The joys of the library and other free things

well, I have been enjoying the Cedarburg library on a regular basis for years, but I sometimes forget that they let you take the magazines home with you! Oh, JOY! Now I don't have to pay for them, be annoyed that I paid 5 bucks for about 110 pages of beauty ads, find a place to keep them in my house, or even make more garbage for the landfill! Once again, I feel like I have somehow gotten away with something. I don't have to even pay a rental fee! Maybe it is the fact that this kind of free stuff doesn't really happen in Mexico, and the wetback genes in me feel like we are about to get found out any minute and be deported by "la migra".

Sure, I was born in this country, and have lived here for the majority of my life, but you know how people from the "old" country are.. " don't throw that out, that is a perfectly good piece of plastic!" What are you THINKING! You can't throw out that 2 week old heel of bread, we could make some croutons out of that...SAVE IT, save it."

My hubby is a first hand witness to this....I honestly cannot bring myself to throw out old clothes, freezer-burnt foods, etc. Let's just say that i have a collection of mismatched and severely worn-out socks that I don't quite know what to do with.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not a person who HORDES these things, it's just that I seem to feel the need to find a home or new use for them....can't those socks be dust rags, or something? The people at the local second-hand shop got so used to seeing me donate items i would pick up on the side of the road, that they finally asked me if I wanted a job there! ( I actually do a little volunteering there). Maybe it just comes from being part of a family of 7 people, maybe it comes from knowing a little too well what it is like to be poor as a kid, but I really have to work hard to put something in the garbage can.

Here are some examples of what I am talking about:

1. when furgzilla's shoes are worn out( but without HOLES in them) I make him put them in the "give away bag"
2. I actually have a designated area with a bin/paper bag waiting to be filled with "donations"
3. i have been know to take things off of the curb (other people's curbs) to take them to "family sharing" ( the 2nd hand/resale shop near here)
4. I once transported a frozen chicken that I didn't know what to do with to 3 different houses ( we moved 3 times in 4 years and the chicken came along) I honestly did not know what to do with the chicken...do you put it in the garbage, or try to figure out some way to give ti to someone. I guess I felt like there was some way to use this chicken...
5. pants that have a hole in the butt or groin, are torn or worn. I always say to Jeff..." give it to the poor..or maybe some guy who does roofing or something could use some old pants!" my husband has taken to leaving the room while shaking his head in disbelief.
6. I would rather put some strange, no longer usable item (like the handle to a sippy cup) in the give away bag, than put it in the garbage.

I guess I somehow feel if I don't put them in the garbage, I won't keep on worrying about how wasteful it is, or that I am filling the landfills with my junk. never mind that the family sharing building has a very LARGE dumpster outside the donation/sorting room. I have seen what happen to the stuff that is useless...IT GOES IN THE TRASH ANYHOW!

for the record,my sippy cup handle actually got put in a bin with baby spoons/cups, etc.

On the otherhand, I do know some of this need of mine has done SOME good... I donate all the pastry from Starbucks to the food pantry, and when my fellow partners at work don't want their weekly fee coffee, I give it to the pantry also. I have now gotten several sbux in the district to donate their expired coffee, which use to be thrown out. I feel a bit better knowing people who are down on their luck, or seniors, or families who need a little extra help are at least having some good bakery and coffee.

Thanks to some good therapy (and a pretty darn good therapist) and some careful self-examination, am am slowing finding it easier to throw out stuff that REALLY just does not belong anywhere but the garbage. sometimes I hand an old t-shirt with holes in it to Jeff and open the garbage can. I walk out of the room, and he tosses it in for me. Silly, I know, but I am slowly getting over it.

I now speed up and look away when I drive past perfectly good furniture on the side of the road in my affluent Cedarburg surroundings. I guess when you are too rich to know better, you just don't know better to donate to charity? I try to remind myself that I have a minivan for getting groceries, not for acting as the Ozaukee county charity-mobile-pick-up-van.

I guess all those years of feeling like I never was ever going to have enough have taken their toll and somehow left an indelible mark on me. Thankfully all things can heal with the passage of time quiet introspection . When that fails, I find a little seroquel with a chaser of BUZZ COLA does the trick.

peace.