Hand Me Downs and The Spare Bedroom

The house I grew up in was a split foyer, four bedroom, two and a half bath single family home in a nice neighborhood. There were three bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs next to the laundry room. From as far back as I can remember, the downstairs bedroom was more often referred to as "the spare bedroom". A more appropriate name for it would probably be: Basement Attic because this bedroom was not used for anything other than storing old furniture, electronics, and other random items that did not belong anywhere else in the house.

As we (the children) got older, clothing became something that was desperately needed, however it was rarely ever purchased. Instead, our house became the neighborhood "Good Will" as our neighbors would bring over all of the clothing their children did not want or could not fit into anymore. We would see a steady influx of clothing throughout the year, with an increase usually happening at the end of fall and in the mid spring as the seasons changed. Since we lived in a subdivision with lots of kids our age, we had at least three familys dropping off donations on a regular basis.

The clothes would come to us in trash bags, filled to the top and bulging. There was rarely a time when only one bag came in. The largest loads arrived in thick, black trash bags, the kind usually used for storing yard waste. Everytime a drop off was made, we would hear the obligatory, "Feel free to throw away anything you can't use!" but we always knew that would never happen. I still wonder if our neighbors are aware of what happened to all of their used clothes or if they even cared.

Anytime a batch of clothes came into the house, my sister and I would take the bags downstairs and root through them in front of the T.V. Most of the time, there were decent clothes to be found and we would  always argue the most over the bags that came from the more fashionably conscious girls who lived next door and across the street. Once we were finished picking out what we wanted to keep, the rest of the clothes were put back into the bags and placed in the Spare Bedroom. One might think that the leftover clothes would go to the real Salvation Army or Good Will, however they were tossed onto the floor and left there.

As the years went on, the Spare Bedroom became a sea of stuffed trashbags. There were bags, upon bags, upon bags, all of clothes, none of which were ever going to be worn. Sometimes, we would get the idea that there might be pieces of clothing we might actually want to wear, and would go into the room and tear the bags open, allowing the contents of the bags to spill out into the pile or onto the floor. Eventually, the room was completely taken over by the bags and the floor completely disappeared.