I, on the other hand, collect more than I need of just about everything. Too many pages in the rough draft of my book, too many pounds on my bones, and too many products in my home. Talk about an embarrassment of riches. As someone prone to excesses, New Year's is always a dodgy time. Instead of resolutions I usually write manifestos (and if you know me personally at all, you know I'm not kidding). But 2009 will be different--one resolution instead of a dozen. I mean it! My 2009 manifesto clocks in at one, measly word: Reduce.*
Because I find that public humiliation is a good way to keep myself on the straight and narrow (in the inimitable words of Johnny Cash, "because you're mine, I walk the line"), I'm going to do an occasional post detailing the items I'm tossing, recycling, or bequeathing to the world in the form of charitable donations or gifts to people who will appreciate it more than me.
Now. Who wants a thing-a-ma-bob to help you French braid you hair?
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM...TAKE ONE!
- Number 1: 68 pages of other people's writing. Usually I file them away and keep them long after I've given them my two cents. No need given that I keep the electronic copies. Gone!
- Numbers 2-9: A veritable bonanza of expired medicines, creams, and prescription medicines. **
- Number 10: A 3-inch, thin metal rod with u-shaped pitchforks on either side. The best I can tell is it's from the center of a hair clip that's missing in action.
- Number 11: Stretched-out brown plastic hair tie.
- Number 12: Old plastic zippered pouch thing. No idea.
And that was just from the medicine cabinet. Oy! It's gonna be a long year...
* OK, yes. Reduce is shorthand for reducing pages during a second draft, pounds through healthier habits, and products in a room by room overhaul, but the way I figure it, even a three-for is progress. Baby steps, people. Baby steps!
** The expanded list:
2. Generic Ben Gay that expired in December...2006
3. expired tooth ache numbing "stuff"
4. expired canker cream (lovely)
5. sunblock that apparently stopped deflecting rays in 2006
6. expired cold and sinus medicine
7. expired decongestant (like that stuff doesn't make you feel loopy enough already)
8. expired prescription for penicillin from Mike's wisdom teeth extraction.
9. allergy itch cream my mother-in-law suggested I buy for the great mosquito attack of '05. The package was unopened...and expired.
Posts
So, you keep other people's writing in the medicine cabinet? :)
ReplyDeleteI hear you on pack-ratting stuff. I have to make a conscious effort to not keep stuff...
Good luck in your reductions! What's next, the spice rack?
ReplyDeleteNot to minimize this most excellent progress, but as a former QC co-op and as a current physician I am skeptical of those expiration dates. In 1996 I tested "expired" antibody solutions (used for clinical diagnosis in pathology labs) against new "controls" and if they were still as reactive (which they were in 100% of my tests) we slapped on a new expiration date two years in the future.
ReplyDeleteSo when considering these expiration dates, consider:
1. what might be the expected half-life of this substance? is it stable, or would we expect it to be less effective over time? While this is likely the case with your sunblock, I doubt that on 1/1/2007 the SPF dropped from 30 to 4.
2. could this product have become contaminated, and thus now pass on infection? Most important with contact solutions, mascara, and other eye products, which are best pitched 6 months after opening regardless of the stamped date.
I had more I could say but this is your blog, not mine, and I'd be better off going to bed than continuing to rant.
Also, you keep other people's writing in your medicine cabinet?
When in doubt, I throw it out.
ReplyDeleteI would go in and chance "just from the medicine cabinet to "mostly from the medicine cabinet" but I think it's funnier to leave the mistake in.
ReplyDeleteI like the "when in doubt, throw it out" adage, but I'm not sure how helpful it's going to be as I move into the more emotionally laden products...the wedding dress that takes up an enormous amount of space that will never get word again, books I hated but don't feel right about donating, Mike's collection of glowing plastic look-what-I-found-in-the-cereal-box spoons...
Hands off the spoons, woman!
ReplyDelete