The other day, I unearthed a garbage bag full of old socks in my bedroom. (It was buried under some other stuff, OK?. The room was a mess! A big honkin’ mess!) So anyway, I’d forgotten about it completely, but when I looked inside, I did recall that those were socks I’d decided to toss, not because they were holey, but mainly because I didn’t like them and they were jamming up my drawer.
But in that bag, there was also a black shirt that looked, well, promising. I pulled it out and showed my husband. “Why was I throwing this away?” I asked rhetorically. “It looks alright.”
Laid out on the bed in all of its wrinkled glory, the shirt didn’t appear faded. Was it too short? Maybe I should try it on…
And that’s where I had to stop myself. I set a rule a long time ago that is simple, yet strangely difficult to follow sometimes. If it belongs in the garbage, you shouldn’t be wearing it! That goes for favorite items of clothing too worn to donate. And certainly it applies to anything I’m actually pulling out of the garbage and reconsidering as an addition to my wardrobe.
I put the shirt back in the bag.
So far, this is not a story of money found. But I continued the Great Bedroom Cleanup - yes, it is nice and neat now, thank you very much – and eventually came across a basket filled with books (that I plan to sell), a new-with-tags bathing suit that never fit (a great reminder not to buy certain nonreturnable items online), and a bottle of perfume.
“Look! Look at this!” I crowed to my husband. “I was just thinking I need to buy more perfume and here’s a bottle practically full!”
“Oh, yeah. Remember I got that for you last Christmas?” he said, sounding not at all perturbed that I’d lost and forgotten about it for an entire year.
And there it is: A $15 purchase satisfied with zero (of my own) dollars spent. A nice little payment for clearing up clutter - and I got a clean room to boot.
