They say that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Over the next year I intend to put this to the test and see how much water it really holds.

Over the course of fifteen years (the amount of time we have lived in this house), my family has accumulated quite the collection of stuff. Some would call it junk. Hell, I would even call most of it junk. And believe it or not, I would go so far to call quite a bit of it trash. Truth is, it doesn’t matter what you call it — all of it has to go. Our goal for the next year is to rid ourselves of all this stuff and keep the trash can on a diet at the same time. In other words, we are going to focus on sustainable stuff removal.

The basic principle behind the sustainable stuff removal is based on one key element contained in the three R’s: recycle. By recycling the majority of our stuff, we eliminate contributions to the landfills. This is a good thing. By recycling the majority of our stuff, we (hopefully) help make other people’s lives better. This is a good thing, too. All in all, it’s a win-win situation for us, others, and the environment.

We plan to utilize several different free tools to help aid us in our sustainable stuff removal: CraigsList, goLSN, eBay, Freecycle, and Goodwill.

CraigsList / goLSN will be great places to list items that we want to attempt to sell locally without having to worry about shipping costs. As an example, we have two aquariums that we need to get rid of in the near future. Placing them on CraigsList or goLSN will be our best option because we are more likely to find a local buyer who can arrange a pick up of the item and we don’t have to worry about shipping. I’m not even sure how you would pack and ship an aquarium anyway, are you? And would it even be worth the headache and trouble to do so?

eBay will be the place to sell the items that we can pack and ship easily and that are more likely to bring us a good price. An example would be the Rolling Stones t-shirt that I’ve been meaning to put up for sale for a while now. Or the collection of used xbox games that our son no longer has an interest in playing.

Freecycle is the perfect place to offer the stuff that really won’t bring money yet it is still good enough for someone to get some use out of it. Here’s a good example of what I mean: Last year we put our two year old 6 foot pre-lit Christmas tree on Freecycle because we realized that we just didn’t have the room for it. There was nothing wrong with it. All of the lights worked. The limbs were in perfect condition. It was a beautiful tree. We just didn’t have room for a tree that big. We offered it up on Freecycle and a nice lady was at our house within 2 hours to pick it up. The best part was finding out that the tree went to her son’s family who, otherwise, would not have had a tree at all due to him being laid off just weeks before Christmas.

And for all the stuff that we can’t find a home for at any of the other places, there is always Goodwill. Our daughter did a major cleaning/thinning of her clothes and other miscellaneous items in her room just a few weeks ago which resulted in a donation of four extra large garbage bags to our local Goodwill. The thing I love about donating to them is the fact that the people are always happy to see you coming, no matter how much junk you bring them.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that we can rid ourselves of most of the unwanted stuff in our lives and our home without contributing to the amount of trash in the landfills. With some patience, time, proper tools and planning we can lighten our burden, make others happy, and not make a huge impact on the environment and Mother Earth.

RECYCLE!