The junk man cometh

I’ve decided that the next best thing to steam-in-the-bag veggies is the junk man – you know, the guy with the 800 number and the truck, who comes on a day’s notice and picks up all the stuff you don’t even want to touch.  Seriously.  I have no idea what dead things lie in and around those boxes, carpet remnants, extension cords, and such.

We use our basement a lot.  I work out there nearly every morning, and my books are all neatly arranged, chronologically, on shelves.  Near the foot of the stairs are weekend things – highchairs, potty seats, the Pack ‘n Play.

Then there’s the bad corner.  It’s piled with stuff we dumped there when we first moved into the house, but that’s the least of it.  Over the years, those piles have grown to include the kids’s high school and college things, miscellanous backpacks and duffels, my husbands work papers, notebooks filled with negatives from my days as a photographer.  Do we even know what to do with a negative now?  I don’t.  Not that I’d throw those out.  But you get my drift.

What you see above is half of what was there before the junk man came today.  He took the first layer.  Now that we can actually see the second layer, I’ll have my kids take a look and say keep or toss.  Nothing gets tossed without their say-so.  I’m vehement about that.  Somehow, while I was at college, every last one of my keepsakes were thrown out – Playbills, camp pictures, personal letters, awards.  That’s my past, folks, gone.  I won’t do that to my kids.

I see this as a three year project, kind of like my sock yarn blanket, to which I’ve added maybe three paltry little squares in the last month while I focused on those Christmas hats.  And as of this afternoon, Cookie A will be sending new patterns to members of her sock club me (!!!), which means a new sock to start.  Yippee!

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  1. Susan Allison Fisher on November 8, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    Love your new website. Will be checking it often. I already read Escape, just waiting for the next book to come out. I have a comment on your last photo you posted. When I first looked at it I saw a baby elephant in the rock formation. Trunk and all. Thanks for the morning smile. One of the things about you that I love is you are so down to earth. Thanks. Susan

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