You Can't Give It Away

As soon as you take that first picture off the wall, it's official -- you're moving. Even if the moving van isn't scheduled for weeks, you've set it all in motion: the boxes stacking up in the middle of rooms, the rolls of bubble wrap, the packing tape that always somehow reseals itself no matter how carefully you try to prevent it from sticking so it's impossible to see where the end went. It all becomes a sort of Judgement Day, as you look around and assess which of your possessions, some of which have been following faithfully from house to house for decades, will finally not make the cut to your newest abode.

Of course once you've decided what items to eliminate, how do you get rid of them? Earlier this year I held a huge sidewalk sale in front of the building. Garage sales are a San Francisco tradition, or at least used to be, and for years I had found my most prized possessions among their jumbled offerings -- a 1903 Sears Roebuck trunk, a Mexican wedding mask, a small lumpen ceramic statue that I was told represented Adam, but with no Eve to go with him. This time I watched as the city's techie Millennials actively crossed the street so they wouldn't have to encounter or contemplate my discards; god forbid they should find anything interesting that wasn't new and had been treasured by someone else. There were no takers for the $400 Belgian coffee maker or John's pricey Japanese ceramics, and I ended up giving away armloads of Navajo rugs and crockery to a nice waitress who had just moved to town. The 75 elaborate crosses and crucifi I'd been collecting for years went ignored by most of the Catholic churches I contacted, then finally were gratefully accepted by Most Holy Redeemer, the gay church in the Castro -- they seemed particularly intrigued by the huge cross constructed by some zonked-out hippies in the 70s. Its most prominent feature was a large taxidermied rabbit head.

Then there's all the posting on Nextdoor. People might express interest in the items, all listed for free, like the beautiful Scandinavian desk shown above. But follow-through isn't anyone's strong suit these days, and I know many of these items will find themselves abandoned in the fog, instead of coming with us to the sunny desert plain.