Losing My Marbles

You know that movie Hook? The one with Robin Williams? (RIP)

BANGARANG! (that movie)

If you haven’t seen it, I’m not sure what you’ve been doing with your time that was more impor­tant.

Any­way.

In the movie, a for­mer Lost Boy named Too­dles is crawl­ing around on the floor. When Peter asks him what he’s look­ing for, he says “I’ve lost my mar­bles” and then con­tin­ues to search the house on his hands and knees.

At the end of the movie, Peter finds Too­dles’ mar­bles and Too­dles can fly again as the source of his hap­pi­ness is back. And I’m not sor­ry about spoil­ing part of the end­ing because it’s 20+ years old and you real­ly should’ve seen the movie by now.

Today, I am Too­dles at the begin­ning of the movie.

I have lost my mar­bles.

I don’t mean fig­u­ra­tive­ly. I mean lit­er­al­ly.

As a young girl, I decid­ed to start col­lect­ing mar­bles. Not rare vin­tage ones I found at garage sales and estate sales. No no. I blew my lim­it­ed allowance on cheap mar­bles from Dol­lar Gen­er­al. I did­n’t stop at any rea­son­able num­ber. Any­one who col­lects any­thing knows that more are bet­ter.

Thanks to my 10 year old self, I owned 814 mar­bles because I also decid­ed to count them one day. Why, I could not tell you.

In the inter­ven­ing 17 years, I’ve stopped buy­ing more mar­bles, but I did­n’t get rid of them. They were my col­lec­tion! I have some pret­ty awe­some king mar­bles and of course I can’t just get rid of them.

Cue a mon­tage scene of me haul­ing 814 mar­bles around 5 dif­fer­ent loca­tions in 3 dif­fer­ent states. 814 mar­bles weigh A LOT and take up space in box­es.

I do not need 814 mar­bles.

So I start­ed to explore what to do with them.

First, I put them on Offer­Up for $10. “That should get them gone quick­ly” I said to myself. Wrong. They’re still here a week lat­er and I’ve had 3 con­ver­sa­tions with strangers who want to give me $5 for them and drop them off at their place. Lis­ten, I’m not dri­ving for 30 min­utes across hor­ren­dous Min­neapo­lis con­struc­tion traf­fic to get $5 or $10. It is lit­er­al­ly not worth my time.

Now, I am look­ing to donate them to any place that will take them with­in rea­son­able dis­tance to me. Prefer­ably walk­ing dis­tance. Schools, libraries, and even the local Snapol­o­gy place are all fair game. They won’t even know what hit them 😀

My mar­bles aren’t the only things I’ve lost.

I’ve also “lost” a ton of clothes and my Lego col­lec­tion.

After writ­ing my post about how my stuff was hold­ing me back, I got to think­ing about why that was. Why am I cart­ing around 814 mar­bles, clothes I haven’t worn for 2 years, and my Lego col­lec­tion? It did­n’t make any sense no mat­ter what lies I told myself.

The mar­bles are on their way to a new home. I went through the clothes and made a donate pile of those that did­n’t fit any­more, that aren’t my style, I’ll nev­er wear again, and things I had mul­ti­ples of.

I haven’t dras­ti­cal­ly changed sizes in the last 5 years, but I still have clothes that don’t real­ly fit any­more. I have a beau­ti­ful Banana Repub­lic suit that I wore to the inter­view that got me my intern­ship in col­lege. I lit­er­al­ly wore it twice. It went into the donate pile because it’s a size 2 and why would I keep a suit that is a lit­tle small.… not to men­tion I don’t even need a suit any­more as I work from home. My uni­form is ath­let­ic shorts and free con­fer­ence t‑shirts. I also have a dif­fer­ent suit jack­et that I like bet­ter, fits my style bet­ter, fits me bet­ter, and works with more of my wardrobe.

I got rid of shirts I thought I’d wear but did­n’t (look­ing at you short sleeve but­ton down shirts) and dress­es. I don’t wear dress­es but I had a few for var­i­ous rea­sons that no longer fit and I will nev­er wear again. I looked real­ly nice in my pearls and brides­maid dress for my friend’s wed­ding, but seri­ous­ly what do you do with a floor length for­mal dress??

Going through my clos­et encour­aged my boyfriend to go through his clos­et, too! We end­ed up with a huge pile of gen­tly used, high qual­i­ty cloth­ing that got donat­ed to a local thrift shop that sup­ports Big Broth­ers Big Sis­ters. I did not donate it to Sal­va­tion Army or Good­will as I don’t like their busi­ness prac­tices. If some­one not named Gwen is going to prof­it off my stuff, I want it to go to a good cause, not line some fat cats’ pock­ets in the name of doing good. /endrant

While I was going through the box­es of cloth­ing, I came across the box­es that held my Lego col­lec­tion. Now, I love Lego’s. My best friend from child­hood lived across the street from me and we spent hours in my base­ment mak­ing up worlds and build­ing stuff. Iron­i­cal­ly, we usu­al­ly built a giant duplex where her fam­i­ly lived on one side and my fam­i­ly lived on the oth­er. She always want­ed to spend our time mak­ing up sto­ries, and I was always busy remod­el­ing my half of the duplex.

Seems appro­pri­ate, now that I think about it…

I am not kid­ding when I say my main forms of enter­tain­ment were these Lego’s, Age of Empires on the com­put­er, hik­ing through the ravine sys­tem behind our hous­es, and sports.

I tell you all this to help you under­stand why I am so attached to ran­dom bits of inter­lock­ing plas­tic. The plan was to leave them with my par­ents and col­lect them in time for my kid­dos to play with, but obvi­ous­ly life had dif­fer­ent plans as I don’t even have kids (let alone ones old enough to play with them). My par­ents also evict­ed the col­lec­tion and told me to take them or they’d donate them.

I did­n’t want to just get rid of them. I also did­n’t real­ly want to do the tedious work of sep­a­rat­ing out the var­i­ous pieces that are worth real mon­ey and sell­ing them piece­meal.

How­ev­er.….….. I do have a 5 year old niece that LOVES to play with Legos. My sis­ter has the room to store them and the room to play with them, so last week­end I loaded them all in the car and took them to my sis­ter. My niece was THRILLED with the moth­er­lode of Lego’s and could­n’t wait to get home to play with them.

This works out for a ton of dif­fer­ent rea­sons. I don’t have them hang­ing around any­more, they’re get­ting loved and played with, and they’re stay­ing in the fam­i­ly. When I do even­tu­al­ly have kids that are old enough to play with Lego’s, my nib­lings will hope­ful­ly be old enough to not be inter­est­ed and let their baby cousins have a turn with the Lego’s.

How I’m feeling

I’m feel­ing pret­ty good about get­ting rid of this stuff. I haven’t need­ed it in a few years and I doubt I’ll miss it. Fit­ting all my stuff into a 16 ft box truck felt pret­ty good, but I imag­ine an even small­er mov­ing truck would feel even bet­ter. Not that I’m mov­ing my stuff any time soon but it nev­er hurts to be pre­pared.

I draw the line at my col­lec­tion of TV sea­sons on DVD’s though. You will pry my Bones and Cas­tle series out of my cold dead hands.

Every­body has lines in the sand and that’s (one of) mine.

Thanks for read­ing! Have you recent­ly got­ten rid of stuff? How’s it feel? Sound off in the com­ments below!