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Do you have a large collection of “collectibles”?  I sure do, several different collections in fact.  Things just seem to accumulate over time. 

As part of cleaning out my house the past few months, I’ve decided to give up my doll collection.  When I was only 3 or 4 years old my great aunt left me her entire doll collection and over the years it was added to.  Now that I’m 28, and don’t appreciate it as much, I decided that it was time to get rid of all the dolls that I don’t truly love.  I went through all of them and pulled out the ones I truly love, less than 10 of the probably 60-100 dolls that I had.

Then I started pondering, what do I do with all those dolls that I don’t want.  I picked up the phone and called my brother to see if my niece would like to have them.  After all, it has family history and is only right that if someone in the family would like it, it should stay in the family. So I just boxed up the dolls to ship to my niece. 

What does any of this have to do with being green?  Well, the basic gist here is that just because you don’t want something, doesn’t mean no one wants it.  In this case, I took a collection of items (this could be anything you collect) that needed thinned out and see if there is someone else that you know that would like them.  People love to collect things, landfills don’t.

If you are doing some thorough spring cleaning like I am, really consider how you are getting rid of items.

So the weather has gotten much warmer here in Cleveland over the past week or two.  This makes me want to do some serious cleaning, mostly cleaning out.  I wanted to highlight here what I’ve been doing over this past weekend pertaining to my spring cleaning. 

1. Donated my old computer – I got a new laptop a few months ago and finally got rid of my old desktop.  I did this as part of April being Cuyahoga County’s Computer Round-up month.  I loaded my computer (and any spare parts I could find that I don’t need any more) into my trunk.  The way they had it setup was so nice.  I drove into this building, popped my trunk and two guys came right over and unloaded my trunk for me and put the parts in their organized piles.  Cuyahoga County will take a look at my equipment, refurbish what they can and donate it to local schools.
2. Recycled magazines – We don’t get many magazines, but the one we love is The Family Handyman.  These accumulate over time in the bathroom.  So I had my husband go through these and get rid of as many as he could part with.  Unfortunately magazines aren’t part of our curbside recycling.  However, there are tons of bins throughout the town to put all kinds of paper into.  So while I was running over to donate the computer, I stopped at a bin and recycled all the magazines.
3. Clothing donations – I went through my closet and dresser and purged a lot of clothes.  I had sweaters in there that I haven’t worn in years.  No sense in having it clutter my closet if I’m not going to wear it.  Between the clothes and some blankets in the guest bedroom closet, I filled 2 garbage bags full.  There are also tons of bins around the city (just like for paper and magazine recycling) where the bags will get dumped into and the clothes will go towards helping people that need them. 

Getting rid of these items has really helped get my house cleaned up.  I always feel better when I come home to a clean house.

So I finally decided to do something with the two old bikes that have been sitting in my garage for the past 5 years! They needed a bit of work (that I wasn’t willing to do) but I didn’t want to just throw them out.  Now I know biking places is more green than driving my car, but I just haven’t gotten into it yet.  I would also get discouraged with the current bikes with the amount of work that needed done on them.  So getting back to the point, what do to do with the old bikes?

I found this great organization called Ohio City Bicycle Co-op (OCBC).  They are a non-profit with the purpose of increasing bicycle use.  They teach both adults and children safety and repair classes and get people excited about biking.  They encourage bicycling as a mode of transportation (very green!) and add a social aspect with having things like a social ride every Saturday.

If you are into biking and live in the Cleveland area, check them out.  If you don’t live in the Cleveland area, check around. There might be a similar group where you live, or start one!  However, if you are like me and just have old bicycles and equipment that isn’t being used (maybe that bike your kids have grown out of), go ahead and donate them. 

What are they going to do with the bikes I donated?  They are going to refurbish them (that work I didn’t want to do). Then either will be earned by volunteers or sold or traded to support their cause. I almost forgot, they even gave me a tax donation form.

Next week is the start of April, and in Cuyahoga County, it is also the start of Recycle Your Computer Month.  Cuyahoga County’s Solid Waste District has claimed April for residents to “recycle” all your old computer equipment.  Now I put that in quotes because what they are doing is really cool.  They will first look at your computer equipment and see if they can refurbish it, and if they can, it will be fixed up and donated to a school.  I feel very good about that.  Additionally, it can be any kind of computer equipment, including accessories like keyboards, printers, even cell phones. 

Just before I started my blog, I replaced my old desktop with a brand new laptop.  Now this has helped me a number of ways with my new venture into the world of green, but I’ve been holding on to my old computer so that I can make sure I get rid of it properly.  This is my perfect opportunity.

If cleaning out your house for a better place to live, making someone else’s life better through donation, and saving the planet wasn’t enough, this is even considered a tax deductable donation.  You can get a receipt simply by calling the Solid Waste District.

Now I am aware that not everyone lives in Cuyahoga County.  So I did a quick check on Maricopa County (where my parents live).  Maricopa County’s Solid Waste District is not doing this, but I did find a different resource in Arizona.  It is called AZ StRUT and their 8th Annual Computer Recycle Day is April 19th.  Again, they refurbish the equipment and donate it mostly to schools.

So along with my old desktop, I’m starting a box of old computer equipment lying around the house.   On April 12th I will be going to the Parma drop-off site to recycle (donate) all my unused computer equipment.  If you can’t make it in April, many of the locations do have year round drop-off, but why wait. 

So I recently received an email from Verizon offering me a brand new cell phone for free.  Well, that’s just the hook and they just want me to extend my contract again.  I don’t foresee not using Verizon since almost all my family and many of my friends are also on Verizon, making the majority of my calls free.  This provides me an opportunity to get a new cell phone for free.  As I contemplated this, as much as a new phone would be cool, what would I do with the old phone?

Most major cell phone service providers have nice donation/recycling programs.

• Verizon – HopeLine donates your old phone to support victims of domestic violence
• T-Mobile – will recycle or reuse old devices and all proceeds go to their charity programs
• Sprint – will recycle or reuse old phones and proceeds go to Internet Safety for Kids, they additionally have a buy-back program for old Sprint PCS or Nextel phones
• AT&T – is a complete recycling program for phones and accessories

As I was looking into other options, I found this article called 50 Ways to Leave Your Cell Phone with many other options. So for those of you that might have one (or 3) older phones that you don’t use (you know who you are), take that step and donate/recycle those devices.  One of the cool things about most of these donation options is that they will also take batteries, phone accessories, even PDAs.

My final decision on this whole new cell phone thing goes back to the three Rs.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  In this case, I’m choosing to reduce.  This means that I have decided to not get a new cell phone at this point in time.  My current cell phone works just fine and ultimately the newer cell phones don’t provide features that I can’t wait to get my hands (except the iPhone, but that won’t work with Verizon anyway).  So until there is some compelling reason for me to get a new phone, I’m sticking with what I have.