Junk in the House

Rewind to a few days back. I was at home with nothing much to do. Its a common phenomenon that when you are free at home, you won’t find any music worth listening, your friends will be out at work or busy, and the idiot box will be airing a movie which you have watched many a times and are in no mood to repeat it. All the prime shows are aired when you are most busy. I was experiencing such a day , and when boredom sets in, people try to make themselves more active and productive. Well I am one of these “people”. I was planning to type something pertaining to the state of affair of our country. But then, I felt that many people have written about it, some might be writing, right at that moment, and many more will write about it in future, to no effect. So I decided to constrain to more realistic jobs.

So with nothing much to do, I considered it to be a good time to clean up all the unwanted stuff I had accumulated in the numerous drawers in our house. And the beginning point would be the living room drawer. I pulled out the teak wood drawer, and pushed it back again. Oh!! it was almost overflowing. But I was determined. So I took it out completely and placed it on the floor. One by one I started analyzing the items it contained.

# First lots of papers and some prayer books: The papers, on closer examination, turned out to be numerous bills from all the stock market transactions that my had family lost money into. No, couldn’t throw them, supposing that some day the IT department would decide to raid my house located in an interior village. Those were the proofs of where my all money went. Prayer books. Well, we are a religious family. Anything with the names Jesus, Mary or the holy spirit on it, had to be retained for life.

# Two rolls of insulation tapes and one of cellophane tape: Of course, the second roll of insulation tape was almost finished. But “almost”. These were necessary items after duct tape(which I never store in my house. I have never found myself needy to it anytime). I know there is a fevi quick tube somewhere in there. But couldn’t find it the last time I needed it.

# Two staplers: One has a broken spring, and the other staples correctly 25 out of 100 times. But I can’t do away with any of it. I hope to find the correct spring someday in some broken article, to bring the stapler back to life. Or may be I wake up from this dream and find out that the stapler was not broken in the first place. The second one is one of the very few things(and most expensive amongst them) that company in which my wife works, had given to her along with other stationary items. I wouldn’t dare throw that. At least till I get a good one, next time I go shopping(Each time I go shopping, when I see one, I say,”well, the one at home is working fine enough for me”).

# Lots of staple pins venturing out of their boxes(I have quite a few boxes, for when I see them at the store, I feel I may be running out of them a home.) And lots more separated out from their main strip I suppose(well, those I can surely throw away, the loose separated ones.)

# A big box containing the memento of appreciation given to my brother by he firm he worked with and hated a lot. The glass(or acrylic, I don’t know the material) is bigger than the palm of my hand, and occupies lots of space. But emotions( my brother’s) may come in to play, if I through it away. Oh! here it is. The fevi stick tube, attached to the bottom of this box, with its mouth hardened up and blocked. This I am surely throwing out.

# Another plastic box containing the business cards given to my brother by his former employer, just before he left the firm. I plan to use them someday by printing wordfight.in on the back side and distribute it, thus increasing my blog hits. So they stay.

# Few audio cassettes, ones which I had bought out of my pocket money some 10 years back. All fungus infested, and unusable, if I had a working cassette player. All the songs are available on my PC in mp3 format, and I rarely listen to them. But these cassettes are made of plastic, and we do not have proper waste disposal system for plastics. And lets say I manage to repair that cassette player in future, due to its vintage value, I will require this vintage cassettes.

# Lots of loose screws lying in the corners. These screws are byproduct of any maintenance activities carries out at home. After completion of job, few leftover screws are found, and if the device is working fine, heck! no point in opening it up again to add those screws. So they are tossed in this drawer, and forgotten. Well, we have to do lots of repair activities now and then. Just few days back I had to hang a picture frame on the wall, but couldn’t get this particular size I needed, so I bought it from the hardware store. Aaha!! Here it is!!! But too late. Never mind. No need to throw it away, since I will need it next week, when I have to hang up another frame on the wall.

# Lots of coins. Travelling on buses ensures that the wallet gets all bulgy with coins in it. So me and my family have made this drawer kind of a piggy bank, with withdrawal facility. Whenever in need of loose change, we search this drawer. But coins have this known physical property of being attracted to the farthest corners the drawer, which is often inaccessible. I managed to collect coins equivalent to 20 bus travels on that day. But my wallet would bulge with them in it. So I took just two, and left the rest in the forward most corner.

# A deck of cards. All fluffy with moisture. But this sunday, I plan to play rummy with my brother. And if I throw them today, I might forget to buy a new deck on saturday while going back from office. And on sunday, the shops in our area are closed. So the cards and the jokers stay.

# A reel of thread. Yikeessss!! The needle was just below the reel, and it pricked my finger while lifting the reel.

So, by now I have not thrown away any item, but got myself pricked on the finger.

I remember the last time, a few months back, when I had tried cleaning this same drawer, but ended up not throwing anything of it out. It was turning out to be a futile exercise. I somehow replaced back all the items in the drawer, in much more unorganised way, put he drawer back in and resumed surfing the TV channels. The junk in the house, remains…….

P.S. : The items in the drawer are real, but the post is imaginary. I would never dare to open up that drawer for cleaning, ‘cause I know, I will end up retaining 99% items in it, and the rest 1% may belong to my brother, who will be cross if I throw them away. And my “behind” is quite heavy for this kind of work….