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  1. Discard Studies5/6/1913 min
    8 reads4 comments
    8.7
    Discard Studies
    8 reads
    8.7
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    • Joemat414 years ago

      Very informative read.Looking forward to read Adam Minter's Secondhand.

    • Pegeen
      Top reader this weekReading streakScoutScribe
      4 years ago

      I found this article fascinating. I have always been a person who loves thrift shopping. I prefer it to any other form, whether for clothing or household items. My mother was a great thrifter and that’s who taught me. She would even pick stuff from the garbage, a habit I also enjoy. It’s the fun of the hunt, the surprise of finding something so utterly unique and beautiful. I like to imagine where it all came from, who owned it first. There’s history, mystery and intrigue. The old is also typically of much better quality. It’s a way of life for me, one that I embrace and enjoy. And I meet the most fascinating people along the way. I don’t have a problem getting rid of things I no longer need or use. All I have to do is imagine someone, like myself, so happy to find a treasure that they’ll enjoy as much as I did. There is a sense of flow to this way of life, of handing things down, passing it around.

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        4 years ago

        Love it. I'm so with you.

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      Ohhh yes. I found this article at the absolute perfect moment. I’ve been thinking about this stuff — meaning: stuff, in general — non-stop recently. I’m very proud about the fact that my entire home (a pickup truck and an RV sitting on top of it) was essentially rescued from the waste pile. In fact, budget was the key decision-making factor. Cheap, partially-functioning crap from Craigslist is all I can afford right now. Furthermore, my on-the-road, off-the-grid lifestyle enables me to see exactly what I use, and how much of it, with profound clarity. I couldn’t have imagined how much time I’d spend considering my little individually-wrapped daily contact lens containers. How quickly they pile up, clogging my little trash baggie!

      I’ve been a hardcore superfan of Marie Kondo for years, since long before the Netflix show. I also like Swedish death-cleaning, which is very relevant to this article, a powerful counterpoint to both the American and Japanese approaches. My “technology drawer” (which is actually just a shallow box for my laptop) is down to less than sixteen total items, including flip phone, chargers, etc. Last night, no joke, I journaled about a strategy to be done with the computer mouse (VIM!) because it really seems superfluous. I made protective cases for everything - out of cardboard (used) and duct tape (in the camper when I bought it.) I have gotten absurdly religious about not buying new things. The folks at Lowe’s definitely thought I was crazy pacing around pondering whether or not I could apply caulk without buying a new caulk gun. One employee, God bless him, actually said, “What are you trying to prove?” And I was like, omg, you’re right, I’m nuts. I bought the the caulk gun, never used it, and every day since I have struggled with the fact it’s weighing me down, weighing down the camper. Definitely nuts.

      And, alas, on the topic of the apparel we get attached to. So I have these damn shirts. Trying to decide what to do with them sometimes occupies me for up to an hour, I’m really not exaggerating. With holes the size of grapes, apples, grapefruits, these shirts are utterly threadbare, more like undergarments really, and crazy, impossibly soft. Like wearing air. It took SO long to get them this way (a decade almost!) but now they’re so silly looking I can’t really even wear them unless I’m in a situation where I want to make a strong moral statement about who I am and what I’m all about; for example, right now, at this campground where almost every RV is a 5-bedroom mansion, it’s convenient to be able to walk to the outhouse and say, “why on Earth do your kids need a bounce house?” without actually saying it. The shirt does the talking. Or I’m just scaring people. Probably. Anyway, the plan has always been to sell the shirts to Buffalo Exchange or a pseudo-thrift boutique in a rich-people city so that hipsters can pay top dollar to look poor. The problem is that now I’m in the middle of Ohio where shitty old shirts are just shitty old shirts. What a world.

      Anyway, I’ve dropped so much stuff into donation bins recently and this article reminded me that it’s not actually about giving stuff a second chance, it’s about making me feel like the stuff will never retire, when of course it all will.

      Still though, I can’t help myself. I gave a 2-person tent to the guy in Cleveland who gave me an oil change. I use newspapers as curtains. I keep boxes of used books on hand because I envision myself as the Great Refresher of the Free Little Libraries across the Great Lakes area, making sure that they all have a mix of fiction and non-fiction, high-brow and low-brow, culturally appropriate, yet challenging. To increase the chance that somebody will adopt A Confederacy of Dunces, give it a good home, I wrote a long message inside the front cover, as though it was a message in a bottle I was casting out to sea.

      I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, except that I agree with the author and interviewer about how “the flow of things” is a great way to start thinking about environmentalism, personal accountability, and even bigger meaning-of-life level topics.

      In a sustainable agriculture course I took in college, we talked constantly about “through-put,” measuring inputs and outputs as a way to understand the overall sustainability of a given “closed” system. But, also, no systems are closed. My takeaway, then and now, is twofold: (A) it’s hard as hell, and very emotional, to figure out what kind of impact you are having on the planet, and (B) as soon as you start to get cocky about your lifestyle or your decisions, it’s probably just because you haven’t thought broadly or deeply enough about it.

      I’ve been living on the road for a month, bathing in lakes and shit like that, but mostly I still just feel like I’m zapping the world of its essence, extracting, always, plowing across the landscape and killing every living thing in my wake.

      Also: I. Have. Way. Too. Much. Time.