Cardboard

Day 194: Cardboard

Cardboard. Can you believe it has been sitting in our attic for years, unnoticed? Our finished attic? Our attic which serves as our tv room, where we have watched a video every Friday night for eleven years? Our attic which serves as a teenage boy crash pad, where one to six boys have slept, played video games, eaten meals, talked and studied for over five years?

As I begin to scrape the bottom of the barrel for stuff to get rid of, I ascended again to the attic. I was shocked to find this there, and remembered how, years ago, when the kids were small and we watched our Friday video when the sky was full of light, we used these sheets of cardboard to block out the sun. How did they become invisible?

The stuff project gives me new eyes. 

Antique Tea Tray

Day 193: Antique Tea Tray

At a memorial service yesterday, the deceased's brother spoke about he and his brother explored their dusty, mysterious attic together as boys. He recalled finding a 19th century cutlass, and books from the 1700s with the family name handwritten in the flyleaf. Such explorations in their New Jersey family farmhouse, he said, had awakened in his brother a lifelong love of history. What must it feel like, I wonder, to grow up in a house where your family has lived for centuries? Does it bring to life past eras? Is it comforting, to feel that your stock will live on? Or does it make you feel small, knowing that you are just a drop of water in the long river of humanity?

That's an experience I haven't had, nor my children. Neither will their children. Especially now, that I'm getting rid of so much stuff. Old family objects are among the hardest to let go of. We have no unfinished attic where such treasures can be safely stored for generations. In the modern style, we require a large house for day-to-day living, and so we've finished our attic, turning it into a t.v./rec room. The basement is not suitable for storing antiques; my great uncle's lovely 1920s bedframe suffered irreparable damage after less than a year down there.

I don't know the provenance of this fragile, beautiful old tea tray. It most certainly belonged to one ancestor or another. I've never used it. It's too large, too uneven, too fragile. I thought for years that I'd mount it on the wall, next to an antique mirror that matches its style, but I've finally come to accept that I'll never actually do so.

I like feeling connected to my history and my ancestors when I use old family things. I imagine my grandmother receiving these old dessert rose dishes as wedding gifts in Glasgow, and how she must have packaged them up, so carefully, and shipped them to Canada when they immigrated. I imagine my grandfather building this cedar chest in shop class as a teenager, how carefully he cut and fitted, stained and varnished. Almost a hundred years later, it's in perfect condition. And he wasn't a handiman at all: he was a lawyer. I imagine Rich's grandmother in her kitchen in Murray, Kentucky, with this Fiestaware bowl. Perhaps she gathered eggs from her own chickens in it. It's chipped, but we'll never give it away.

Some family heirlooms are a boon, others a burden. I've decided that it's okay to begin to separate the boon from the burden. And in a case where the object's history is unknown to me, and the object itself has no utility, I'm resolved to let it go. No matter how many times it's moved across the country with me.

Floor Lamp

Day 192: Floor Lamp

We tried to keep the IKEA floor lamp. It's gooseneck would have been perfect to allow Rich to sit in his Archie Bunker chair and read. He would have had more seating options, instead of just the well-illuminated sofa where he is lying, reading, even now. But even the Home Depot illumination specialist was stumped. What kind of bulb does it require? Another woman, overhearing, got involved in the question. She had a picture of her IKEA lamp and its light bulb requirements pulled up on her phone. I had the actual lamp in my shopping cart. 

After long minutes of peering and measuring, we both concluded that the needed bulb is only available at IKEA. But I refuse to be controlled! Let some other poor fool make the long trip to Canton. 

After the number of entries in this blog involving IKEA issues, I have resolved to stop shopping there. On the surface, they've got it all: uber PC backstory, low prices and hip merchandise. It's not safe to shop there, however. You end up with problematic stuff. 

That's the problem with low prices. They encourage you to buy stuff you don't really need, because the price point is too low to offset the temptation. It's like the free drinks in Vegas. Heady. Next thing you know, you've got a new kitchen or a pressboard bureau or a giant stuffed snake. On the way out, you can buy yourself a hot dog and some cinnamon rolls to complete the decadence. 

