Flashes of Panic

It’s one of those weeks when everything happens at once in Amherst. The fair is spinning on the Common, soaked only in Silly String despite forecasts of rain. And the dumpsters of the local colleges are full as fully-loaded vans and SUVs bear away all but the seniors, finals having ended (at least at The College) yesterday.

After my sophomore and junior years, I was part of the crews of students cleaning dorms for Buildings and Grounds (aka “B&G”) in preparation for Commencement and Alumni Weekend on successive weekends, both making extensive use of on-campus housing. The amount of stuff we “trashed out” of rooms was phenomenal, and that was just what they had been too lazy to take to the dumpster. It would’ve made an epic yard sale, and in fact many of us snagged perfectly good stuff for re-use. I didn’t count all the loose change I picked up, but at least once it was enough to buy myself dinner at the local pizza-joint-of-choice.

At the time, my opinion was confined to what a waste it was, and how the conspicuous waste was another aspect of conspicuous consumption on the part of my classmates—a point that was abundantly clear to those of us living four-to-a-double and trying to scrape up some summer cash by cleaning up after the wastrels.

It is still that, but lately I’ve started seeing it more like the inevitable waste of mobility. Every time I have moved, while I’ve left my apartments clean, I’ve also developed a certain amount of stuff to cast off. Since the new year, I’ve been looking at stuff in this apartment with an eye to what can be shed in the next move, and I shudder at the thought of moving my parents, in the same house for about thirty-five years, into the retirement home they constantly threaten to build.

I’m hoping to do a better job than the dumpster-fillers at the College, leaving their wrack behind like the trail of an invading army. But for much of it, the question becomes, how do you get rid of it? Freecycle discourages “dumping” too many items to the list and asks users to claim as much as they offer. eBay is slow and not a sure destination in many cases; after all, there’s no promise that anyone will want a lot of this stuff.

Yet at the same time it’s not enough for a yard sale. (Nor do we have a yard.)

I wish it was as easy to responsibly dispose of stuff as it was to acquire it.