Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
So you can see where this is going now after our previous episode.
The Goodwill bag. Which has sat there more than a year, surely. I moved here four years ago, at the start of the pandemic, it was madness, so many things went wrong. Then I was fortunate I got two books to translate and had to work like mad to pay off back rent that had piled out when first one room mate fled when I couldn't promise I'd keep the two-bedroom as I was in line for the old folks' program, then another fled due to COVID, and I got stuck waiting months on end for the application to be processed, and the apartment to be readied and me to move — after the pandemic was already quite underway, pre-vaccines, in May 2020. Then in 2022 finally my son came and we put a lot of stuff into plastic crates, threw out a few amount of stuff, and got the other room organized enough to use the crates as a base for a mattress and to make a bedroom out of it, its natural purpose. My son did an enormous amount of work because I spent half the time with terrible gagging fits (which finally led to another operation in 2023).
So, as I mentioned I backslid, then with renewed purpose the next day, after the patch was one and I could also actually make a rag bag (yay! no more using dish towels that are in perfectly could shape and shouldn't be used to clean with, but only dry!) — I managed to put some of the items I hesitated about BACK into the Goodwill back. Honestly, I'm not going to wear that too-tight blue short-sleeved shirt with the frilly collar, the sort of thing I hate. No, those too-big heavily flowery pants that are a chore to shorten or take in really should go, somebody gave me those (a lot of shopping for me used to be done for me by my mother-in-law, before she became more elderly, and with dementia. OK, progress. Not enough to really fill up the bag, however, and it was only a modest cloth grocery bag. So, now I had to look in the closet. At least one closet. There was no good reason to be keeping a velour green men's jacket, I have no idea where that came from. 
It might have even come from my cousin's local second-hand store where she volunteers, the Opportunity Shop — like the quilted vest my daughter rejected outright (though she shops regularly in the thrifts herself) — and which was too small for me. And now I had to also face that large, black, bulky top with the horrendous sequins all over it. My God, talk about Brighton Beach! I may hav worn this one…and only to Brighton Beach, to my mother-in-law's house (where there were only other Russians who would only say it was a nice top lol). My God, that I even wore it once! OK, this has to go. Now we also see another velour (I hate velour!) top probably my mother gave me which means it is truly ancient — and covered all over with paint from some long-ago job, not even Goodwill worthy. Rag bag! OK done!
I don't even have to walk all the way to the Good Will (or the Salvation Army) store, take your pick, as there is a collection box right at Stuyvesant, the housing complex near me, and I can toss it there.
Naturally, I walk right by it after first becoming distracted with the community "take one/leave one" book box — where I left some off and took one — and then fastened on the Ufixit store where I wanted to see if they'd take my broken computer. They would. That Just One Thing still awaits, and I wonder how the hell I will get it down there, as hauling it in a cart might make it more broken.
So off I go to my aunt's still toting the Goodwill bag all the way to her house…where I should have tried to get her to part with some old stuff…but in any event I finally went BACK to the collection box on my way home and…DONE!
It's only a grocery-bag full of likely 5-10 pounds or a square foot of stuff gone out of the MOUNDS that await. But still. Progress! Remember, you don't want somebody to have to be doing this after you die!
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