It’s the Thing That Ate Your Garage.
It also might be the thing that ate your attic or spare bedroom. It’s junk, and sometimes, it’s hard to part with it.
“Some people get attached in the extreme case, when it’s a medical condition,” said Marcie Katz, a professional organizer from Merritt Island (www expertlyorganized.com).
Usually, though, people feel stuff is worth something to someone, even if it’s worth nothing to them. Or they have an emotional attachment to items they don’t need, so they keep them.
“With those cases, I usually say, you can keep the love and discard the item,” Katz said.
The guys driving 1-800-GOT-JUNK trucks see the gamut. There are pathological hoarders, like the man who had an apartment stuffed with 2,000 pounds of bug-infested linens and clothes, to latest-and-greatest gadget buyers who toss working TVs, to people cleaning out the homes of deceased relatives.
“You can really upset people by going in there like a bull in a china shop and just throwing everything on the truck like it doesn’t mean anything,” said Stephen Cunningham, who runs the 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise that stretches from east Orlando to Merritt Island. “It means something.”
Disposable society
On a recent run around Brevard County, Cunningham and co-pilot Ryan Atwood of Orlando made a stop at ComCycle in Melbourne to drop off a variety of electronics for recycling. The amount of discarded stuff in the warehouse is shocking, especially the stacks of computer monitors.
“We recycle electronics, computers, networking gear, monitors, TVs, terminals, anything electricity flows through,” said operations manager Mark Larsen.
The company is a division of AERC, which recycles mercury. ComCycle has a “zero landfill policy,” Larsen said. “Nothing goes in the landfill.”
It will either wipe or shred hard drives so companies don’t have to worry about their data being compromised.
“Computers are obsolete awfully fast,” Larsen said of the piles of colorful motherboards, computer fans, copy machines and more.
“We’re a disposable society, aren’t we?” Cunningham said.
The 1-800-GOT-JUNK folks will pick up just about anything a client points to, from appliances to piles of logs. They charge by volume. For instance, the contents of a one-bedroom apartment would fill the shiny, blue truck and would cost $498 to remove.
Cunningham’s crew tries to recycle stuff. Sometimes they donate items that look new, such as toys and bicycles. Often, however, junk ends up at a landfill.
“We see a TV just about at every job we go to, and even more so now, because everybody wants a plasma or an LCD TV, so they throw out their old TV,” Cunningham said. “It’s a perfectly good TV, it’s just not the one they want.”
The dump is “one of the most scariest places in the world,” said Atwood, who moved to Florida from Connecticut a few months ago with only what fit in his Honda Civic. He hasn’t accumulated junk yet, just redefined a few things he’s saved from the landfill.
“If we don’t need to throw something away and somebody can use it, we really like to do that as opposed to just dropping it off at the dump,” Atwood said, “because the dump is an awful, awful place.”
Clearing out
The dump may be awful, but keeping trash in your house isn’t a good alternative. On the other hand, people’s ideas of orderliness can go too far.
“You really have to be realistic to be organized, because if you are too much of a perfectionist or if you want your house to look like Martha’s house, you’re setting yourself up for failure,” Katz said.
“There’s an overorganizing trend,” she said, that prompts people to aspire to a sterile, super-clean house. “People panic because they don’t have matching containers and all that kind of stuff.”
There are several root causes of disorganization, Katz said. A lot of people accumulate things because they postpone decisions about what they want to keep. Another problem: They haven’t designated a place to put certain things, so stuff piles up.
“It’s not all or nothing,” Katz said. “I’m not saying you can’t keep any Publix bags. You can keep a few; just set a limit.”
Asking yourself if you really need something may not be the best question.
“Honestly, we don’t need anything much,” Katz said.
It’s better to ask: “Where am I going to put it? Am I willing to maintain it? Am I willing to take care of it?”
She sees generational differences in how people handle their possessions.
People who remember the Depression may be more likely to save things, Katz said. “Younger people who were raised in the throwaway society are less likely to get attached to their junk.”
Regardless, people have to be in the mood to get rid of junk before they can get organized. Handing someone a gift certificate for an organizer is like giving a smoker nicotine patches.
“They have to want to do it,” Katz said, “and most people do reach that point where they’re so frustrated, it negatively impacts their daily living.”
Because cleaning out junk is so much work, some prefer to call a professional service such as 1-800-GOT-JUNK or organizers such as Katz. She’s a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers, which is promoting January as Get Organized Month.
John Deck of Merritt Island called the junk service to get rid of a big mirror and pieces of rusty chain-link fence from an old dog run. He was the third owner of his house to end up with the fencing in his garage.
“Finally, I now have my space for my lawn mower and my weed whacker and my edger,” Deck said. That is, when he buys them.
“I think everybody accumulates junk,” Deck said. “I’m definitely one of those people, when I get my mindset I’m getting rid of something, I want it gotten rid of, and fast.”
Deck says if you haven’t used something in two years, it’s time to discard it.
Cunningham puts the limit at one year, though he admits to having a little junk himself, including remnants of his move from England years ago.
“I’ve fallen into the same trap that other people fall into,” he said. “They become emotionally attached to their junk, because it reminds them of a different time in their life.”
He recalls hauling stuff away from a storage unit the owner had spent thousands to rent before deciding its contents were, indeed, junk.
Amassing junk is like accumulating condiments in your refrigerator door, Cunningham said.
“You don’t know where it comes from,” he said. “It just accumulates, and then you have to clear it out. And that’s what happens with junk. You put one thing in the garage, and then the next thing you know, you can’t get your car in there. So your car’s outside getting worn down by the sun and the rain, and your junk is nice and safe and warm inside the garage.”
Contact Kridler at 242-3633 or ckridler@brevard.gannett.com.