Rearranging the furniture

The new furniture is finally in the house, although it won't be perfectly in place until the boys take some of the old furniture to their new homes in September (I hope - I really hope!). Fitting it in has required taking apart two of the most over-stuffed rooms in the house (the dining room and the office) and deciding what parts need to be brought back together and what can be used by someone else and what is just junk. The deciding line is not always clear.

I hate throwing away anything that still serves its original purpose. It seems unfair to me that something that still works should end up in land fill. Yet there are lots of things that would work for me but are not quite appropriate to send off to someone else. Like about a million pens and pencils and various craft supplies. There's no reason to keep them and not much reason to throw them away. So I pack and store and hide and defer.

It's easier to do a clean sweep. It's easier to say: I haven't used this for a year so it is gone. Or to say, I can always buy a new one later. It's easier to throw it all away.

Except that I do not like to face myself as an unquenchable source of junk. It's not that I am afraid of future scarcity: it's that I am afraid I am careless of the world around me.

So it will take several weeks for me to winnow the boxes and papers and supplies and arrive at exactly the office I should have to do exactly the work I need to do. And in those weeks, I will resolve not to buy any more pens.