for, Open Books. But now we set our sights on bigger game.
First, we were going to need some assistance. We knew we had a lot to donate, too much for us to walk a mile and a half to the Brown Elephant, even with our little shopping cart. We needed serious trucking, and although the Brown Elephant does pickups, it has to be weeks in advance, and arranging a weekend pickup can take longer. Enter Rae, Denise, and her awesome truck. I e-mailed Rae, begging for the opportunity to exploit her girlfriend and her awesome truck. I emphasized Tori's and my love, devotion and strong sense of bribery, and a deal was struck.
Over the last few days, Tori and I piled up an impressive collection of unloved stuff: three DVD players, several kitchen tools, a decade-old VCR, and the aforementioned wardrobe, rebagged for a nicer-looking pile in the hallway. This afternoon, Rae and Denise showed up with the awesome truck, and Tori and I lugged our stuff downstairs, where Denise loaded it into her truck.
The operation went without a hitch. And everyone benefited: the Brown Elephant got a ton of clothes, Rae and Denise got a nice Mexican lunch, and Denise's awesome truck got three games that the Elephant wouldn't take and Tori and I forgot to bring back to our abode. (Sorry, Denise.) In the meantime, our apartment is still a freakin' mess, but we have improved our maneuverability. And really, that's what it's all about, right?
It takes a lot of work to reverse entropy, but it's worth it. Our real estate agent had us move a ton of stuff out of our house before it went on the market, now it's like we have a whole new house with half again as much space.
Posted by: Myke | 29 May 2009 at 12:53 PM