The Family Curse

There are some things that are explained by science, some things by happenstance, and of course, there is the familial component, the genetic link. Often times we think of medical illnesses as being inherited, but in the case of saving stuff, I think I can make a case for it being genetically linked or perhaps the family curse.

Recently, my brother and I did some cleaning at his house, as he and his wife were doing a major home renovation. As part of that project, they replaced the floor in their kitchen. The old floor boards eventually found their way into the dumpster, headed for the landfill. It killed me to see those beautiful maple floor boards heading to a "premature" grave, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Many of us are consumed by stuff, even when there is no immediate utility in sight. Often times, the stuff gets in our way and even costs us money to maintain or keep, but we simply can't part with it. I once spoke to a manager of one of those storage unit businesses, and she informed me that most of the stuff that people harbor in their storage lockers is not even worth enough for charity donation. Well, the idea of discarding that maple flooring was more that my conscience could handle. So, I found myself convincing my brother to reclaim all that discarded flooring, so we did.

In my local community, we have a Habitat for Humanity Restore, and they do just what we did, only they do it under the guise of salvage. They have made a business of reusing "gently" used goods and reselling it to benefit this worthwhile organization. It is a wonderful concept, generating money from stuff that was destined to fill our landfills. Some might even call this recycling.

Well, now that I have all of this out in the open, I must confess that it gives me more pleasure just not seeing this stuff end up in the trash than actually seeing it put to use. Perhaps this is a function of not wanting to see things wasted, or more likely, having too little time to put it to use. Regardless, maybe the next time I am about to part with an "interesting" object, I will confidently look at it and toss it into the trash. No, I possess this rare recessive genetic characteristic which causes me to suffer from the family curse, so I probably will find some lame excuse for not parting with it. As I get older, I only wish I could recapture all the time I have wasted over the years, because that is far more precious than all that stuff. Ooh, but if I had the extra time, then I could do something with all that stuff!