2020 has been a heck of a year so far. We don’t have to tell you though. Many of you have switched to working from home. Several other folks were laid off. And still others have been working harder than ever, with sometimes longer hours and more challenging conditions. This is life in the wake of Covid-19.

How has that affected us? In the first couple of weeks, people swarmed stores and hoarded what they perceived as essential items. Toilet paper was at a premium, followed by yeast a few weeks later—apparently everyone wanted to try their hand at bread making. Puzzles, paint, and home renovation projects all rose in importance too. As did purging.

Yup, you all realized you had too much stuff and finally had the time to go through it…

Consumerism

Consumerism; this was supposed to be the lesson we already learned and a battle we could win during the pandemic. We applaud those of you who recognized that many of the items in your home do not bring you joy and tackled cleaning out that which does not serve you. Unfortunately, we also saw a spike in online shopping and that speaks of our urge to consume at all costs, regardless of need.

The pandemic shone a massive spotlight on consumerism and our willingness to buy, just for the sake of buying. People were bored, so turned to retail therapy for distraction. Did you really need much of what you bought or was it just an act of filling hours because too many of them yawned in front of you?

Now don’t get us wrong! Load of Rubbish will gladly take away your used and unloved items. But there is something to be said for slowing down. For sitting with our thoughts and exploring what we are feeling and understanding why those thoughts are there in the first place. Too often, our society is over-programmed, over-stimulated, and over-worked, with not enough time spent appreciating the simple things like taking a walk in nature or eating a homemade meal with family. Time is a gift squandered too often, but over the last three months, it was thrust on us.

What have you done with it?

Time to Hit Pause…

We continue to get calls daily from people looking to get rid of stuff. Many of you are now tackling larger home renovation projects. Too much time spent staring at walls, dealing with issues in your home that you have ignored for years, or struck by inspiration and a newfound window of time to implement these projects. We remind you that construction materials are on our list of items we collect.

Before you raise a hammer to perfectly good walls though, think about the why of what you are doing. Do you really need to repaint a wall you painted last year? Will a new bathroom add value to your home, if you only recently redid it? And the hot tub you are dreaming of. Will you actually use it now, and moving forward, once life picks up the pace again? Just to note, if the answer is probably no, we collect hot tubs too.

We collect clothes, bikes, renovation debris, pianos, workout machines, and so much more. Plenty of items you had a hankering for in a moment of weakness, only to let languish in the corner of your house for months or years, before calling us.

So go ahead and contact us. Load of Rubbish is available Monday thru Friday for your junk removal needs and will do our part to get gently used items to donation centres, and recyclable materials to appropriate recyclers. But do yourself and the planet a favour and allow yourself to sit in the moment a little longer, a little more often. There are lessons for us all here in this enforced stoppage. Let’s do our part to listen to them.