I have to admit it. I have an addictive personality.

No, not that you are addicted to my personality, rather that I find it very easy to get addi… absorbed in things.

So this freecycle thing. I suppose it could be considered my latest addiction. But it’s a good addiction.

I don’t need the stuff filling boxes and crevices throughout my home. It’s like the material equivalent of fatty deposits over muscles or lining the walls of blood vessels. It looks gross and inhibits my ability to do everything I might wish. For those who’ve encountered the Flylady crowd, they refer to it as CHAOS (can’t have anyone over syndrome).

Each day in 2009 I’ve found something I don’t want to keep around, for whatever reason. I list it on the Freecycle page. Usually by the end of the 24 hours I have not just one person who wants my discard, but many people. I don’t have to do much, just bag it, label it, and place it near the door. The stuff flies out of the house. I feel like I’m making people happy, and I’m happy because that stuff clearly had value to someone. I wasn’t *crazy* to keep it around all that time. Silly, perhaps, but not crazy.

Others in the family are catching the “don’t have to hoard it” fever. My married daughter tells me she started a freecycle group in her town. My younger kids help me search for freecycle fodder, or have offered up their stuff.

So today I come home and ask out loud what I should freecycle today.

“Dad says to freecycle the rollerblades.”

This is my husband who still has boxes of mag tapes from the 1980s.

Oh. My. Goodness. There is hope yet.