Giving away clothes

Plastig bag filled with clothes

Filled with clothes. No, I am not moving again quite yet.

A newly established charity is collecting clothes for Russia and Poland. I wish them the best of luck: Russia actively tries to stop people from trucking stuff like that into the country, as it is bad for the local economy. And Poland… well, its standard of living is lower than ours, but I sincerely doubt there are more people needing clothes than the local Catholic charities can keep up with.

That said, I eagerly grab an excuse to get rid of some of my immense hoard of clothes. I packed this bag full, so full in fact that I have to be careful when dragging it; and yet if someone else had packed that bag and told me to look in my wardrobes, I would not have been able to tell what was gone. I am not even sure I would have been able to tell whether or not anything was gone at all! They still look and feel pretty much full.

To be honest, I wonder whether the charity will even come to pick up the clothes, or whether it is just a publicity stunt.

And even if they do pick it up, I wonder whether it will ever reach the supposedly poor in Eastern Europe, or whether it will be quietly burned when the challenge of transportation and distribution dawns on the organization. Or when it is stopped in customs.

But it is worth a try, simply because I will have that much less if I move again, which probably won’t be years off. If I live, I don’t see myself here in a year. You can rent fairly large houses not far from here for the rent I pay here. Although fairly large houses are likely to go to families, for obvious reasons.  I have to scale down so I can rent something cheaper. Well, I don’t “have to” as in otherwise hunger, but “have to” as in I could spend that money more wisely, if at all. Having to rent an extra room to store the excessive amount of clothes is not wisdom, I think.

Even so, I am not packing up everything except what I need for a month. No. First of all because I don’t really expect this to work. But also because, well, it’s clothes and I can use them. If I live another 40 years, like my grandpa did, I can wear out most of them. And that’s better than them being burned near the border. Probably. I am not quite sure. So I am hedging. Giving away the stuff I am pretty sure I will never wear, and that is too good to throw away.

Well, that I think is too good to throw away. The poor Russians or Poles may well think differently. I am honestly not sure which has the highest standard for what to wear, they or I. Just because you’re poor does not mean you don’t have pride. I, on the other hand, am single and celibate. What use do I have for pride?

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