Opportunity Cost

If you've ever bought something for a specific use and employed it successfully for that use, then stored it and kept it and moved it and eyed it and moved it again, workshop to basement to barn to storage to yard...think about it.

That item probably owes you nothing at this point, and paying it homage by paying to move it across country is a fool's errand. That thing has done its job and needs to cycle its way along the path. Craigslist or Freecycle come to mind as great avenues of disposal.

The recycle dumpsters and 1-800-GOT-JUNK come next.

Don't try to realize any money at all...don't expend your time and effort but throw your remaining resources into getting the things into someone else's hands.

Keeping the story

Thinking today about when you look through other people’s things, what do you learn about the person? Thinking right now about Grammy Carter’s box full of lace collars, and her box of ribbons (in a tangle...) and her other distinctly labeled boxes with bits and pieces of clothing that she might have had either to make over for someone or for herself or her mother or her daughter...

When Michele helped me go through the studio last year...we spent a whole day at it...we ran across a box that was labeled “felt scraps.” We tossed the scraps, kept the box.

The story behind the story: during the Depression, a man came door to door selling felt letters, you know like sports letters or college letters. My grandmother convinced him to give her the scraps from cutting out the letters, and so she had little pieces of felt for Mom to play with and for whatever uses one puts little scraps of felt.

So this box of felt scraps from the 30s was not just a box of felt scraps...it had a story, too, and whatever you choose to pin on it for a moral. It’s not just a box of felt scraps saved for 70 years...it's connected to a man eke-ing out a living, a mother entertaining her daughter, maybe teaching her to sew, and a little girl making playthings.

The story’s a much better souvenir than the box of felt scraps.