Perhaps it all started when I was a little kid. Out in the country nobody picked up your trash. You burned it, buried it, or hauled it to the dump. The most amazing feeling grew to a fervor as we drove to the county facility a couple times a year--clean, free, expansive, exhilarating, joyous. The feelings are easily recalled and replayed as I make way for the fresh, the new, the clean, the rearranged.
Our town is going through major evolutionary shifts related to waste collection. It is arguable for both sides whether we are progressing or regressing as a city or as a species on this topic. Nevertheless, our household has garbage pickup just once a month. If we miss that day, we are nested in our own trash for another four weeks.
I'm paying attention to the calendar: today is the day. The exciting Things I get to do today are to hustle around the house emptying rubbish into the reused dry cleaner's bag, a prophylactic for the basket under the kitchen sink, put out all recyclables, and line up the yard debris can with the other two containers at the curb. Can you top that? Go ahead. Make my day.
Can you please come un-hoard my house?
ReplyDeleteBaby, I'd love to! Just give me directions and I'll be there in a heart beat. You have made my day!!
Deletescary!
ReplyDeleteI'm laughing out loud! That's what Bud says, too. Folks will find out, he says, how strange and skewed I really am. I said that if they are just now coming to that conclusion, they are so slow they will never catch up enough to be a bother. You've just known all along. Congrats.
DeleteI am the most untidy hoarder of rubbish imaginable; my wife's even worse. Where do I start?
ReplyDeleteStart with the awareness that stuff is congestion and that when something is full there is no room for the new to flow in. If you find there is plenty of space (mental and physical) for the exhilarating rush of new ideas to constantly flow in, even now, then just forget everything I've said and keep doing what you are doing. We all have our own way. Love your blog, by the way.
Deletei can't say i'm unloading "stuff," but i'm having lots of new ideas about how to re-arrange the "stuff" i have to make the interior of my house more interesting, to feature different items, to re-fresh my eye when looking at the kitchen, the living room, my bedroom. it's all little "stuff"--i'd need to point it out. but it started with you, andrea, and your whimsical painted kitchen knobs, and developed further when i saw marcia blown glass ones. you know i decided on buttons for kitchen knobs, with the help of Byron and Ed, my handy andy paid contractor. the knobs i can't quite do by myself, but i can make my kitchen valance with the bright red and/or orange Belgian linen tea towels interspersed with the delicate lace hankies from Seville. i can hang one of my bark cloth floral curtain panels in front of the doorway leading to the coat closets. easiest of all to do, i can put my colorful coffee and teacups and tea pots on the kitchen shelves -- do i want them there or in the white towers recessed next to the coat closet and intersperse them among the cookbooks? half the fun is the thinking and planning and changing my mind. the other half is knowing it's cheap! it's using "stuff" that i already have! and what i've bought so far (the buttons) maybe weren't so cheap, but all of this is cheaper than a real kitchen do-over! look out dining room -- you're next!
Delete"half the fun" indeed! The thinking is such an energizing activity when it is creating and selecting preferences. Go, Karen!!!
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