I’m still in a mad domesticity mood. OK. OK. Poor Steve.

I’ve just sorted out the crap in the basement for an impromptu garage sale on Saturday. I don’t need a nickel for an old pot holder and five bucks for an IKEA desk. The garage sale is just the means of getting stuff out of my house. By charging money for the pot holder and the desk, I will con people into thinking that the stuff has value and then they will take it off my hands. That’s the theory anyway.

Some of this stuff is garbage that moved with us from New York City. We didn’t know how to get rid of it there, so we just moved it with us to New Jersey. Smart, huh? The trouble is that it’s hard to get rid of stuff in New Jersey, too. There are these mysterious garbage rules that after two years, we still don’t really understand. Thursdays is household garbage day, which means you can leave slightly bigger, heavier stuff for the guys to haul away. What is the big and heavy limit? Those rules are rather vague. I believe that much of it depends on whether or not their wives were nice to garbage dudes the night before. Today, we dragged an old screen door to the curb with a prayer and they took it. Hurrah. The guys were serviced, and we were serviced.

I’m unsure about how well this garage sale is going to work out. I haven’t advertised for it, but we’ll make big signs for the busy road at our corner. Also, much of the stuff that we’re hocking will the kids’ old toys and stuffed animals. The kids will be here. I’m going to pull Winnie the Pooh out of a garage bag where it’s been hiding for two years and tears will come to a small child’s eyes. “Oh, there you are, Pooh!” It’s all so predictable.

We’re also trying to purge five boxes of stuffy old books from grad school. We really don’t need two copies of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic, but I’m not sure that our neighbors want to bone up on the impact of Calvinism on capitalism.

Then there’s just the unwieldy crap, like 5 old air conditioners. (Toni, these babies are way too heavy to carry up a city apartment. You really don’t want them. They have new light ones for $100 at Lowe’s.) I don’t think the garbage dudes will take it even if they all received lap dances the night before.

The last problem is my husband who has that squirrelly storage instinct. The air conditioners still work, so he doesn’t want to dispose of them, because … I don’t know why. I can’t in good conscience even give them to a friend. So, he’s going to be pouting and moping about when all the stuff that doesn’t sell gets put in a dumpster.

Please take our stuff.