Safety in redundancy

     Growing up with parents 

who shared rural, Depression Era backgrounds 

meant my childhood was one box of magazines away from being on an episode of "Hoarders."

     There may be safety in redundancy but sometimes you gotta break down and get rid of some crap.

I've been in the mood this summer to thin out my belongings.  I took a load of books to trade in at the used book store.  Now that I've finally discovered reading for free on my phone's browser, I may never use up my book store credit.

     I bought this shoe box full of thread at a garage sale in Missouri over 15 years ago.  I debated thinning it out as surely the thread on the wooden spools would be weak and rotted with age but upon closer inspection, the thread is still in good shape, sleek and shiny and much better quality than the lower price thread available today.  I also enjoy knowing that no matter what little project I need to work on, I have the exact right color.

     I have a small stack of large "laundry" bags including a few from IKEA and this one that I purchased on a short trip to Venezuela in 1990.  I don't mind loading up the IKEA bags and handing them over to Goodwill but I'm not parting with my "puerto libre" tote.  I still stuff this thing with sleeping bags when I go camping and it hasn't shredded yet.

     I've been in a long process of deleting grass from my yard and the front yard is now fully landscaped with hardy plants that don't require irrigation.   This enabled my to give my lawn mower away but I still need some grass in the backyard for dogs and chickens and that grass grows to waist height if I don't manage it somehow, so I finally decided to ditch the gas-powered weed eater and go electric.  

Shoulda done it years ago!

     Electric weed eaters are cheap to buy and so easy to use.  Yes, I have to deal with a very long extension cord but that's nothing compared to the Herculean effort that was required to get my old weed eater started and keep it going.  So much less cussing with the electric version.

  

     There's a constant ebb and flow, no matter how hard I try to manage my stuff.

Like I'm going to say, "no," when offered these beautiful little pots!

     I even have to consider offers of free plants as my yard is small and rapidly filling up, but with everyone showing off their night-blooming cereus flowers on FaceBook lately, I gratefully accepted some starts from a friend.  I have the perfect swamp magnolia in the corner of my yard for this cactus to climb on.

A quick word of caution...

     This is NOT the best way to get your cast-offs to the thrift store.

     I had my 10 year old stepson in the truck with me when we witnessed this maiming in the making.  There were so many things wrong with this set-up, the safety talk continued the whole way home.  Hopefully next time the driver needs to move mattresses, he'll invest in a couple of tie-downs and move the human cargo to the front passenger seat.