From now on, it's Kings Chosen or the Reuse Center for me. I swear. 

Kale

Day 191: Kale, Beet Tops and Another Unidentifiable Green

My farm share reproaches me. Yet another waxed box full of lovely, crisp, fresh greens. If I was a better person - greener, earthier, more politically correct - if my Birkenstocks were more worn, if my hair was longer (or much shorter), if I subscribed to Mother Earth instead of O, then I would view YET ANOTHER box of kale, beet tops, and some unidentifiable bitter green (which should be eaten as part of a salad, if only it didn't taste quite so....distasteful), all these, with joy. "Kale chips!" I would say to myself. "Kale stew! Quinoa 'n' kale! Tempeh kale stir fry! Kale stuffed peppers!" The possibilities are endless!

O, Jess, why did you have to move? You always took the kale.

I realize that giving away kale is not truly within the parameters of the stuff project, but since I've been putting energy - week after week - into getting rid of kale, I feel it belongs here as a marker of this year. If I didn't have a farm share, but merely had a friend with one - a friend who would give me kale once over the summer - I think I would like it. I have fond memories of kale. When I was a child, we always had a vegetable garden in the back yard of our sixties colonial. The soil hardly deserves the name: our vegetable garden was planted in fill dirt. My father used to flood our little patch of fill dirt with water, and we would stomp around in the mud. It was our way of breaking up the soil. We'd plant tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots, peppers, zucchini, corn. And kale.

Despite our best intentions, kale was our only crop. Everything else tried, but between the fill dirt and the big trees, we were lucky to get a cherry tomato or two. So kale it was, night after night. Luckily, Mom subscribed to Ladies Home Journal and Family Circle. She had The Joy of Cooking and The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. She had recipes.

For whatever reason, I loved all manner of vegetables when I was a kid. Was it because of my grandfather's one acre garden, how  we'd walk in the rows of corn, pull them off the stalk and eat them, our teeth squeaking on the raw kernels? How my grandfather would pull the onions out of the ground, wipe away the dirt and eat them like apples, his breath pungent for hours after? The tomatoes and beets like red candy, sweet and firm? Zucchini and cucumbers like drops of water on a parched tongue?

The kale was okay, too.

But not every week. No.

Not week after fibrous week.

One thing I'll say for the chickens. They haven't given me an egg in weeks, but at least they like beet greens.

Plastic Sharks and More

Day 190: Plastic Shark, Dog Toy and Balloon Inflator

Notice that this plastic shark, dog toy and balloon inflator resemble exactly a reversed percent sign. 

%

See?

I've realized that every last little forgotten plastic item will one day need to be cleaned out of here, if not today, then when we move away from here, or when they carry us out feet first. 

Have you ever thought about the fact that the difference between owning a house and renting it only pertains to some legal definitions and how those definitions cause us to behave in relation to property? Because we are all here on Earth temporarily. We are all temporary residents of our homes. We are all moving out some day, one way or another. 

I guess I don't want to leave behind a legacy of absurd plastic sharks. 

Toy Shelf

Day 189: Toy Shelf

One thing I'm starting to accumulate: empty shelves. Why is it so difficult to decide to get rid of them? I tell myself that this stuff project is changing the way I think about stuff, changing how I bring objects into my home, burnishing me so that I have only what's useful or beautiful. But I can guarantee that, if I fill all the empty shelves now scattered about the basement, it will not be with burnished objects. 

So here goes the first shelf, easy to get rid of because it's too small, and dinged up, and best suited for a little girl's toys. I only have a big girl now. 

If this doesn't hurt too much, maybe next week I'll think about that rusty utility shelf in the Michigan basement room, or that pressboard toy cabinet in the garage, or that old laminated bookshelf in our tool room. All empty now, just waiting to magnetize useless stuff. Yeah. 

Maybe. 

Plastic Placemats

Day 188: Plastic Placemats

Anyone with little kids need some plastic placemats? Perfectly cute, perfectly functional.