Confession

I have two confessions. I'm ready to come clean.

Deep breath

I have a junk drawer and I'm a hypocrite.

Wow! That feels good. Glad to get it off my chest. Yup, world, I have random junk that finds it's way into the very large utensil drawer in my kitchen. I open the drawer at least a dozen times a day and the junk laughs at me, but I don't care. And really...I don't. Everyone has a drunk drawer, right? Neat freak, Monica Gellar, had a whole junk closet. But, there's an aspect of my junk drawer that I have a teensy, tiny problem with...the butcher's knife.

Which brings me to confession number two. I'm a hypocrite. I stand on my pedestal, claiming I'd never have a gun in my house with kids. It's just so dangerous. You never know what may happen...blah, blah, blah. And here I am, with a butcher's knife in my junk drawer. There's no safety lock on the drawer, oh no, that would be too smart. But, in case you're wondering, there are 2 child safety locks inside the drawer, just waiting to be used. You wanna know the real hypocritical part of it all, oh it's a shocker?! When I finally decided to clean the drawer out, it wasn't because I was worried my daughter would get hurt. Nope, I was concerned that I was going to be hurt riffling in the drawer. She gets a straw out of the drawer daily, and it's my well being I was looking out for.

Hanging my head in shame. Waiting for the stones to be thrown.

But, it's over. I've been to confession. Said my Hail Mary's. I've cleaned out the drawer.

And the tally, among other really special items...

Wanna grow a garden? 4 packets of seeds

Build a chopstick house? 13 take out chopsticks

Secure the aforementioned house together? 36 screws

Draw all over an heirloom desk? 3 sharpies

Poison a small child? 5 bottles of various medicines and vitamins

Tie dye shirts for your family? 21 rubber bands

And finally...

Arm yourself against rape and pillage? A chef's knife, a carving knife, 3 paring knives, and a meat fork

Glad that's over.

 

Basement Crap

Happy New Year!

I used to make resolutions. I was always unsuccessful. Aren't we all, really? But when I turned 30, I made the best New Year's resolution ever...to stop wasting my time creating resolutions. I suppose in theory, they're good ideas. Perfect chance to make yourself a better person, turn over a new leaf, stop biting your nails. But really they are just guilt and failure waiting for you. Nagging you on January 2nd and again on January 5th. Until January 11th, if you even make it that far, you admit defeat, accept change isn't any fun at all and resume life as usual.

The Container Store is convinced I should have made a resolution this year. They want me to resolve to get organized and clean the crap out of my basement. And, hey, it's not a half bad idea. If they'd like to give me a few hundred in ELFA shelving I'd be up to the challenge. I'm not a hoarder. Yet, my basement is full of crap. All sorts of crap that, if it tragically flooded, I might do a celebratory dance in my head.

This morning, I decided Christmas was over and I wanted my house back. I ventured to the basement to retrieve the Rubbermaid boxes. These boxes were just accessed about 3 weeks ago, and still I had to move a lobster pot, a box of screw drivers, a Fisher Price Laugh & Learn house, and a small box full of unidentified junk just to get to the Rubbermaid boxes.

The box of unidentified junk is really what this whole post is about. Today I stumbled upon a website, Crap at my Parents House. It's a funny site, and I was scared. A handful of years ago, I helped my husband pack up and sort my grandmother in-laws belongings. I will never, ever, in a million years forget that experience. And out of respect to the lovely lady I will not go into detail about what I saw. But suffice it to say, we've all seen an episode or two of TLC's Hoarding. From that moment on, I decided i didn't want any of my children going through my junk after I die, questioning why their crazy mother saved so much ridiculous, worthless shit.

However, it seems I'm not alone in this basement battle. Dear husband has quite a bit of belongings in said basement. Matter of fact, I believe he has several boxes down there from our move 4 years ago, simply labeled JUNK. In his defense, I labeled the boxes. If the label fits...

Thankfully K is still very young. I have quite a few more years to accumulate crap sort through and organize the basement chaos and clutter, so she doesn't have to when I die. Or I could just write in to TLC in advance.