Friday, April 18, 2008

One Man's Junk...?

I have a small flat...about the size of a pro basketball players right foot...myself and my 5 kids enjoy a certain amount of freedom of movement...as long as that movement is restricted to turning in circles...or the rare times we may need to change our minds about something...we often are forced to step out onto the patio if two or more of us are changing our minds at the same time...in other words...my flat is small...dinky...miniscule...a shoe box.

The funny thing about all this as that it seemed huge when we moved in 11 years ago...the kids were running throughout the flat screaming and having a good time...I was imagining curtains and carpet and painting the walls all sorts of lively colors...it was heaven. Heaven compared to the one room we all shared in my mother in laws house up to that point...it was a veritible mansion...and it was ours....of course the kids were little then and one still on the way...not to mention the fact that we had no furniture....not even a fridge or stove...to clutter the place up. It was an empty mansion....but it was ours.

Fast forward 11 years later and the kids are all grown up just about...elbow room has been reduced to eyebrow room...and even though we did chuck out a great deal of junk when we tossed out the "man" that owned the junk...its still pretty darn crowded...which makes me wonder....where the hell did all this junk come from?

I have things stuck away in corners...up on cupboards...under the beds...in other words...every nook and cranny has something stuck in taking up space...most of that stuff, I have no idea where it came from...and worse yet....I dont know why Im keeping it. Every few months I do a clean out...in which I take everything out...evaluate its potential as useful in the future...and either chuck it or keep it...most of the stuff gets chucked but a few months later the flat is stuffed again and the process needs to be repeated.

A short list of things I always have stored somewhere which I dont use and dont know why I always assume I will...

1. Plastic bags...I have enough plastic bags at any given time to cover my Jeep...which is good since this will afford it some protection from the Mindless Idiots that are lurking around every corner...but I rarely use plastic bags again...except maybe to put trash in...what I end up doing is putting all my "trash bags" into one bag and throwing the lot away...but next month I will have accumilated a new collection...sigh.

2. Perfume bottles...for some reason I save empty perfume bottles. They serve absolutely no purpose except some of the shapes are interesting and I like to admire them...up to a point tho. I recently tossed 12 empty bottles...pained my heart to do so but toss I did.

3. Boxes....Im a box freak....there I said it now maybe I can get that much needed help. I love boxes...small, big, medium...doesnt matter...and empty box has sooo much potential to be used again and again. When I buy something or someone brings something over in a box...Im less interested in the contents then in the box and all its possibilities. Ive often bought unneeded things just cause the box it came in was so interesting...said I needed help didnt I? Problem with boxes is that I pile them up and gloat over them and never ever use them again...so now and then I have to give myself a good talking too and convince my box lover greedy side that some boxes have got to go...after all...the flat is only so big..and there are always more boxes to be had...ha ha.

4. Dishes....I cant remember the last time I walked into a store and bought a dish...and yet my kitchen is stuffed with dishes. Most of them I dont recognize as being mine...but unless my dishes are mating or mutating they are coming from somewhere, Now and then my neighbors will send a dish down...by the number of dishes in my cupboards I would harbor a guess that my neighbors cupboards have been emptied and need filling up again...so I send all the dishes I dont recognize upstairs...they take the ones that are theirs and the rest come back to me. Who those remaining dishes belong to I have no clue. Anyone missing a dish?

5. Now the one thing I have lots of but have no plans of getting rid of but are taking up the most space are my books. I feel about my books the way some NRA members feel about their guns. You will have to pry them from my cold dead fingers and all that....for real. I happen to have at this moment more books unread then read...which for me is something of a phenomenon...very rare that a book goes unread for any length of time once in my possession...however, my newly acquired life as a single working parent has robbed me of my much loved reading time...will have to work on that but to get rid of even a single book is akin to asking me to give up a arm or a leg...I could do it but life would be hard and I would always dream of that phantom limb(book) that I no longer have. If my books reach to the ceiling and we are squeezing ourselves through disorganized piles of books throughout the flat...I still dare one of my kids to suggest getting rid of them to make more space....I would suggest that child consider moving out if my idea of heaven was becoming unbearable...for real.

All of those plus so many other things are constantly being sorted and thrown out (except the books) on a monthly basis...I fill up the front door area near the street with all my cast offs...funny thing is...my cast offs become someone else's new treasure for no sooner have I tossed it out the door then someone comes along and rifles through the pile and hauls much of it off. I hope they enjoy all that "junk" as much as I did...Im glad it found a new home...I would hate to imagine my boxes (sniff sniff) in a trash mountain some day...what a waste....on second thoughts maybe I should save those boxes just a little longer...excuse me...Ive got to go check the front door real quick.