Robbing my inner packrat of environmentalism

A cornerstone of my reluctance to throw things away is that I think it's wrong to discard marginally useful stuff. I suppose I think that, somewhere, someone would want it, and if I could get it to that person, then that person wouldn't have to go out and consume a new one. But the fact is that I've never found someone to use any of these things. And I've lugged so much crap from place to place to place as I've moved.

I've come to recognize that, while discarding something does contribute to the size of landfills, it doesn't hurt the planet any more than having the thing stored in a box in a closet in my apartment. Location of an object doesn't change the environmental equation.

Now if I were to go out and acquire replacement stuff, that would be bad. But I live like a monk. I don't need or want more stuff.

Today I went through crates of papers that required filing and recycling. I found some amazingly useless things like my electric bills from 1997, and my long distance bills from 1998. Don't think I'll be needing those. They all got recycled.

I don't know what to do with some many year old outdated cell phones, though.

But there's more room in my apartment now. I like it. I've done well getting rid of junk. I now ask myself, "Why am I saving this thing? Will I ever really use it? Is it useful to anyone else such that it can be donated?". It's hard to put thing in the trash. But I don't miss them. I have yet to regret having thrown something out.