The Last Straw
How much stuff do we have exactly?
She came to me the other day with a twisty straw that was pink and had some funny looking square thing attached to it. Turns out, it was a minecraft straw that she had.
“It tastes funny”, she told me.
I rinsed it out and handed it back to her.
“It still tastes funny”
Well, let’s see. We can’t put it in the dishwasher because then it will be a mangled straw due to the heat of the dishwasher. I have no pipe cleaners that are that small and designed for cleaning a bendy straw.
After exhausting all our options (those were the only ideas I had) we decided that we could continue life without the straw and we would be fine. I opened the kitchen cupboard and tossed the straw in the garbage can. Problem solved.
We’re minus a bendy minecraft straw. We’ll live.
How the hell did we get to the point that there’s so much crap in the house we don’t even know what it is or where it came from?? Every once in a while Google Photos sends me a notification with some photos that are dated before the child arrived and every time we see them we say the same thing:
OMG! Look how clean the house is!
Now that the child is on the scene things are a little different and I am writing this on the kitchen table and right beside me are paper eyeglasses from the minions movies. Because.. I have no idea why we have these actually.
Nobody, and I mean nobody needs minions eyeglasses in their life but somehow, we have a pair and it’s on my kitchen table.
This got me thinking: This isn’t the only thing in the house that we have and although we are far from hoarders, there’s not a lot of closet space left here. I know - kids come with stuff. Heck, you need to buy a car seat just to be able take them home.
But the stuff…seems to be growing?
Where the hell did all this stuff come from? Yeah, I know: China. But that’s not what I meant. I mean: do we need all this stuff? Do we use all this stuff. Do we really need a minecraft straw or minions googles (no, and no are your answers)
It seems I am forever tossing some little toy from McDonald’s or something of the like, but the crap still keeps adding up here.
Some things we need obviously. I’d rate toothbrushes and soap up there - and clean clothes are a good start - but how in the heck did we get so much of the other stuff? Take crayons for example: She didn’t come from the womb with crayons. I’m sure she was gifted her first small set and then she probably got more as gifts over the year and I bet now we are at hundreds (thousands maybe?) of crayons.
There’s only one way to find out. I plan on researching writing about our stuff.
I have no idea exactly how this will take shape yet. I may review stuff that I have.(this laptop I am writing on is pretty cool) Maybe I will write a dissertation on why we need this stuff - or why we don’t.
Or how about a poem:
I had an idea
it had a flaw
that one day
I would write
about a straw.
This is a work in progress, and with such a small audience it’s a great time to try and fail early and often. At least that’s what the gurus say.
I have set this up as a separate section of this site so you can chose to subscribe to it (or not) as well. I have called this section: We Have That At Home.
Now, back to the straw:
I recommend these ones as you can get a pipe cleaner in there to get to the dirty gunk that builds up inside of these. They’re dishwasher safe too!