Did anything important happen yesterday? I’ve had my head in a diving bell for days. But just in case it’s relevant, I offer the following, on the theme of “Out with the old, in with the new.”
There are ways to tell you’re approaching the end of your useful years.
Your flesh loses its snap and begins to puddle. Weird things start growing on your person out of sheer cellular exuberance. You hear yourself saying “But we just put that roof on” and realize that was thirty years ago.
But nothing quite says “old” like opening a cabinet door and thinking “At least it hasn’t gone Fibber McGee on me.”
Because that isn’t even a reference to anything in my lifetime. That’s like my parents cracking wise about Grover Cleveland. That is an antique reference to a radio show I never listened to, and that was in fact petering out when I was an infant, and yet somehow I know that Fibber McGee had a hall closet that disgorged torrents of bric-a-brac whenever he opened the door.
Which means I know one more thing about Fibber McGee than I do about Charli XCX. Go ahead, call the coroner.
The contents of the cabinet in question have been defying gravity for years now. It’s where I keep all my nice storage containers, and also my funky but serviceable storage containers, and the lids to storage containers I can no longer locate but might someday, and—continuing down the caste levels—five thousand plastic tubs from cottage cheese to yogurt to the store olive bar, and, probably, somewhere, their lids. There has been some attempt over the years to nest them by size every now and then, just often enough to be able to jam in some more, but mostly it’s a jumble. I usually pop a new one in on top like it’s a Jenga tower and hope for the best.
Sure, my city allows me to put these containers in the recycling bin at the curb, but not their lids, and I have never felt confident anything good happens to them after that, or if they just get buried in the Landfill of Liberals’ Shame. Here, the city says, we’ll take them. They’ll go to a farm in the country where they can play with all the other tubs.
But it would be even better if I could actually reuse them. Someday. Wouldn’t it? Yes it would, Fibber.
Somewhere behind all the cottage cheese containers would be the other miscellany: vases, a teapot, freezer paper that won’t fit in a drawer, water bottles, a bag of marbles. Worse, this is one of those corner spaces where the door is hinged and doesn’t actually open all the way, and you need to get on your hands and knees, and employ core muscles you don’t have, to reach anything in the back corner. My neglected waffle iron is in there. Also various items I ordered from a paper catalog forty years ago, like the little elastic plastic bowl covers in every size. One bundle of them would be sufficient for a lifetime but I have three such. Pootie scored a shower cap but otherwise they haven’t even been opened.
So on a day in which I had two hours to spare before I had an appointment, I opened that cabinet door and thought: hell. It’s time.
The contents soon covered every inch of a long kitchen counter and I set to work. A half hour later I had succeeded in sorting them such that now two counters were fully involved. The smallest pile was for the garbage can. Another was destined for the curb in a Free Box, which is a remarkably effective way station to the garbage can. The third pile would be put back in the cleaned cabinet.
I didn’t even bother to take out the two nice stew pots in the far corner. I use one of them sometimes, and the other I used to use when I brewed beer but probably won’t use again. But it’s a quality pot and it isn’t bothering anybody in the far corner. Underneath both of those is what appears to be a shiny new grill that gets plugged into a range top we replaced thirty years ago. I can’t imagine who could use it. It’s not hurting anybody in there.
But I did pick out a half dozen of my best cottage cheese containers and their lids, and nested them neatly, just in case I need them, and I shut the door. Probably a mistake. They whelp in the dark.
A while ago I had the brilliant idea of using a large drink cup as a mold to cast the tower of a lighthouse model. I figured I would need to experiment a bit and so there would be a need for several drink cups just in case the first few attempts didn’t work out.
I now have a large box full of drink cups in various sizes and have used six of them.
And there are other collections of things which might have some retail value. Or might just be junk. And there’s a closet full of linens and towels, some of which date back to college and most of which aren’t ever used because there are two sets of towels and one set of linens that get washed and redeployed without ever visiting the linen closet.
