what fun

I hate Waste Watch!Not that the idea isn't noble. It is. Even a bitter old wench like myself will admit that.It's just that the whole system forces one type of personality on the masses.That personality is: the neatnik.The clutter reducer. The keep on top of it aller. The cleaner upper right awayer.This I am decidedly not. Or at least, was not.What about us hoarders? We are left to strangle in our own, um, hoards.Because that teensy tiny little black cart is picked up only once every two weeks. You can barely fit three bags in the damned thing. And you have to chop up furniture with an axe. Assuming you can find an axe under the clutter.I am not the neatnik. Or rather, I wasn't the neatnik. Until last week.I have this huge monstrous house. Too huge for me, hubby, and three dogs, but it is what it is.I also have a tendency to hoard. And to love various men (and a child) who liked, and still like, to drag home interesting finds with the thought of "future use for these seven perfectly good bricks" before storing them away with all their other found junk.Over 10 years, that crap builds up. To the point that one tiny little black bin can't even take the tip of the iceburg off.Last week, I rented a waste bin. The great, big, black Superiour Sanitation kind that you see outside of construction sites. Or rather, The Boy rented it for me, and had it delivered at 8 a.m., with instructions thus delivered: "I have ordered the second largest bin they have. You have ONE WEEK Mom! Get going!"Each morning, the Boy awoke me with a wake-up call: at approximately 8:13 a.m. "You have one week Mom. Get going!" Then we would have a long happy chat about other stuff.And then I got going.The first day, I was not very efficient. I would sit down on the floor and kind of read through every old letter, mither over every old book, look at that dusty old satin flower, wax nostalgic over that shoulder padded suit, and think: "But what if I need this at some future date?"I very quickly got over that.I realized how much unadulterated fun it was to be actually allowed to legally throw stuff away. I would make old tv's CRASH in that bin. VCR's? Screw their parts. They made a lovely tang against the side of the bin. Clothes from 1985? Who would ever wear them anyway? GONE!! Have I actually looked at this mouse eaten book in seven years? Zing. . . Cassette tapes? Cassette tapes? Who cares if its John Prine! Bye-Bye!Every morning, The Boy would phone. Every day, I would slaughter the junk.Saturday, The Boy came over with his buddy to do "his room". It too, hadn't been looked at for five years in the hope that he might need that stuff some day.At first, he waxed nostalgic. I warned him this would happen, as he fingered that signed Bill Cosby photograph and looked at the speakers him and his buds had hooked up seven years ago for that fabulous party, of which the "entrance fee bottle" was still duct taped to the entrance desk.He got over it quickly, too.All day, we zinged and smashed and zanged and crashed, into that black bin. Even the remnants of his silly closet-grow-op, the one I had no idea about until I stumbled across the light under his closet door three months in, was gone to the posterity of memory.We did find some treasures: I had forgotten where they were.That they even existed, in fact.For example, the little teensy jumper that I took him home from the hospital in.A photograph of his Dad's 1969 Barracuda convertible.Three of his baby blankies, with "ribbies" (the satin edges that he so needed) intact.My grandmother's diary from 1942.My diary from 1986..Those things did not go into the bin.Exactly one week later, the bin was picked up. It was full to the brim.My house now echoes. Literally echoes.My and The Boy did the math and determined that at the rate of Waste Watch Black Bin pick up, it would have taken three years to do this. But of course, by then I would have lost my initiative.What will I miss?My daily wake-up call from The Boy.But I can still do that, even without a bin. Right?