October 28, 2024
Greetings from the archaeologist,
I may have stumbled on a genius idea for Halloween. Or I have a screw loose.
Most hardware stores are filled with things I don’t need. These things are what other people need, but they must be kept all in the same place as what I came for. This makes for an interesting shopping experience, which typically involves me standing in front of large displays of the wrong things with a glazed look in my eyes.
I mention this here as a justification of sorts, an explanation of a massive archaeological find that I discovered. Perhaps ‘discovered’ is a little dramatic since I actually created it.
Every hardware store, from the quaint small-town place that still sharpens saws, to the giant chain superstores that require an app on your phone just to find the entrance, holds within their walls a plethora of widgets and whatnots, each of which are a solution to a problem, and also the source of a problem.
Among all these distractions is the 1” # 10 Phillips head wood screw that I came in for.
Everything else is what I don’t need, at least not yet. The ‘not yet’ part is the reason I need to look at them, cataloging for future projects. I may also be considering whether these other new screws that just were invented might be a better choice than the 1”# 10 Philips head screw that I intended to use. And then there is the moment when I completely forget what I came in for.
If I actually buy the one thing I do need, I will discover, more times than I can calculate, I already had it at home, just couldn’t find it. That’s how it begins.
Every project I’ve started, from replacing a light switch to building a deck, has typically involved purchasing a plethora of thingamajigs meant to connect one thing to another. Nails and screws and plates and brackets and hasps and bolts and washers and nuts and grommets. Once the project is completed, these connection whatzits that I haven’t used or didn’t need or were the wrong thing entirely, must be saved in an organized manner so that I can find them when I need them for the next project. (Insert ironical laughter here.)
The result is a vast, multilayered, perhaps multidimensional, honeycomb of chaos.
I have one of those organizers for nails and screws, you know the little apartment building for anonymous things you’ll never need again. It is a bunch of tiny plastic drawers all of which need to be opened to find the one that holds the rubber washer you were sure you bought the last time the sink was leaking. But it turns out that was in the last house you lived in, almost thirty years ago and if you find the washer it will be dried out. And the wrong size. And it’s not a washer, it’s some gum you were hiding from your kids.
This summer I was looking for something amidst this treasure trove of miscellany, and in a moment of insane frustration I took everything out of the shelves and drawers and boxes and stacked it all on my workbench. If there are organization fairies that visit in the night and put things in order, they have not visited my garage. The mess is frozen in the exact tableau I created months ago.
I summoned long submerged courage and went to the workbench with the naïve intention to put it all in order. Within minutes I was frozen by indecision, and a little distracted by the complex history in front of me. I opened a small, organized box that held screws and mollies and an assortment of drill bits, none of which had ever been used. It was given to me by my friend Floyd, who passed away more than eighteen years ago. I found a coffee can of spiral-shank nails, which I remember purchasing when I roofed a rental house I used to own. That stopped me. I have nails that are older than my children.
There is a point in every person’s life when they begin to notice all the flotsam that will need to be jettisoned before they leave this cluttered world. It may be driven by a need for simplicity, or a sympathy for the generation that needs to clean up after you’re gone. Or, in my case, I need to be able to use my workbench. Regardless, when you reach the “I have nails older than my children” point, it’s time to purge.
All of this has left me a little unsettled until this morning. I had my coffee and looked at the crime scene that is my workbench, and considered the bazillion little things that needed to find a new home. And then it came to me.
With a little effort, and some creative packaging, we could convert this mess into an opportunity to share some practical things with the world. I could save some money on unhealthy snacks and just hand out little spiral-shank surprises to the kids who come knocking on Thursday.
Trick or treat.
Hope this finds you döstädning,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith
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