Columnists
Pandemic broom
Ah, August! You’re all about the cooler nights and the hot days that hum with cicadas and swirl with wasps. I’m all down with August. Last week I wrote about my concern with the Province’s approach to “back-to-school” for our elementary school children. The arrival of the month of August makes the approach of the 2020 school year a scary reality. I don’t know what we’d do if I had school-aged children. I just don’t know. I do know when LOML and I did have children in elementary and high school, we had to go to work to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and shoes on our babies. I know we couldn’t have done that, comfortably, if we weren’t able to go to work. And we wouldn’t have been able to go to work if our children weren’t in school. August! You bring out the best and the worst in all of us.
Return to school and weather aside, August is shaping up to be just another pandemic month. It’s another month of where I spend too much time looking for things to do to keep me busy but not bored. I’m a ten out of ten for starting interesting projects and then abandoning them. However, this month I made a list of all of the things I need/want to do around the house. (Heavy on the “want to do”.) I feel as if I’m an emptynester who’s sort of “de-nesting”. Right now I’ve got designs on getting rid of things and clearing away the excesses of my life. I might have too much time to think about this project, though. For instance, this morning I was thinking “If only two people live in this old house, why the heck do we need to have so many coffee mugs?” I’m not sure I understand how the coffee mug situation got so out-of-hand. I would estimate we own around one hundred coffee mugs, all of them residing in and around the kitchen. Some of them have a bit of sentimental value, but I’m only sentimental when I dig them out, look at them and then try to convince myself to donate them. That’s when I find a reason to keep the damn coffee mugs. Obviously, I didn’t care about those mugs until I looked at them. So, why keep them? Right? I am right, and now I have a cardboard box full of coffee mugs that may or may not find their way to a jumble shop, or to the sidewalk with a note attached. “Free coffee mugs. Take all of them.” I also noticed we have an abundance of Mason jars. I use the word “we” a bit loosely. LOML would never keep a Mason jar unless he had a very specific, and very immediate, use for it. Honestly, I’m never going to make jam or pickles, so why do I have a tote box full of canning jars? I don’t have any sentimental attachment to canning jars. Out they go. There will be no home canning in my kitchen until all of the jars have been taken away by someone who is serious about canning stuff, and then I’ll buy a brand new carton of jars.
And, it’s not just jars and mugs. Curtains! I’ve got shelves full of curtains. Nothing fancy, mind you, just plain old curtains. Someone could use them, right? I obviously don’t have them hanging anywhere, so why the need to have them taking up real estate in my linen storage? Of course, I may want to repaint a room, someday. Obviously I would have a pair of curtains to match the new paint and goodness knows I’ve got at least ten, partially used gallon cans of paint and a wide variety of colours to do that “re-do”. The curtains need to go. I’ll just bag them up and put them out, I think that’s what’s going to happen. While I’m on the topic of fabric, let me talk about the amount of clothing I have that hasn’t been worn in months or, maybe even, in years. Most especially I have a huge collection of workout clothing. Why is it so difficult to get rid of workout clothing? I’m definitely, emotionally, attached to my workout gear, but I’ve got ten years worth of tights, shorts, tank-tops and jackets rolled up (Marie Kondo style) just waiting for me to decide if any of it brings me “joy”. But it’s a pile of workout clothing. None of it brings me joy. I get the joy from the workout. I’m not sure if give-aways are encouraged during these pandemic times, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. This week be on the lookout for cartons of coffee mugs, boxes of canning jars and vacuum packed bags of workout clothing.
Look out, trashy crime novels. You may be next on the chopping block.
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