(Second in an irregular series in which I try to sell my house and move across the state as greenly as practical. Previously: Should I do a green retrofit if I’m moving soon.)

The move is happening — a year sooner than expected. Yikes.

I want to be more green, and this seems to be a good opportunity to apply some of the things I’m learning. I also want to make as much money as possible when I sell the house. I’m happy to be green; but in the end, cash will win out.

First step: Listen to the experts and clear out the house to prepare it for market. I’m lucky that my Realtor is also my father. I can trust what he says. He said “Get rid of half your stuff, then get rid of half of what’s left.” That’s excellent advice, and like all his previous excellent advice (Viz. school, girls and money), maddeningly difficult to follow.

I like my stuff. I collect books; I buy a lot of them and never get rid of any of them.

Since I moved into this house, I have also collected two children, who seem to be buried in their own stuff.

So, how to purge, in a way that’s most practically green?

1. Friends and Neighbors

I started by working the network — blogging, tweeting, pinging, facebooking, buzzing and even chatting in real life to get the word out that my stuff was up for grabs.

And the magic started.

I went to my next-door neighbor, who has two college-age boys. It turns out that one of them is moving to an off-campus apartment in a couple of months. I was able to pull together four plates, four bowls, four cups, silverware, spatulas, a good frying pan, a saucepan, a spaghetti pan and a baking dish. You’d be surprised how eager college kids are to have good stuff. And, we didn’t have to deal with this in the yard sale or on the scrap heap.

My sister’s friend just had her first grandchild. My nephew came over and grabbed the freshly-outgrown climber from the backyard and brought it over to her house.

My brothers-in-law came over to look over the books and take away some of my darlings.

We were making progress. On to Step Two.

2. Donate

Donating clothes is remarkably easy. Here in Holliston, we have an organization called PlanetAid that will take donations of clothes and shoes. My wife and I bagged them up and dropped them off. We also donated some clothes to our church drive.

I was very lucky that right next to the PlanetAid station was one that collected Books, CDs and DVDs. I’m going through each of the bookcases in my house and ruthlessly purging. If I haven’t read it in five years: out. If I am unlikely to ever read it again: out. If it’s depressing beyond words (I’m looking at you, The Road): out. I’m up to 35 boxes of books donated so far, with a couple of rooms still to go.

I also brought all the CDs from the past few years along with me as I was dropping off the books. A sixteen-year-old boy was there with his mother, looking every bit as excited as you’d imagine. I asked him if he liked Punk. I gave him a couple of my Rhino collections and my worn copy of Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. It feels good to improve the general taste level of the next generation as I’m improving the salability of my house. He liked my DVDs, too; I was able to twist his arm to take seasons one to seven of Buffy, one to five of Angel, and one to five of Alias. It turns out that teenaged boys like Jennifer Garner.

Clothes? Check! Books, CDs, DVDs? Done! Hmm. What about this giant crib sitting disassembled in my basement?

I can’t put it out on the street. It’s far to nice to turn into kindling. What to do?

3. Freecycle

I’m lucky that this very blog talked about Freecycle a couple of months ago. So, I checked them out. And I ripped my hair out at the interface. And I called it names. And I tweeted how annoyed I was.

Then, I finally signed up and got through, and I started seeing all the ways people here in Holliston were helping each other. I lurked for a couple of days, then I put a note out saying that the crib was available to anyone who wanted it. Within a couple of hours, I got a few responses. The first person to respond came out the next morning and made it disappear. She was happy; I was happy; all was well with the world.

Freecyle: The interface is awful, but the people are good. Here’s the activity on my freecycle list in just the past day or so:

4. Town Recycling/Dump

What about the town? First thing was to check what the town would happily take. Holliston will accept televisions and computer monitors at the dump, and practically nothing else. Grr. But, at least I was able to finally get rid of my 1982 Sony Trinitron that’s been haunting me all these years. It’s finally joining its companion Atari 2600 in the sky.

I’ll also need to work with the town to get rid of the paint that I have in my garage. They have a couple of special “hazardous waste” days every year where you can drop stuff off. It’s worth waiting for those days, so that you can ensure that it’s being disposed of correctly.

But, what about everything else? The old porch furniture? The broken fan? The 500-pound metal file cabinet I’ve been lugging around since Nevermind?

5. The Junk Man

I found a service called 1-800-Got-Junk. This is what I was expecting:

It was actually a far more pleasant experience than I dreaded. The guys came and made the stuff disappear. No fuss, no muss. And, they hit the perfect price from a business perspective: just high enough that I had to gulp a little bit, but not so high that I would consider bailing.

That said, I don’t know if this is the greenest way to handle it. They “do their best to recycle as much junk as [they] can” and that was about as good as I was going to get. I probably could have gone item-by-item through all the stuff that was disappearing and found its optimal grave, but I have a life to lead. (Maybe this is a business opportunity for some aspiring green entrepreneur.)

I hope that the cleaning, purging and other stuff we did makes our life better. I’ll be satisfied if it helps our house sell a little faster and for a little more. I’m thrilled that I made a few other people’s lives a little better. That’s what we really want.

So, here’s my checklist:

1. Family, Friends and Neighbors
2. Donate to worthy causes
3. Freecycle
4. Town Dump
5. Junkman

What am I missing? Are there better ways to do what I did? Please let me know in the comments, or on Practically Green’s Facebook page.

PS: One other item that is cluttering our home is wine corks. We know they are renewable and recyclable but we never know what to do with them! However, Whole Foods recently announced that cork recycling drop boxes will be available in all 292 store locations in partnership with Cork ReHarvest. Whew! Now we feel a little better about celebrating Wine Wednesday…

Our modest collection of wine corks