I Had To Take a Wicked Dump

The highlighted of last weekend was Dump Day. Although it sounds like it might be about a day I spent on the toilet, in actuality it is the day I went down to the basement and eliminate a bunch of our old crap.

The kids love dump day! They love to help me out, and by help I mean tear into bags and boxes and spread the contents all over the floor while I try and organize everything.

This year I finally threw out our old cabinet style TV. This thing was made in the 70's and it didn't work. This TV was so old that it didn't even have a cable connection on it and, get this, no remote! Instead you had to change the channels with one of those dials that you turn by hand. Not only that but it also had a knob/dial for power and volume. It must have been Barney Rubble's old TV or something. When we moved from BC 6 years ago it didn't work. For some reason we loaded this broken TV onto a U-haul truck and brought it halfway across the country with us. When we moved into our place we put in the corner of our basement. There it sat untouched until last weekend.

Dump day also saw the removal of 4 computers. They were all crap boxes. One was a 386. The others were around the Pentium 100 - 120 range. I held onto these because you just never know when you are going to need an obsolete computer. I also threw out an old Lexmark ink jet printer and a broken power supply.

Next came a single box spring that we've had in the basement for at least 2 years and a toddler bed. This toddler bed had been used by all three kids. It had lost the railing on one side and several of the bars that support the mattress were bent. Yes, our kids sleep hard! The crib mattress was no good without the toddler bed so this was thrown out as well.

These items would have been sufficient for a good dump trip on their own. They were all large items, with absolutely no use for us. Not to mention they were taking up valuable basement real estate.

In order to fill up the van I also threw out some of the miscellaneous crapola that was scattered here and there. The most useless bookshelf ever made was thrown out. As were my old computer text books about late 90'x hardware, Windows 98 and MS Office 97. Most of the remainder was made up of old toys and papers and boxes that were just plain garbage.

I then clean up the mess that was under the basement stairs. This area was kind of walled in with a stereo stand and speakers. It had remained virtually untouched since we moved in. Finally everything that was going to the dump was piled up in the center of the floor.

I hauled it up our treacherous basement stairs and out into the van-truck. Then #2 and #3 and I headed off to the dump to dump it. What a deal! $3 to rid ourselves of a van load of garbage. A good days work.

However, where this chore ends another begins. Now the basement will need to be reorganized and swept and cleaned. Also I will need to get some light going on down there, of our 8 fluorescent light bulbs only 2 are working. Another job for another weekend.