Because I can’t bear to part with them, I have a jar full of those tiny allen wrenches that come with build-it-yourself particle board furniture.
Sure, when I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I fantasized about carefully curated capsule wardrobes and matchy-matchy stackable storage bins. But I also couldn’t stop thinking: “So what if it doesn’t spark joy? What if I need it someday?”
And 2020 has been full of somedays.
The day before Easter, I needed those mismatched plastic egg halves and the five colors of Easter grass tangled together in one giant ziploc. My kids got baskets and an egg hunt even though we were stuck at home.
And a few days later, I needed that recycled HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner with removable numbers. I swapped out my son’s 1st for a 60th and a Zoom party for Grammy began. (I also needed that idiot-proof chocolate cake recipe from a cookbook for clueless teenagers she gave me a couple of decades ago too.)
For the day we ran out of beans and made that inevitable trip to the grocery store, I did need that long-neglected sewing kit my grandmother gave me when I was ten and those leftover fabric scraps just big enough for face masks.
When it rained for seven days in a row, I needed that after-Christmas-clearance color-your-own cardboard gingerbread playhouse to keep my kids from losing their damn minds.
On the day of my daughter’s drive-thru ballet recital in May, I needed a slightly stained disposable Frozen II tablecloth to transform my minivan trunk into Arendelle. And I needed that rhinestone tiara from my bachelorette party (and about a thousand bobby pins) to transform my four-year-old into ballerina Princess Anna.
And almost every day, when I had to teach my spring semester college classes from what used to be our guest room after my kids finally went to sleep, I definitely needed all the pieces of that old IKEA desk that had been gathering dust under the bed.
(And yes, I still had the right allen wrench to reassemble it.)
Jenna B. Morgan
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