Coffee heat rising

Where does the junk come from?

Does junk reproduce inside closets, the same way wire coat-hangers spawn in the dark? How does so much JUNK accumulate, after you think you’ve shoveled out every drawer, closet, and cabinet in the house? Where does this stuff come from?

Well, some of it just blew in from the Great Desert University: a week or ten days ago I hauled the last of the junk out of my office and deposited it in the storeroom, where it filled countertops and shelves, waiting for me to find a place to put it away. About half of it, I should’ve thrown out without ever letting it escape the campus. However, I figured if I get the Glendale job, I’ll need the yard-sale lamps, the battery-run clocks, the odd little Mexican mirror, the useless books, the sweet little fan that fits on a bookshelf, oh god what to do with all this junk?

That’s easy: dispose of the unused junk that’s already in the closets and cabinets to make room for the transplanted unused junk.

This inspiration led to half an afternoon’s worth of winnowing out junk, cleaning out drawers to accommodate shifted valuables, wistfully going through beautiful old linens made by or belonging to my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, folding them back up, finding a new place for them… Oh, well.

Tomorrow St. Vincent de Paul will get…

a DVD player
an AM-FM radio & CD player that runs on batteries or electricity
a set of electric curlers
an old smoke alarm
two decorative ceramic dustcatchers jars
a Braun electric coffeemaker
4 books
a Bissell hand-held carpet spot cleaner gadget

And as I was about to sit down to tap out this post on the keyboard, I could hear the muted mating calls of the creatures still hidden in the closets:

an old VCR player
a keyboard so old it connected to a now-defunct computer with a pair of plugs, one purple, one yellow
an ancient Toshiba laptop incapable of running any current software of any kind
a straw basketful of old electronic hoodahs and doodahs
a plastic basketful of old PC and Mac software
the Evan Mecham television
an old Mac keyboard
an ancient flatbed scanner
busted JBL speakers still sitting nonfunctionally on my desk
two empty straw basketweave things for holding magazines

Where did this stuff come from? How did it get here? What is it trying to do?