One Plastic Bag at a Time

Freecycling seems to have struck a chord out there and I can understand why. I personally suffer from being a bit of a clutterbug and sometimes form irrational relationships with inanimate objects, although I consider myself lucky that I only have a mild form of this disorder - it could have been way worse. I won't go into details, but it involves a family member, an old refrigerator, honest to god weeping and even last photos of the old soldier of an appliance as it stood lonely on the curb, destined for the nether regions of Staten Island. Actually, I think that's pretty much the whole borough.

Don't even ask what happened when our Chevy Nova did in fact no longer va ... in this day and age, a grief counselor would have been involved.

But I digress. While I would be willing to part with a lot of my stuff if I knew it was being used by someone else, I can tell you that is easier said than done. In fact, the only thing that is harder in New York City than finding a decent apartment or explaining the concept of life/work balance to your steroid crazed midget boss who does in fact live to work is to try to give something away through Craigslist. That is a story for another post.

Imagine my joy when I finally got around to reading the Sunday Times and discovered the program Furnish a Future. It's one of the many programs funded through Brooke Astor's charitable donations, and I was glad to see that with all the tawdry news about her current condition, this wee item of news managed to make it into print.

If you live in New York and it kills you to get rid of your starter furniture because you're sure that someone could use it, you are right. Furnish a future collects furniture, among other things, for families that have recently been homeless and now have housing but nothing to sit or sleep on. A full list is available on their website.

So if you've been hanging on to that ginormous faux oak entertainment unit because you just couldn't bear to see it go into the back of a sanitation truck (nor could you bear to witness the hernias to be inflicted by the poor DSNY souls who had to lift the damn thing) here's your opportunity to get back some space and bask in the glow of having helped someone out at the same time.

My favorite part of the article in today's Times was that it was right above another heart-wrenching tale of tears and angst following the retirement of the highly revered Valentina Bobric, the queen of eyebrows at the Red Door Spa.

And that's why I love New York.