A dedication

This blog is dedicated to all my junk.

If you have ever watched the show "Clean Sweep" you know what our weekend was like. Karen and I spent almost all day Saturday and Sunday going through everything in the house, Every box, every do-dad, every scrap of awesome "I will use that someday" wood and hardware I have collected over the past 10 years. We have quite a stack of stuff for our yard sale. And probably an equally large stack of trash. We filled up our trash bin to overflowing. We borrowed 3 other neighbor's trash bins and topped them off. We still have a substantial pile of disposables in the middle of our garage. It is amazing how much stuff someone you can pack into your house when you are not looking.

We still have the boys rooms to go through and probably another round in the garage, after I finish up my current projects But it is a good start.

It's tough to get rid of stuff. There are a lot of memories associated with the suffed alegator we made to represent our den at the monthly pack meeting. There was the motherboard from my first PC. The Intel 286 is going to make I comeback I know it. The Glass Dishes someone gave us for our wedding, that since has given up a couple of her members to the perils of young hands. The Scooters Karen and I ran all around town to find before the stores closed Christmas eve years ago. All fond memories, all cluttering up our house. We retained a select few of such items and put them aside for pe4rhaps another spring cleaning session years from now. The other items... well....

I handled this exersize well, plowing through the task at hand without too much trepidation. Then came the garage. It was the wood pile made me the most melancholy... There was the piece of Pecan that I got from Alex and Debbie's pecan tree that I had been saving, letting dry out, so I could carve something spectacular. The old Bike inner-tube that I stashed away. How often do you need a little piece of rubber for a spacer or bumper, to put on the back of a picture frame so it does not scratch the walls... gone. The slats from the broken mini-blinds; Girl Scout craft material if there ever was such a thing. The 3' x 3/8" oak dowels that were leftover from a school project. Surely those would have gotten use, perhaps on another school project or other masterpiece. Numerous scraps of electrical, TV-cable, telephone, Cat-5 network wire all stashed in a box that I would someday use to save the day when such a scrap of wire would be needed. The pile of tile and marble pieces from the bathroom re-model; Those would have made a fine marble and tile chess set.... I had a box made from scrap wood that held nothing but scrap wood. Oh the creations Michelle has made with a hammer, some nails and what she found by rummaging through that box.... All now landfill fodder.

A vision came to my mind as I was re-reading this blog before pushing the "publish" button. This reminds me of a section in the book "Charlotts Web"; where Templeton describes the wonders of HIS stash.... (I had to get a literary reference in there somewhere).