Do you think it’s hard to declutter? Wait until you try to find places to take unwanted china and furniture.

The apartment from which my mother moved had a sleeper sofa, a wing chair, matching end and coffee tables, a pullout dining table, a recliner, a china cabinet, a dinette table and four chairs, and two bedroom dressers that didn’t go with her to the nursing home.

A few days before we were to have the apartment emptied, my sister Nancy informed us that she had called Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore and couldn’t interest them in the furniture. She thought that we’d have to hire a junk hauler. Still miffed by the Salvation Army’s rejection of much of our parents’ furniture a couple of years ago, Nancy wasn’t optimistic about finding a charity for donation.

It perplexes me that donations of household furnishings are turned down. There are so many needy people. Waste harms the environment. I understand that charities can’t accept items that are unsanitary or falling apart or not usable, but Mom’s furniture was in decent condition.

I felt especially sick about the china cabinet that had been our paternal grandmother’s. I don’t know how valuable it is, but it had been the showpiece of our parents’ homes for six decades and Grandma Goss’s before that. Despite her dementia, Mom had enough wits to ask us what would happen to the china cabinet.

“We’ll keep it in the family,” we promised, not thinking about who could take it. Patty and I have no room in our one-bedroom condos. Rick and Nancy and their spouses have dining room hutches. No one in the next generation wanted the china cabinet.

Other problems were inside the china cabinet: two sets of good china, assorted serving platters and bowls, and crystal bowls and wine glasses. My initial calls to consignment and antique shops were discouraging. China isn’t selling, everyone said. People don’t set formal tables anymore. 

For sentimental reasons, I couldn’t bear the thought of the china cabinet and its contents in a landfill. For environmental reasons, I couldn’t bear the thought of everything else in a landfill. 

Determined to find somewhere, I looked beyond the usual suspects and found a couple of places that would take everything. The Honest Junk Company, based in Chicago, was willing to travel 40 miles to Plainfield. It partners with the Chicago Furniture Bank to give away furniture to clients leaving shelters and moving into permanent housing. College Hunks works with local charities to find new homes for used furniture and recycles unusable items.

An Aurora secondhand store, New Uses, said it would look at the china and crystal. A woman at a Joliet antiques store, appalled that I’d even consider taking good china to Goodwill, said that we could donate it to her for storage until and if the market changes.

In the end, luck came to our rescue. At the last minute a cousin took the china cabinet. The man we found on Craigslist to transport two pieces of furniture to the nursing home wanted everything in Mom’s apartment for his new apartment, his friend’s new house, or another friend’s secondhand shop. He was willing to take not just the furniture and the china but also everything we had packed up to drop off at Goodwill: Mom’s clothes, pots, pans, cooking utensils, dishes, flatware, towels, bed linens, bed and throw pillows, folding chairs, decorations, and miscellany. We’d have to pay him, but it would save us the effort of dealing with multiple places and schlepping some stuff ourselves.

“Tell me the china won’t get tossed around as it would at Goodwill,” I said to him. “Tell me matching dishes will remain a set.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it,” he reassured me. So, we let it all go, including an eight-place- setting china service whose replacement dinner plates sell for $14 each, serving bowls for $30, and gravy bowl for $50. I wonder whether the friend’s secondhand shop is any more upscale than Goodwill, but wondering isn’t helpful. It’s a done deal.

The only things left are unused cosmetics in a laundry bag in my bedroom. Women’s shelters told me that toiletries are overflowing now. Anyway, I’m not sure it’s appropriate to foist nighttime serum on women with more important worries than wrinkles. Maybe I should try a resale shop.

Trying to look at the upside of this experience, I note that at least we kept our promise to Mom: The china cabinet did stay in the family. Our cousin who took it has eight children, so maybe it will stay in the family for many generations.