Going, Going, (Almost) Gone

As many of you already know, I’ve been doing the unthinkable lately. I’ve been trying to access and repair the damage I’ve brought upon myself by being a “saver” most of my life, and trying hard to invalidate much of my shit (trust me, there IS no more-definitive word in this case).

I thought it might be fun to share some of my findings in the past two weeks. Remember, these are things that I obviously, at one time or another, deemed save-worthy. One of my favorite catch-phrases is “I might use (or need) that one day.” But people … I ask you …


~ Three plastic sandwich bags filled with matches. I used to collect match books. It was like a journey through my life looking at all the clubs, bars, restaurants and hotels I’ve gone to or stayed at since I went off on my own.

~ Old dried up Avon samples. Nothing stinks quite as badly as old Avon perfume packets. I guess I collected those too ~ perhaps hoping I wouldn’t go into a full-blown asthma attack by wearing perfume someday. As a touch of irony, I almost keeled over opening the lid of the bin in which these treasures were stored.

~ A thirty year-old pair of tap shoes. They were my last pair, and yes, I’m still hanging on to them even though someone switched feet on me while I was sleeping because they are about a whole size too small.

~ Baby clothes, baby hats, baby shoes, baby toys, baby blankets and baby diapers (yes, the old, cloth type), premie baby bottle and pampers. I only have one child - you’d think I had six - but apparently I was bound and determined to hang onto every shred of evidence in the event that she got whisked away by aliens. I’ve kept about five items and tossed the rest. The diapers make for wonderful dusting rags or fishing hand-wipes.

~ Two plastic sandwich bags filled with various nuts, bolts, screws, (hang onto your seatbelts) twist ties, pushpins, shower rings and oh yes, two old wooden clothes pins. Surely there was some significance to the clothes pins, but I probably wouldn’t admit to it even if I could remember.

~ Allen wrenches. Now really, in each of the five bins I’ve been through thus far, I’ve come across at least two allen wrenches. These annoying (yet at times, necessary) tools seem to pop up everywhere I turn. What is it about the allen wrench? Manufacturers seem to include one in anything that requires it for assembly, so why would anyone hold onto one – let alone a dozen?

~ Money. I’ve found some money in the forms of coins, paper and monopoly. It hasn’t added up to much, but let it be known that if I ever sell all my books? It may pay greatly to come to my yard sale; someone, long ago, must have told me the safest place to hide money is inside of books.

~ Old empty AND not-empty prescription bottles. What the HELL was I thinking? That if I waited long enough, the street value of valium might bring me a small fortune? The thing with the pills that cracks me up is that I’d get these prescriptions filled and never TAKE the damned things. I must have had visions of myself standing on street corners in the faraway future, waving signs that read “we gotcher pain killers, yer anti-depressants, yer seconals, tuinals, your beauties (as in black) and yer cramp-stoppers… step right up.” I was happy to finally discard these nasty things.

~ Speaking of street corners, I also broke down and tossed my “Jesus Saves” and “One Way” pamphlets from back in the days when I lost my flipping mind for a time and became a holy roller. It lasted about a year and a half, but oh my, was I ever good at it. (Grant, I thought of you when I found these things – figured you’d just love that) In my own defense, I didn’t stand on street corners. I just pissed off a world of people putting these things on windshield wipers in parking lots. Yes, that was probably me.

~ Records. I have more 45s than I care to discuss. Here, I’ll pull three titles out of the stack just to show where my head was at back then: (random pickins mind you) Lowdown by Boz Scaggs, Cisco Kid by War, and La La Peace Song by O.C. Smith. Oh, the list gets better, trust me. I’ll guesstimate that there are about a hundred and fifty 45s here. Anybody want some?

~ I have turned up at least eight big fat photo albums worth of random pictures. These don’t get thrown out. Maybe, when all is said and done with my dejunking process, I will grit my teeth and discard the doubles, triples and so-out-of-focus-that-I-can-barely-make-them-out shots. Maybe. (None of the photos, by the way, ever made it into albums)

~ Pay stubs dating as far back as 1971 and no, I’m not kidding. I didn’t keep them all, just one or a couple from every single on-the-books job I’ve ever had! It’s time to kiss them goodbye. I swear, it’s almost as though I was afraid I’d lose my identity – or worse, my memory. Now that I know having these things wouldn’t help if I did, they’re going.

~ Scented votive candles that now smell like the mildewy papers and junk they were stored amidst. I know they were once scented because it says so on the fuzzy labels at the bottoms.

~ Bubble-wrap. I wasted twenty minutes in one sitting popping every last bubble before I finally tossed this crap. (next time I haven’t posted in awhile, you can use that visual to figure out what’s taking me so long)

~ Writing implements. Oh sweet mother of holy lead and ink - have I got a collection of pens, pencils, markers and highlighters! If each one were worth a buck, I’d be taking you all out to dinner (plane fare included). I think it’s fairly easy to see where I was headed with all these implements … I wanted desperately to be a writer, and in the event of some catastrophic shut-down of all pen/pencil factories worldwide, dammit, I was going to be well prepared. Little did I know during the years of collecting that I would be writing about just this topic by means of a keyboard! (What a dreadful waste ~ the collection, that is, hopefully not this post)

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Thank you to everyone for the kind thoughts and comments at my last post! They are all greatly appreciated.