JUNK ! All that stuff that you just don't know where to put it or are too lazy to put away gets shoved into the "Junk Drawer". I don't think I know of a single person who does NOT have a junk drawer but I'm sure you are out there some where. The circle of friends that I hang with usually have a "Junk Room" as opposed to only a drawer and that is just as it should be. People who don't have clutter of some sort stashed somewhere in their home are not to be trusted. Those are the sort of persons who toss away EVERYTHING that is non essential and to me that is not a good trait. You NEED some crap in your life to keep you honest and humble.
BUT . . . NEVER in my life have I encountered a junk drawer the likes of the one in The Man's kitchen.
If you have read any of my previous blogs you know that The Man keep EVERY THING !!!!! The entire property, (not just the house but the large, multi room garage) is filled with STUFF. We can blame it on his wife and her penchant for "collecting" but since she is deceased well over nine years you really would have thought The Man would have gotten rid of some of the stuff that fills the property. (After all, this is The Man who built an in-ground pool and then filled it back in only four years later because it was too much work. I guess the clutter that abounds in this place does not require any maintenance so therefor it just remains. If it were alive and required feeding or walking it probably would have been gone years ago.)
I have finally begun to get The Man cleaning out some stuff but it is a SLOW and PAINFUL process. I need to choose my timing and enthusiasm very carefully. One of the BIG things I am itching to attack are the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen. The kitchen is very very small but has numerous cabinets and drawers ALL filled to overflowing. The other day I asked if we could go through one drawer that contains all sorts of things like forty two Mellon ballers of varying sizes, at least three ice cream scoops, spatulas and serving spoons up the wazoooooooo. Seeing how there are only the two of us here and we do NOT cook massive intricate meals I really don't think we need much more than one spatula and one ice cream scoop. I can't remember the last time I "balled a melon". When I do cook I REALLY would like to be able to open a drawer, reach into it and see exactly what I wanted without a fifteen minute treasure hunt.
You would have thought I had asked to rip out his heart . . . The Man couldn't speak clearly because he was so horrified that I wanted to "get rid" of anything in the precious kitchen drawer. His immediate answer was, "What if DJ needs some of the stuff in there?" (DJ is The Man's son who lives thirty five hundred miles away in Alaska. DJ has owned his own home for well over twenty five years so I seriously doubt there could be anything in that drawer that "The Boy" would want. ) I explained that I was NOT going to throw anything away, just put all the things we don't use into a box to make some room in the drawer. It was a NO GO . . . and that drawer remains as jammed packed as it did when I first came here four years ago.
NEXT on my list of "itchy finger projects" is the "Junk Drawer" which resides in the same tiny kitchen and is filled with . . . you guessed it . . . JUNK !!!!!! But little did I realize just how junkie the junk draw was. There are only two things that I was aware of residing in this swamp of a drawer. A pair of scissors and the propane lighter that we use for the fire pit. Those two items sit in the very front of the junk drawer and are the only two things that have seen the light of day in the past three centuries. I had NO idea what else was residing in there until today.
I must confess I have been plotting my attack for several weeks now. I lay awake at night thinking about how and when I will get cleaning out that drawer. I have seriously thought about getting up in the middle of the night and attacking while the man is sleeping but that is just too devious even for me. And so today when The Man was sitting at the kitchen table talking to a doctor on the phone I casually opened the drawer and began to take out a few items. I was very nonchalant hoping The Man would not realize what I was doing but he seems to have an uncanny ability to tell when I am cleaning anything. I could see he was watching my every move and when I had removed about five things he began waving his arms and shaking his head to tell me to stop. I smiled and waved back and continued to remove a few more things.
I managed to clear out about three inches from the front of the drawer before I stopped . . . I could tell he was not happy with me and didn't want him to have a stroke while on the phone.
Here's what I found in that small space at the very front of that drawer . . . in addition to the two items I already mentioned there were a large assortment of nails and screws, several rubber bands and hair clips, some chip clips, three screw drivers, a box of pellets for a pellet gun, two light switches, a couple of boxes of matches with about three matches in each, some old cough drops, a couple of dried up ball point pens, three big old keys AND . . . a half smoked cigarette.
I held up the cigarette with a questioning look on my face and he had no response other than the obvious, "I don't know where THAT came from".
I was allowed to throw out the cigarette but all the other things were put in a plastic bag and set on the kitchen table so he can go through them at a later date to make sure he knows what's in the bag in case he needs any of it !
And you wonder why I drink !
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