Out of sight, out of mind

In my house I have a trunk full of Archie comic digests. Not a car trunk, a white wicker trunk.

I only thought about that a few days ago as I was thinking about this column. I haven’t read any of those digests, or bought any new ones, in over than 25 years.

I love to read novels. Criminal/romance/suspense is my genre. My favourite author is Lisa Jackson, with Sharon Sala and Nancy Bush as my next backups.

There was never much suspense with the Archie gang. Archie and Reggie always fought over Veronica, which always made me feel bad for Betty. I doubt if I’ll ever read any of those digests again. But the wicker trunk doubles as not only a storage compartment for the forgotten, but as a side table in our basement den. So all is well, I suppose. The fact is I hang onto a lot of stuff. I don’t consider myself a hoarder, at least not in the reality TV show sense. It’s not anywhere near that level. It’s more of the ‘give my head a shake’ level.

Since efforts started decades ago to keep things out of the landfill stream I have done my part by hanging onto the useless and the obsolete, mostly because I don’t know what else to do with it.

I’m not sure how much of a demand exists in 2016 for an electronic sandwich maker, but it’s nil in our household. And someone once bought me an apple peeler, but it’s just easier to eat the peeling than to put the apple onto this contraption so I’ve never even taken it out of the box.

And so some of this stuff that I haven’t parted with awaits a future yard sale, but a lot of it sits in cabinets, in drawers and in boxes. Out of sight, out of mind. Last week while I was on vacation my husband and I did some updates to our kitchen. Eventually we intend to paint the cabinets we’ve had since we built our house in the mid 1990s, but for now we installed a backsplash and put new pulls on the cabinets and drawers.

One day last week I was installing new pulls on some kitchen drawers when I opened a drawer I rarely, if ever, open or use. It falls into the category of a junk drawer. (Sadly, it’s not the only one in our house.)

In this particular drawer I was shocked to pull out a 2010 Sears Wish Book (which is now sitting in a recycling bin) and a collection of music. What stood out most was my collection of soap opera’s greatest love songs . . . on cassette!

I immediately thought to my- self that surely we can better utilize this drawer. It now contains dishcloths and pot holders. (And the cassette tapes that are still shoved way in the back of the drawer.)

When I shared what I had discovered inside this drawer with friends, one of my friends said she still had all of her cassette tapes from junior high and high school.

Would it surprise know that so do I?

I don’t have a working tape recording, though. I haven’t for a long, long time, and never intend to get one again.

But why let logic stand in the way? you to