It’s springtime in New England: that lovely season that heralds in tulips, flowering trees and endless weekend yard sales.

I don’t begrudge anyone a successful yard sale: from an ecological perspective, it’s great to see reuse of items that would otherwise end up in landfills. It’s just that I don’t understand wanting to spend a perfectly good day rooting through other people’s junk.

Maybe it’s just me: but I have actual shit to do on the weekend–like buying toilet paper and washing clothes. You know: those core activities which actually keep your household functioning. Where do these people find the time to spend hours rooting through piles of other people’s crap?

Our neighbors have yard sales frequently. In fact, they have them so frequently that I wonder where in the hell they are getting all of the junk that they sell? Their house just isn’t that big. Maybe they go to yard sales, buy stuff, and then turn around and hold a yard sale of their own?

In an effort to understand the attraction, I spent a few minutes looking out the window at the action yesterday.

They always have a selection of baby furniture–presumably of an age that the pieces pose choking hazards, or are covered in toxic lead paint. These items are very popular with the clueless minions that show up like swarms of locusts every time they have one of these sales. While I feel sorry for the children who might be injured, I sort of see it as natural selection at work.

Every sale includes pieces of “art” that they display tastefully propped against the bushes. I can only guess that there are lots of cheap motels going out of business, as I cannot imagine where else they could have acquired this expansive gallery of poker-playing dogs and badly-illustrated flowers.

One of their sales is not complete unless it includes a good selection of household items such as George Foreman grills, crock pots, food dehydrators and the like.

I believe that this never-ending supply of extraneous small appliances is fueled by the divorce rate. When a household breaks up it’s a necessary task to divest of all those useless wedding presents that have gathered dust in the basement for the odd 5, 10 or 15 years it takes for husband and wife to glance across at their spouse snoring on the other Lazy Boy and to realize that there must be more to life…

By contrast with all of these enthusiastic yard sale addicts, I am at the point of wishing that I could have a dumpster permanently parked in my driveway

And I’d love to have one of those yellow demolition chutes coming out of the window for ease of disposal…”Bam!” straight into the container for direct removal.

I am tired of “stuff”: stuff that has to be dusted, stored, maintained. In fact, if I had my way I’d probably live in one room with tatami mats, a futon, laptop and a wine fridge. That would pretty much keep me happy.

Perhaps, instead of a dumpster, I will just point the chute across the street. I am pretty sure that I could could count on my neighbors to sell this stuff if I just slid it across the way.

Here’s to divestiture!