Comment: Examining Crap

Move estimators came today and I really found myself looking at my home with new (and highly unflattering) eyes. I hadn’t done the massive tidy up I save for the end of the day. (I mean, with kids, why clean up until the end of the day? Keeping a kid-filled house neat all day is downright Sissyphean.) I was mortified at how my house must look to other people.

So when the two men came to look at my stuff, I thought, wow, we have a lot of crap. And it’s lame crap. We don’t have any decent furniture, we don’t have any artwork of any note, and even though we have nice mattresses, we have no bed frames. So basically, (that was for you, Solipsist!) we value our sleep, children and computers (not necessarily in that order.) Otherwise it just doesn’t matter what’s in our house. As Darlene or Lurlene from Seinfeld said, “It’s just so much fluh-uff.” (I have GOT to find out what her name was. Interesting sidebar: the actress who played that role also played the part of the snooty, vaguely European-sounding saleswoman in the Elaine mannequin episode. True story.)

We don’t have things of value, and we don’t take care of them very well. Is it because they’re of little value that we don’t care what happens to them? Or do we just not give a rat’s ass? I mean, at the end of the day, the house is clean and relatively neat. But it’s still full of crap.

I mean, I certainly don’t want my kids growing up thinking they can’t jump on the hand-me-down couch we have. That’s why it’s a hand-me-down. Let them jump. Soon the outside world of grown-ups will encroach on their precious, collective joie de vivre and they won’t even want to jump on couches. That makes me sad.

We inherited a beautiful dining room set, but its chair covers are trashed. Should we recover them? Maybe. But not yet. There are still a lot of crayons and chocolate brownies to to grind into the upholstery.

(So I guess we have crap stuff because we don’t want to worry about life getting in the way of our enjoyment of said stuff. Or maybe we're lazy. Or in permanent sticker shock as to the cost of non-Ikea furniture. Or all of the above.)

Maybe someday we’ll have a beautiful, orderly, neat house. But it won’t be as much fun as our craptastic house is now.