Valley man tackles clutter, shares advice on blog

Hundreds of computer books. Piles of bicycle clothes and 38 plastic bicycle water bottles. Empty boxes full of foam panels that once protected appliances long dead and gone. Old bike tire tubes. A temporary license plate from 2002 and the manual to an old space heater, as well as a handful of remotes.

These are just some of the things Spokane Valley resident Marc Mims has gotten rid of since he started what he calls “de-hoarding” at his home. Not that the home he shares with his wife, Jenny, was that bad.

“I hate watching the TV show about the hoarders, so it’s not like that,” Mims said. “We don’t have tunnels between piles. We just have stuff.”

A bicycle enthusiast, Mims said he’s long had a pipe dream of getting rid of the stuff he’s accumulated over the years and maybe go on a long bike trip. He’s blogging about the experience as well.

“I got this idea that if it doesn’t fit in panniers then I don’t need it,” Mims said, adding that his wife remains supportive yet slightly skeptical. “She’s afraid I’m going to throw her things out, too.”

A friend told Mims it’s nice that he wants to clean things up, but at some point he’s bound to throw something out he will need later – and then he’ll have to go buy it.

“That’s how the blog started. As sort of a record of what I’m getting rid of,” Mims said. And no, so far he hasn’t had to repurchase a single thing.

A software engineer by trade, Mims buys a lot of technical books. He also inherited a U-Haul truck full of books when his dad died in 2003.

“My dad had books about everything from municipal sewer systems to how to make dentures,” Mims said. “He was a mathematician, an inventor, a surveyor. He had a lot of stuff.”

His mom continued to ship 40-pound boxes of books after he returned to Spokane.

“The mailman got more and more cranky every time he had to deliver one of those huge boxes,” Mims said. “My dad always said they were worth money.”

Some of the books were indeed worth something, but the majority of them never saw daylight after they entered Mims’ garage.

Until now.

He has hauled boxes of computer books to Spokane Valley Tech for students to use. Others were set free, as Sims calls it.

“I leave them at coffee houses and I watch to see what happens to them,” Sims said. “Sometimes they disappear. Sometimes they sit there forever.”

And he’s recycled a lot of outdated manuals, like the 1997 version of how to use Turbo Tax.

In early October he issued an abandoned property notice via email to his three grown children, asking them to come home and sort through the stuff they’ve left behind.

“It’s also a bit of ploy to get them to stay longer when they come home for the holidays,” he said.

He’s sold a few things on Craigslist but loses patience with the process.

“I don’t love buying and selling stuff,” Mims said. “I’d rather someone can use it.”

He’s made a habit of showing up at friends’ dinner parties with things he wants to get rid of.

“My de-clutter is their new clutter,” he deadpans on the blog.