zwood’s blog

Wins_rocket

W drew this rocket to decorate one of his "rockets" (plastic tubs that he or his tools 'ride' in) - it amazes me how sometimes he just scribbles and then sometimes he busts out with some very representational image like this.

Part of W's co-op preschool is participating in a huge fund raiser for the school.  The school has an annual rummage sale where they make ~30k selling other people's used stuff.  It is quite amazing.  The week of rummage (this week), each family has to work 20+ hours prepping for the sale (picking up donations, unloading donations, sorting donations into categories, and selling donations and then hauling unwanted donations to the dump).  In addition each family has to donate 2 "treasures" to the sale (suggested treasures include real jewelry, persian carpets, fur coats, etc.) and cook 2 baked items to sell at the sale (where a dozen cookies counts as 1 baked item).  It is a massive amount of time and energy (esp. when you have logistics of daycare of not only your preschooler but also a baby in our case).  In some ways it is a cool event, where families get to 'bond' on their work days and the school gets to encourage re-use and recycling and of course make money for the school to do cool things (like buy more fun art supplies for the kids, etc.), but in many ways it is a huge waste of time and given the option, I would rather donate our share of $ to the school and have a sane week...  but all that aside, what it really has been making me think about is people and their relationship to their possessions...  After 9+ hours of unloading and sorting other people's 'donations', I am a bit mystified by people and their stuff (myself included!).  Now, I am a big supporter of re-use and re-cycling and I regularly pack some used, now unwanted possessions into bags for donations to second hand stores, etc., but after sorting through all this stuff, I just have to say: