Front Porch: Household purge leads to discoveries and lots of donations

We are deep into the purge now.

No, not that purge, but the one where you go through your entire house to better organize and/or get rid of stuff, some of which you’ve even forgotten you had.

I know there are people who do this every year or at least every few years. I am not one of those people. We have not done this for a couple of decades – except maybe for occasional wardrobe adjustments when weight is lost or gained and fat clothes are either brought forth from boxes in the closet to replace skinny clothes, or vice versa.

We have a lot of room, which is both a blessing and a curse, so it’s been easier just to find a drawer or closet or unused bedroom to shove things into, which is exactly what we’ve done. For waaaay too long.

What kicked this purge into gear was when my husband closed his business at the end of the year and entered retirement. He needed to de-commission his work truck and get rid of industry-specific equipment, some of which had been merged with other outdoor guy-tools.

He hauled up from under our lower deck a bunch of equipment and asked me to go through it to see if I wanted to keep anything before he donated it to one of the charities or thrift stores in town. When I did as requested, I came across a long-handled scythe.

We have a scythe? I didn’t know that. I said at our age, we should be careful not to have equipment on hand that the Grim Reaper might find useful should he choose to stop by anytime soon, so get that thing outta here!

Funny thing about the scythe. As Bruce was unloading it at the thrift facility, along with the other implements, a woman who was also there also donating things, came up to him and said in animated fashion, “I’ll give you $10 for that!” He handed it to her and told her to give the money to the employee at the site.

When I told a friend this story, she asked, “does anybody still use a hand scythe anymore?” I am clearly the wrong person to ask.

As Bruce began the outside work, I began inside. It had occurred to both of us that as we entered this new phase of our lives, with no thought of moving just yet, the time will likely come when a move becomes necessary.

How good it would be to do the needed eventual down-sizing of our paraphernalia ourselves, when we could pick and choose for ourselves, when our sons wouldn’t have to come in and do it for us and at a time when – let’s face it – we really didn’t need all this stuff anymore.

I quickly discovered that there’s no such thing as cleaning out one drawer or one closet. All of these hidey holes are interlinked, it turns out, so removing one thing to another site requires yet another relocation – and so on and so on.

I have a big roll of black 33-gallon bags, and out they came, and into which went clothes, linens, small appliances (how many fondue sets does one need?) and all sorts of found-again “treasures.”

I came across a corduroy dress I last wore in college, which I had kept because it had been a favorite of mine, and, who knows, it might come back into style. And even if it did, it’s not likely that these having-borne-children hips could ever fit into it again.

In the basement I had a large never-used turkey roaster with inset V-shaped rack, an unopened 25-pound bag of dry lima beans, assorted decorative baskets used at Easter and other events, and a Japanese tea set. Various closets and dressers yielded some in-good-shape clock radios and other small electronic gear, towels, serving platters, a food mill, a case of cat food (we’ve never owned a cat), a sombrero and snowshoes – and so much more.

We put together a large bag of socks (from winter sports long ago, socks that were left behind when our now-middle-age sons moved out after graduating from college, some of Bruce’s boot socks and some generic foot coverings from various eras or our lives), as well as garments, a bit more thread-worn than others, but still having wear-life left in them, and also old work boots of Bruce’s. These all went to an agency that helps those living on the streets.

I came across dresses from past work eras of my life. Note: I’ve been mostly retired for 20 years now. And so much other clothing! For a non-fashionista, I can’t believe I had so much stuff that could be worn. Of course, I wasn’t wearing it. I was just storing it in an accumulation that went back to the 1960s (the corduroy dress).

I know this sounds like a huge excess of material goods (clothing in particular) and of self-indulgence, but if I may point back, in my own defense, to the previous sentence, in which it’s noted that (some) items go back more than half a century – kind of a lifetime of clothing.

And so, off a whole lot of it went to local thrift stores and charities.

Of course, I kept the things Bruce and I wear currently, plus some of the rediscovered treasures, like a lovely colorful knitted pullover I used to wear a lot. Hello, old friend.

It was crammed into the back of a closet, and I have rescued it – after my surprise at finding it again, since I had forgotten that I even had it in the first place – and am wearing it at the very moment I am writing these words. Happily, it still fits.

The purge continues. Next up – the kitchen. Ugh, not looking forward to that.

But the primitive knife that my father-in-law made when he was a young man (and is something of an heirloom to us) has been missing for a few years, so perhaps I’ll come across it.

Purging is also about rediscovery.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net