TREASURES OR TRASH

AOL had a list today of 21 items that we could do without. Here's its list:

1) Ice Cream Makers, 2) Rice cookers, 3) Shoe inserts, 4) Polaroid camera, 5) Iron, 6) Hobby Kits, 7) Tie Racks, 8) Give-away thumb drives, 9) Trade show giveaway junk, 10) Bargain DVDs, 11) Ear candles, 12) Books in a Kindle World, 13) Home Theater Sound Systems, 14) Bread Machines, 15) VCRPlus Gizmos, 16) Ionic Breeze, 17) Piggy Banks, 18) Ab Rollers, 19) Radar Detectors, 20) Baby Wipe Warmer, 21) Happy Meal toys.

Now I have to agree on some of these as being totally useless. I’ve had Ice Cream Makers, Rice Cookers, and Bread Machines pass through my kitchen almost unused. I did try extra-hard with the Bread Machine but I never ever got a decent loaf out of it. All it ever did was wake me up in the middle of the night kneading away with a godawful noise just so I could have fresh bread in my kitchen at 7 a.m. (which never happened). I just must not have the touch, because even after taking a bread-making class where we learned how tto knead our own bread with our own hands, I still never got a good loaf. But to this list I’d have to add these items that rested in my kitchen for years until I hoisted them: nutmeg grinder, meat pounder, vegetable steamer, springform pan and a wok.

I would take issue with AOL’s list in that I could never think an iron or real honest book could be considered useless! I don’t iron Jerry’s underwear but I do iron lots of my summer cottons. And it’s too late in my life to consider changing to reading my books on Kindle.

There are two other things on the list that I would never remove. First is the piggy bank. When I go to baby showers, I always find a big ceramic piggy bank and place enough coins in it to equal what I would have spent on an ordinary gift for the baby. On the bottom of the pig I use acrylic paint to put my name and the date of the shower. Then the pig gets dressed up either in boy or girl decorations – or in merely unisex style if the baby’s gender is unknown. It is wrapped and presented at the shower. I couldn’t do without Piggy Banks. And I probably would be disowned by my two youngest granddaughters if the Happy Meal toys were abolished. They may be useless to them tomorrow, but for today they are the driving force of my taking them out to lunch. “Girls, where shall we eat?” I say to them. “McDonalds!” they shout with one voice. It’s the Happy Meal draw!

Jerry and I have yet to part with our slide projector, 3 carousels of slides (although we got rid of about 1000 individual slides), and hundreds of audio tapes on which we put all of our record albums. We only look at the slides at Christmas when the families get together and the latest little grandchildren want to see what their daddy looked like when he was a baby. And very honestly we never listen to an audio tape anymore. We are too spoiled by CDs, although our CD collection is very slim and sadly all of our old Chicago albums from the ‘70s are on tapes, not on CDs.

But for the most part I have to agree with AOL’s 21 items. Things come and go in their usefulness, and I’d add that a trip through the 99 cent store sometimes causes us to buy on impulse other things that really shouldn’t even see the light of day into our house. Nevertheless, seeing AOL’s list will help me look at my remaining “things” with a new eye. Does it fit on AOL’s list? I can ask myself. If so, I can ditch it (or pass it on to a thrift shop where maybe someone will see it more as treasure than trash.)