Decorating With Junk - Two-bit Guru - Photo of assorted junk that could be used as decoration

“Oops.” ~Two-bit Guru

In an earlier post I said today I would to tell you about how to organize your junk  but this dang rant broke loose like an oil spill and I couldn’t stop it. Organizing junk next time, or hoarding, or something.

When most people think of junk they probably think of a pile of stuff on its way to the landfill. Some of us—I say this with the nth degree of extreme humility and unobtrusiveness, with just enough fawning to keep you from chasing us from your doorstep with a broom—Know Better. We have True Awareness when it comes to junk.

We know that the wealth of any society is nothing more than human effort combined with material resources. That’s it. Now what do you say when you look at that mish-mash on the curb? If you said, “Value” welcome to the Exalted Realm of the Truly Annotated (or Anointed, if you prefer) and Enlightened. If you said anything else, just keep trying to see the pinpoint of Light at the end of the trash heap as we move on.

We fail, and by that I mean, you fail, to show junk the respect that it deserves. Look at that burnt out waffle iron. Think of the effort it took to dream up that thing. It took imagination, it took engineering, it took designing, it took artistry, it took labor, it took a factory, it took aluminum, nichrome, brass, steel, plastic, glass, and probably several toxic materials that we have never ever heard of but that might be eroding the integrity of our cell walls even as you read this.

It took marketing people, it took sales people, it took the efforts of at least one CEO, a CFO, a CIO, a CTO, CSO, CCO and CKO, a board of directors, CPAs, it took retailers, it took clerks, it took the high school kid who retrieves the shopping carts at the Big Box Store. And it took us to buy the dang waffle iron and later throw it in the trash heap.

Can we possibly try to slow this all down a bit? Imagine if we made everything work twice or three times instead of once, before directing it to the landfill. We already do this when we save an empty jar and use it to store food. Or plant a flower in a chipped coffee cup. Or wear that dented colander on our head when we watch old WWII movies. Maybe forget that last one.

Here’s a suggestion: Fetch the broken waffle iron and hang it on a wall in your living room. Tell people it’s art. It can’t be any worse than some of the crap you’ve got hanging there already. I say this with all due humility.

A broken waffle iron hanging on your wall is one less broken waffle iron in the landfill.