100 Things (or so)

[melannen]

I spent the afternoon working on cleaning out the attic (this is an ongoing process subject to weather conditions, but the section I did today really needed it). Our attic is very small - it's over the whole house, but the area between the downstairs ceiling and the current roof (which was added post-purchase by Dad) is pretty low, about 4' at the highest and rapidly sloping down to both edges, so you have to crawl. Also the floor is slanted because it's the original roof, and the sharp ends of nails from the roofing poke out of the ceiling every six inches or so.

In short, it's the most fun place in the house!

I did maybe 1/8 of the whole attic today, and was inspired to do an inventory while I was at it. So for pure anthropological interest, here is the current contents of Mom's attic :

Attic contents: area straight ahead from trapdoor (counterclockwise from left):

old phones and answering machines
violet wand
antenna control box
tv digital converter
2 ceramic turkeys
3 boxes christmas cards stuff
old small wall hanging pictures from kids' rooms
clip-on lamp

1910 Harvard Classics
Sweet Pickles books
Berenstain Bears books
assorted v. old kids' books
bright & early books/beginner books
small bookshelf
mysterious square brown flat thing on the floor

picture frames
easel
folding lap tray
small computer/printer shelves
attic ventilation fan (not installed)
soapmaking trays
motorcycle helmet
window fans
bowtie antenna
old mailbox
carpet & carpet underlayer scraps
box of random toy stuff
4 boxes of dad's puzzles
2 boxes of wind-up toys
box of building blocks
box of articulated dinosaur bones
box of spare corelle dishware
small rubber mats
trunk cover for subaru
box of cookie tins
box of asst'd jars and tupperware
box of antique wool cards
box of smoked glasses
box of fondue pots

2 boxes empty bags
spare sunhats
box of rainbow brite comforters
box of globe mugs, other mugs & kids' dishes
folding wheeled cart


Taken down to go through and either get rid of or integrate into downstairs life:
pile of buckets and colanders
bag labeled "fleas"
box labeled "fleas"
kids' games and puzzles to get rid of
box of baskets and ass't'd packing material
bag of dad's old shirts
box of disposable aluminum cookware
leaf for kitchen table
big box o' perler beads
weaving loops and frames
Spirographs, map puzzles, paperdoll set, Memory, trivial trivia cards.

I say "anthropological interest" because home inventories are some of the most fascinating documents I ever got to look at while doing research.¹ And in general I find the stuff we surround ourselves with, and the emotional capital we invest in it, fascinating! There's a reason I have a hoard-brooding tag on my journal.

I actually thought about doing the "100 Things" meme when it was first going around, about 100 Things - or to put it in BBC terms, A Personal History in 100 Objects - but I decided it's not like I needed *more* ideas for journal entries.

But hey, anyone want to do a variation on that? Several things that would have been on my 100 Things list are in that inventory anyway. If anybody leave a comment asking about something on that inventory, I will tell them a story about it! (Either in a comment or a new post, depending on how much I have to say.)

¹And also learning the term "provisionally discarded" in an archeology class has actually helped me a lot in the ongoing 'don't turn into a hoarder' battle - I can "provisionally discard" things without having to decide now, and then if a year later they're still in the 'provisionally discarded' storage - either because I didn't want them or I forgot I still had them - they go.)

Comments

[finch]

box labeled "fleas"

Maybe someone in your family was into amateur flea circuses?

[melannen]

Sadly, not that interesting! My family tends to go for the flea markets more than the flea circuses. And my mother labels things that are destined for the flea markets as "fleas" (after all that must be what you sell there, right?) You are by far not the first person to be confused. :p Lately we've had a bad habit though of sorting out junk to get rid of, shoving it in the attic, and forgetting it's there.

Our church has a twice-yearly charity flea market/rummage sale, and we always send at least one carful of junk, which is probably the main thing that keeps our house from being overrun, considering we shop at many more than we sell at. I've always been intrigued by the idea that the American mainline Christian tradition of church rummage sales turns decluttering into almost a religious observance, without having the really unfortunate parts of "donate used stuff to the poor" - it's "what would I be better off without?" rather than "What do I think other people need?" (and it also makes it something that's ongoing - you get to the time of year when the sale always happens, and you automatically start thinking about doing a general declutter.)

My mother - and I am starting to inherit this - runs the rummage sales, and as a relust is more or less the church's full-time Person In Charge Of Donated Junk, which makes her something of an expert on ways to match junk with people who actually want/need it even outside the sales - old towels to animal shelters, old sheets/blankets/curtains to the quilters' group, like-new sheets, blankets, and winter coats to the homeless shelter, large button-up shirts to the preschool classroom for smocks, etc. It makes me look at those posts that go around about how terrible in-kind donations kind of critically - everything they say is true, but on the other hand, there are all sorts of local places that actually do want the stuff, if you go looking. And there's also another ethic there, where it's only partly about helping people, and it's just as much about hating waste in all its forms. We get rid of junk all the time, but nothing ever goes to the dump unless it's actually rotting.

[sara]

Well, in-kind donations of things that aren't broken, yes.

I absolutely adore the new-to-me HP LaserJet 1200 that was recently donated to Workplace. Because it works. Because I can still buy cartridges for it.

I hate and want to burn with fire the buggy, demi-functional inkjet printers we were given repeatedly over the last few years (at last count I have disposed of seven of them). Because if you are giving something away because it does not work, it is not a kindness to pass it on to your local nonprofit.

[melannen]

Well, yes, that is also part of Mom's job as Person In Charge Of Donated Junk: to very politely tell people, "sorry, I don't think anybody would want that, you should probably just take it to the recycle center." (Also to be the familiar face who talks to the contacts at other places and makes sure they know they're allowed to say no to offers.)

