Take it away
Wie viel von unserer kostbaren Zeit und unseren
sowieso schon blank liegenden Nerven sollten wir
darauf verwenden, überflüssigen Ballast abzuwerfen?ADVANCED USI ASK MYSELF
AMY ARGETSINGER
is an editor at
The Washington
Post, a leading
daily newspaper
in the US.y favorite people these days are the people who take
things away from my house. This is an odd way to
think of it. After all, I am the one giving them some
thing valuable, for free. But I search long and hard for
the right people to take my things, so I feel like they
are doing me a favor.
It started when we moved. The previous own
ers of our new house had installed wood floors and
left behind six long boxes of extra planks, filling an
entire closet. We had to get rid of them, but how? I
didn’t want to take them to a dump. My daughter is
learning about garbage in school. She is concerned
about landfills and always tells us to “reduce, recycle,
reuse!”
The wood was worth about $500, but it was an un
usual color, and there wasn’t enough to cover a full
room. So I placed a notice on the internet site Craigs
list, offering it for free to whomever could come pick
it up that same day.
Journalists often resent Craigslist — a free ser
vice that has undermined the business of paid ads
that once made so much money for newspapers.
Yet I could enjoy its communal spirit when it came
to finding people who wanted my free junk. And it
made me feel better about the casual but intense con
sumerism that has come to define American society.
Boom! Immediately, I heard from 40 or 50 people,
all enthusiastically wanting to take the wood planks.
We picked a man who said he wanted to renovate his
family breakfast nook and could arrive with a truck
by 3 p.m. And then they were gone from my closet
and out of my life.
It was thrilling to discover this community of
thrifty and creative people wanting to make use of
my castoffs. The eight hexagonal tiles left over from
a bathroom renovation? I put out an ad, and withincabinet [(kÄbInEt]
, Schrank
cast-off [(kÄst O:f]
, abgelegt; hier: Abgelegtes
closet [(klA:zEt]
, Wandschrank, Abstellraum
communal spirit
[)kE(mju:n&l )spIrEt]
, Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl
dump [dVmp]
, Mülldeponie
garbage [(gA:rbIdZ] US
, Müll
junk [dZVNk]
, Gerümpel
landfill [(lÄndfIl]
, Mülldeponielaundry room [(lO:ndri ru:m]
, Wäscheraum, Waschküche
nook [nUk]
, Essecke
odd [A:d]
, seltsam
resent [ri(zent]
, hier: sich darüber ärgern,
ablehnen
scrap metal [skrÄp ˈmet&l]
, Alteisen, Metallschrott
thrifty [(TrIfti]
, sparsam
tile [taI&l]
, Fliese
welder [(weld&r]
, Schweißer(in)two hours, a woman had claimed them to decorate
her laundry room. I replaced 15 outofdate handles
on my cabinets and was surprised when a dozen
people asked to take them off my hands: One wom
an wanted them for a toy kitchen; a welder wanted
them for scrap metal.
My obsession with getting rid of things
grew. What about this piece of electronic some
thingorother from the previous owners? Surely,
some clever person would know what it was and
want it! I got one response.
But then I found myself waiting for him to follow
up, offering to rearrange my schedule so I could hand
it off. After a while, it felt pathetic: It was a free thing
— but I was spending my own time to be rid of it.
Now, I know that it is worth as little to the world as it
is to me. Its next home? The dump.M
10 Spotlight 9/2019 I ASK MYSELF
Fotos: Lubushka, urfinguss/iStock.com, privat