Stuff. I have written about my tendency to hold on to Stuff before. I hold on not just to scraps of paper and pictures and acorns and single mismatched earrings. I hold on to people, too. It is both my greatest quality and my weakness. In recent years I have learned to embrace the “people are in your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime” theory. Previously I tried to keep everyone in my life for a lifetime. I thought it made my life richer. Sadly, I think it may actually just dilute the people that are there day to day.
I have embraced the theory. I have. I have let go. And I have done so with peace in my heart and the knowledge that just because someone is no longer in my day to day does not mean that they were not there for a reason or that their season may not come around again.
I try to live this theory as it applies to my Stuff, too. I don’t always succeed. Right now in the back corner of my attic storage is a lampshade with black fringe from my Leg lamp costume. I know it is an item that served it’s purpose, it had a reason. I should let it go. But I want it to be a Lifetime piece, I do. I know it has no practical purpose… but you just never know. What if I need it?
In the last seven years I have moved three times. Prior to that I had moved only a handful of times in my life. I took advantage of each move to let go of some things. Having children makes the keeping of everything impossible. Holding on to each and every precious item, it is adding to the pile of Stuff that they will someday lug around.
Daylight Savings Time allows for a perfect morning. We all woke without the use of an alarm clock, our bodies gently nudging us towards wakefulness before the alarm clocks starts screaming Wake Up! You’re Late! (I wake to Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life every single day. Start each day with a laugh and a little perspective.) While Em ate breakfast I rummaged around in my junk drawer in the kitchen for three more items. I promise I won’t spend all month showing you shit from my kitchen junk drawer. Really.
Trash and Donate were easy today. For the trash I have two cheapie cat toys. A catnip toy that has a hole in the corner and a weird little ball that sheds blue plastic pieces. Lucy is a huge fan of cat toys and I am a huge fan of her not choking. We no longer have cats so these items have outlived their usefulness. They have neither a reason nor a season coming up in the near future so in to the trash with them. As I tossed them in to the kitchen garbage can I got a little misty. For the first time in more than 15years I will not be filling a christmas stocking with cat toys for an ungrateful beast that shits in a box in my house. A heartbreaking realization, I know.
Donate – I often wonder if the collect box tops for education campaign is real or if it is akin to the collect soda pop can tabs for cancer campaigns of my youth. I had jars of tabs, bracelets made of tabs, tabs in my pockets, in my backpack. I don’t remember ever doing anything with them, but I knew it was tacky not to pop them off before I chucked a can in to the trash. (In to the trash! Gasp, those crazy non-recycling 1980s.) I clip boxtops from the few items of prepackaged food we buy and I toss them in my kitchen drawer, or in to the bowl of fresh fruit that sits on the counter. Very occasionally I get it together and turn them in to the school. This year I have managed to send them in on three separate occasions and it is barely November. Yeehaw, stay at home mom for the win!
My Keep item is one that has surely outlived it’s season. But dammit, its reason is genius! 17 years ago I used to go to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va quite often. Any and all funds that were not spent at Anheuser Busch’s amusement park were spent on their fine American made product, the Budweiser. Even as a young gal I oozed class and style. I didn’t always have a frosty mug with me, sadly, and I couldn’t just go around slugging beers from a can. I could snap on this metal handle and Tada! This item has a two-pronged approach to assisting you in catching a wicked buzz. Not only does your beer stay nice and cold because your hand is not warming it up but you can’t put it down without it tipping over so beers had a tendency to disappear before my eyes!
I can’t tell you the last time I used this. I pull it out on occasion to show someone. Typically someone visiting from my college days. But this item has lived in every junk drawer I have had for the last 17 years. It has outlasted the purge of moving to a new state. I can’t get rid of it now. Dare I say that this item has no reason, it has no season? Is this a Lifetime junk drawer item?
For today I am going with a solid, yes. Yes, it is. I wanted to show you how handy it is. No can of beer to be found. Here it is providing a handle to my jar of Fish Oil Supplements. Fish Oil has done wonders for my achy creaky joints in the morning. Amazingly enough a solid decade of Budweisers did not seem to make me bounce out of bed feeling like a million bucks. Who knew?
Stay tuned for 26 more days of my treasured pieces of crap. Can you even imagine the wondrous items yet to be revealed?
Share the love, pretty please!!
The American Dream means something different to everyone, I suppose. The Happiness I pursue looks different through my eyes than it might through yours. You might not even see the Happiness I so fervently strive for as worthwhile. But there is one thing on which we can all likely agree.
Excitement on the side 