Although frankly I don't know if I've ever known an inkjet printer that wasn't buggy and demi-functional right out of the box. :P (When we cleaned out the church's storage areas last fall we found four of them, all in at least some state of functional-ness. Two of them sold at the rummage sale - with warnings; one is being used, and the other got put back into storage for when that one hits complete nonfunctional-ness.)

[sara]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure inkjet printers are more or less physical evidence that the downfall of western civilization is upon us. They are just vile. The only reason I didn't light the one at work on fire is that it probably would emit toxic smoke. Or eldritch horrors. Maybe both.

[melannen]

Although tbh even broken inkjets don't get sent straight to the dump anymore because we know the people at the local maker space who have a corner of their warehouse designated for "misc. broken electronic parts for scavenging" and haven't learnt yet that it's possible to have too many misc. broken electronic parts. :D Perhaps they will become a robot! And literally destroy civilization!

...okay that needs to be a movie.

[sara]

Yeah, see, our local electronics reuse place has been around long enough that the misc. broken electronics parts joined together into a massive plastic behemoth, flooded their workspace, and tried to crush their budget.

They went to Salem and lobbied for the e-cycling law that's now rendering inkjet printers into their constituent parts. Much more effective than warehousing. ;>

[melannen]

I suspect ours will get there eventually, but at the moment they're still dazzled enough at having an actual industrial space to work in that when we go "hey, we'e going to take this stuff to recycle at the dump, but we thought we'd ask if you wanted it first" half the time they still say, "ooh, yeah, we want that!"

And hey, giving them the stuff they ask for is probably the best way to teach them to show more discrimination. :P

[marginaliana]

Because I am secretly 12 years old, I had a moment of amusement at "ass't'd packing material," but I think I'm more intrigued by "perler beads." What are those?

[melannen]

THAT IS THE CORRECT ABBREVIATION OKAY! :P

I thought everybody in the US under forty knew about Perler beads! They're the best way ever invented for making RL pixel art (if you don't have the patience for cross-stitch.)

They're these little colored plastic cylindrical beads, maybe a few millimeters a side. While you can string them together for ugly jewelry if you're desperate, what they're designed for is that they come with these little pegboards, and you place the beads on the pegs in a specific design. And then if you apply heat with an iron over it, the beads melt together at the tops and form a single object, which is removed from the pegboard and can then be used for hundreds dozens ... a coaster.

(Okay, you could do other things. I think the last time we had them out, when I was in high school, we made a whole bunch of pixelated X-Wings, Y-Wings, TIE fighters, and blaster bolts, put magnets on the back, and had dogfights on the fridge for the next several months. The downside is that the objects don't hold up to wear very well - it's easy to break the seams where the beads are melted together, especially if it has a lot of protruding bits, and then your object falls apart.)

They were a huge fad when I was a kid! You could go in a craft store and buy the beads by color, in any quantity. They're less popular now, but you can still purchase them. My friends at Interrobang Studios who go to all the comic/anime cons tell me that there's somebody else on the circuit who has a GIANT pegboard (like, a couple hundred pixels on a side) and sells really elaborate Perler bead art suitable for framing - she did portraits of the two of them, and they really do look like RL video game sprites.

The more standard pegboards are only about 15X15 pixels, so you can't do much with them. I thought we'd got rid of our remaining collection, actually, because we had enough coasters. I haven't decided yet if there's anything I want to do with it (other than attempt some Commander Keen sprites) but it's going in the craft room so I don't forget about it again.

[marginaliana]

I had those! I fear that my mother may still have some of my creations coasters, even. I just didn't remember what they were called and had, in fact, forgotten all about them until just this very second reading your comment. OMG, wow, a wave of the early 90s just swept right over me.

You should definitely make something with the ones you found! The world needs, like, a little pixelated David Mitchell eating pizza or something. (I have just horrified myself with this sentence. But in the best way.)

[melannen]

Going up into our attic is like diving into a great ocean of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, really. :D

Unfortunately I don't think I could do a recognizable David Mitchell with a 15x15 grid and only about 16 colors. :P My skills = not that strong. I will have to consider the possibilities. (There is supposed to be a way to make something using more than one pegboard put together, but I never learned how. And I'm definitely not buying any more beads, no matter how much having more blacks would help.)

[gramina]

. . . there is a violet wand in your mom's attic?

[melannen]

There is! :D

A very old and beautifully steampunk-styled one, in the original leather(ette) case, which was in my grandfather's attic before my mom's. Goodness knows where he got it from, or why, or if he ever used it at all - I'm fairly sure it's too old for him to have purchased it new, either. I've never actually turned it on, because it has what I think is the original cord, which doesn't look at all trustworthy, but someday I'm going to devote a Saturday to making sure the wiring is safe, and see if I can make it go. (I promise I will report back to the Internet.)

I'm fairly sure my mom doesn't know about the adult-toy connotations, because it's packaged as a quack medical device. Unless I told her about them. I may have done. :D

[sophia_sol]

Box of articulated dinosaur bones? :D

(this list is kind of surprisingly interesting! idk, I'd never really thought about home inventories before, but all of a sudden I can totally see how they'd be interesting.)

[melannen]

Box of articulated dinosaur bones!

It's an old kids' construction toy (probably from the late '80s/early '90s?) that consists of a bunch of dinosaur bones that snap together at the joints. If you assemble them correctly, I think there's a complete T. Rex, Triceratops, and, um, something else that I've forgotten about, but of course it is more fun to make frankensteinian monstrosities with six legs and a head on both ends. :D

I don't actually know what the set is officially called, because we bought it used in a giant ziploc bag with no instructions (and google isn't helping) but it is so much fun.