I don’t keep a large supply of linens, either bed or table, because I don’t like clutter, plus as a vertically-challenged individual, I cannot reach top shelves, bottom shelves only with a LOT of grunting, and the prime real estate that I can reach comfortably is for things that I use all the time. I have 2 sets of flannel sheets for cooler weather, 2 sets of cotton for warmer weather, 2 sets of towels for two, one tablecloth, which stays on the table. It is vintage and crocheted, and I got it at a garage sale and love it! I gave all my canning supplies to a younger acquaintance who has a farm and does that kind of stuff. I cannot lift the pressure canner anymore, let alone lock it.
I put a free box on my curb from time to time, with mixed results. And I usually have a Goodwill box in my hall closet for stuff to donate. I also have a cast iron dutch oven that I will have to give to a friend of mine who cooks and also loves cast iron. I cannot lift it anymore.
Eventually, I will probably have a garage sale for some items that are too good to toss, but are not used anymore. Might as well get some money for them.
It’s a rather wistful experience to jettison stuff because one no longer can use them, but were well-loved at some point in my life. Like the canner and supplies. But I know that they have a good new home.
I can let go. For one thing, I won’t remember the item if I’m not looking at it anymore.
Lucky you! I remember stuff that’s been gone or over for decades.
Honey, I don’t know what I had for lunch.
I’d like to forget lunch. Also breakfast. And maybe last night’s dinner.
My liver reminds me of meals best forgotten. Usually about two in the morning. It parted company with my gall bladder nineteen years ago and has been mourning its passage ever since.
Some day I expect to be parted from the rest of this corpus.
And that’s an end to that.
My Dad used to talk about Fibber McGee’s closet too, usually in the same breath as Howdy Doody, The Shadow, and The Lone Ranger. My garage is dangerously close to the radio show‘s description of the junk-stuffed closet. And the container collection sounds all too familiar, only ours is dominated by yogurt containers and ice cream buckets.
Glad to see that today‘s blog is in denial of the orange elephant in the room.
Well, I didn’t have anything timely to go, and figured I’d punt. I had hoped we’d all be feeling a lot better by Wednesday.
Trying to evade watching the news for the past several weeks, and especially this one, I have now mended the entire pile of pants, socks, and scarves that have resided on my dresser for the better part of a year (some perhaps longer). I suspect this political season has inspired thousands, maybe millions, to open those junk drawers/closets/piles and clean house.
Hope we can all do the same with the new administration, ASAP.
Millions have done that, and untold millions more are sitting in the dark surrounded by empty bottles.
I didn’t realize my relationship with my storage areas was strictly transactional, but I’ve realized ‘til I’m blue in the last 36 hours, so. Apparently I was trading organization and the rule of law for reassurance and hope. You make that trade, you wind up with chaos and cynicism – a lose-lose combo. I figured, if I agreed not to bother my closets and cubbyholes, to let Fibber be Fibber, I’d gain time to ingest every pundit’s new book, every issue of The Atlantic, every WaPo and NYT opinion piece, and every MSNBC podcast for an entire year. I’d feel better and could claim I was By God Accomplishing Something. I’d ignore the Junkyard in favor of Harvard Yard, and gain peace of mind. Oh, shit, this metaphor has just collapsed under its own weight. There’s just this unholy mess left. If I’d had all the money I lost in the Great Recession, I could have hired that nice lady’s organization service last Spring. Now she’s had to go dark to protect her trans daughter. My undocumented-and-exceptional cleaning company is about to be deported en masse. And I’m never leaving my house again. I have all the time left in the world for being here now.
Be Here Now, that sage advice! But be somewhere else later.
Sad to say, it looks like “Out with new, in with the old.”
Yeah. We’ve seen and heard it all before, and we voted for it *again.*
Again: There is NO system of government that can maintain a civil society if enough of the people are no damn good.
I was at my old barber’s place the other day and commented on my hair
pre-hair cut that over the years has gotten more ‘see through’ on the top while wider on the sides. Gary is my age but his shop is busy with nice young lady hair cutters doing other people’s hair.
I said ‘Gary, I’m looking more like
Clarabelle all the time. Can you narrow in the sides ?
Gary said, ‘Doug, you and I are the only ones in here you know Clarabelle’.