Yard Sale

Every spring Good Samaritan has a yard sale. It's one of our traditional fundraisers, and a lot of times, because we have it in early May, it rains.  Other than meteorological non-cooperation, May is a good time to have a yard sale, because a lot of our folks are in spring cleaning mode and ready to bring us boxes and boxes of stuff.  Predictably, the forecast calls for nearly three whole days of rain, so right now, the whole upstairs of our Church looks like somebody's basement exploded all over it.
Every time I walk down the hall and through the narthex I am astounded by how much stuff we are trying to get rid of: art, tools, glassware, furniture, dishes, even an old science project apparatus about solar panels.  It's a visually arresting scene this year, set up like it is to take place indoors.
There is just so much stuff.
I have seen people dropping it off.  They are happy to be rid of it. I know the feeling of getting rid of things that amount to clutter in your life.  Come Saturday, people will appear, some even jumping the gun on the 8:00 AM start time, and enthusiastically and gleefully take home a lot of this stuff.  They will buy it because it's a good deal, they will buy it because they think they need it.  They will buy it and before too long it will end up in another yard sale (I'm pretty sure I've seen some of this stuff before).
I still have some nagging questions, where does all of this stuff come from?  Why did people keep it? Why are they getting rid of it now?  Why will someone else probably buy it?
I admit there are some things that I think: "Hey, I could use that," but I start asking myself, "do I really need it," and the answer is pretty universally, "No, I do not."  I'm not talking down at the yard sale stuff, I'm absolutely as guilty of over-consumption as anyone else, and usually I don't have the good sense to pick up my pointless junk for 25 cents.  Why spend hours scouring yard sales when Amazon is so darn good at getting me what I think I need in less than two days with free shipping.
Occasionally, I have been pleased with myself if I manage to "up-cycle" some piece of something that I had been holding onto for nebulous reasons.  Honestly though, I think that only feeds my desire to pack rat things away.  If I actually use something that I probably should have tossed, it certainly reinforces that behavior.  I hear my Grandpa in my ear, "you might be able to use that someday."
Maybe I will.  Maybe I might, or maybe someday my kids will be hauling all of that junk to the dump, or to a yard sale.
The thing is, I can kind of make an argument for de-cluttering, and I can kind of make an argument for waste-not-want-not.  It's not as clear cut as zealots of either camp seem to make it.  Maybe that's a lesson we could apply in other areas as well.