What amazes me the most about all this "stuff" is just how much of it there is, and this is the stuff that people don't want.
Clearly, my standards are rather low, but taken in another way....I am very easy to please. I am eternally grateful for any and all clothes that show up for kids because with 5 of them (and all of them true "farm kids"), clothes go by fast. Miscellaneous wood is another one that is very handy to have people drop off....you just never know when you will need to build a shed or put together a project that may require odd pieces of wood or when people will drop by for an impromptu bon fire.
The worst part is that we start to take on a "pack rat" mentality and have to periodically jettison some of the excess cargo that builds up. The biggest times that we have had to do this, of course, is when moving from place to place. We moved so much for a while that we had it down to a science. "Three moves equals a burn" was a common phrase in our house, and we were pared down to only the necessities. Needless to say, when you move to a farm with excess out buildings, the stuff starts to pile up in a big way. My mother always threatened that, when she moved off their farm, that she was just going to lock the door and light the match. Having recently moved my parents off their farm.....this would have been a good idea.
We have been in this place now for almost nine years which means that there is roughly nine layers of stuff that has built up in many of our sheds. One shed in particular has been a key storage shed - the Quonset hut. When we first moved out here it was a storage shed for my sister's stuff, then it got utilized as the catch all garden shed, then my father stored his Lexan panels in there for his acoustic engineering business, and then one end of the shed was commandeered for an animal shelter to house Hazel, Lambie and the occasional wayward chicken. Now, in a grand attempt to make do, we are turning the Quonset hut into a green house using some of the left over Lexan panels that have been sitting in there for three years.
One side of the shed faces due south so the plan to remove the corrugated metal panels from that side and replace them with the Lexan panels seems like a straight forward one....at least to me. However, as pointed out several times by my architect husband....it is never quite as simple as that. The metal panels came off easy enough and are currently being stored in the Quonset hut and idiotically moved from one end of the building to the other when we need to get them out of the way. Hate to throw them out though....they could be used for something else. (See how this gets going.) The metal ribs have been painted from their original deep rust to a shiny black and now we are at the stage of attempting to figure out how to put the panels on. In theory, this isn't too hard, but in reality....these things are really heavy and have to be lifted twelve feet into the air. I have images of going out to find Keith squashed under one of these panels like a bug under a cover slip on a microscope slide. At present, we have two in place and six more to go.
Using, re-using, recycling, and making do are wonderful skills to have. It kept my creative grandmother busy until she was almost ninety years old, and it has undoubtedly saved us thousands of dollars while simultaneously saving tons of stuff from the landfill. At some point, I have a sense that our society's "throw away" mentality is going to come back to haunt us. The "Wal Mart" mentality, as I call it...."Oh, but everything is so inexpensive at Wal Mart! How can you not shop there?" Easy.....When so many jobs have been shipped overseas and almost everything you buy now comes with a sticker that says, "Made in China" on it, because in China they are willing to work for $2 per 12 hour day so the cost of production and, therefore, the cost of the product ends up being cheaper than any American company could produce it.....and then companies like Wal Mart sell mass quantities of a product for a while, become that product's main purchaser and then they demand that their price for the product be set even lower, so now that company has to produce its good for even less money and the people in China work 14 hour days for $1.50.....that's why I don't shop at Wal Mart....or Kmart.....or Target if I can help it.I really have nothing against products made in China, they make the products that Americans either don't want to make, or American companies don't want to have to pay so much to have made. However, I try to keep my purchases as close to home as I can. It isn't easy, but once in a while you find a company that still produces a product in America. They aren't inexpensive, that much is for sure, but they are paying American workers wages that support the local economy and they are very often socially conscious companies that make the effort to produce a quality product while simultaneously creating jobs. Imagine what our country would be like if these companies were the ones that we shopped at instead of the Wal Marts? America has essentially become the land of the service industry - manufacturing has become a thing of the past for many, which is unfortunate. Not everyone is cut out for service industries and I sometimes wonder what will happen when China decides that it is tired of supplying us with our plastic Happy Meals toys and 50 inch television screens? Will we have any idea how to produce stuff for ourselves? And will anyone be able to afford it? When I can't find an American product, I buy second hand if possible - yes, it probably came from China, but it is sold not once, but twice (or more) by local sales people.
Believe it or not, there are times that I think back to the stories that my grandparents told me about the Depression and not having so much stuff, and I am somewhat envious. A time when people were all working together to exist in whatever capacity they could, using what they had on hand, relying on neighbors for help when needed. As much of a struggle as those times were, I never once heard a story from either set of grandparents that was necessarily sad. They were stories of dances and playing cards with friends and sitting on fenders of their cars in the middle of town on Saturday nights talking to each other while all the kids ran around and played kick the can. Crazy stories of jobs that my grandpa did to make ends meet - like moving houses or driving a load of pigs to market when the truck tipped over and all the pigs got out. Now what are our stories? "Went to work, came home, ate something in front of the t.v. and then went to bed." ....talk about the great depression.
I think there is a movement afoot - slow but starting to grow - of people that are starting to realize some of this as well, that sometimes less is more, being creative and ingenuitive gives more a sense of accomplishment than being rich does, and sometimes talking and having dinner with neighbors rather than watching the latest episode on t.v. leads to memories shared. Maybe it is due to "The Great Recession" that we are in right now, in which people just don't have the funds to replace or buy things, but I like to imagine that maybe....just maybe, we are waking up to the idea that want and need really are two different things and sometimes, when the wants can't be had, it allows a little space for something else to come in instead - creativity, interaction, memories made. Maybe that is what my grandmother really meant, "Waste not. Want not."
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