The question was asked: "Do you remember having a television like this growing up?" I nearly posted, "I still do," but that snippet of a comment sounded too "poor me" to leave at that.
Besides, our television set isn't really THAT old. But we bought it in the nineties, so its rear end pokes back about 12 inches into a corner and has to sit on something huge to hold it properly. There's no high definition anything to it, and it shouts "outdated" from the get-go.
The thing is, the television WORKS, and I just don't do do-overs the way I used to. I don't get excited over newer and improved versions of everything because newer and improved happens all the time, and trying to keep up with it all is self-defeating in more ways than one.
I also have a dinosaur for a computer, and a white refrigerator that doesn't match my stainless steel stove, but both perform their tasks and both are tucked off in corners, so who cares?
Waiting things out till they're actually not useful anymore reeks of that old saying "waste not, want not," but in a world laden with trash piles and junkyards, it's not a bad saying to renew a mindset with.
Every spot of trashed earth is a blight on God's creation. I've often wondered how disappointed God must be every time He sees a pristine piece of land used as a "holding tank" or dumping ground. Using things up and wearing them out at least lessens the blight and makes a household's money go further, too.
I figure my stainless steel stove will have its match when the white fridge dies, but by then I will probably once again long for a retro stove of white enamel. I am not a perfect person for never having erred on buying "stuff" without a maximum of consideration (See the "Beauty and Purpose" entry of this blog.)
In the years since the microwave oven became indispensable in the kitchen, I've owned a few. One at a time, each has developed an issue whereby it was cheaper to buy another than to fix one. About this we certainly came to feel that many things nowadays are built as "throw-aways," but each unit either involved a fee to be disposed of or meant another useless item to store in space we couldn't spare.
The upshot here was that we began to give more thought to new purchases. We found that it isn't the end of the world to live with things longer, it may even help the WORLD last longer not to junk it up in God's eye--again in more ways than one.
A funny thing happened on the way to this thoughtful forum about using things up. Through the years we have also purchased and thrown away a number of radio-CD players. Of course we had to have these in order to
hear the music we love in the "new-fashioned" way. With long-playing records, 8-tracks and smaller cassettes becoming obsolete, like many people we eventually replaced many of our LP albums with their modern counterpart.
I remember wondering, "What's so great about the compact disc?" "Well," I was told, "It's COMPACT. It doesn't take up much space, it 'plays better' and it doesn't scratch easily. It's just a whole lot better."
Come to find out, compact discs DO scratch and skip, and it's the system that makes a CD better--the only thing I'll grant is that discs do take up less room.
But neatly stacked, albums were not atrocious for storing, and we never could bear to part with ours. We kept them for over two decades in one sturdy box in the garage, even after we tossed the faulty record player we used to play them on.
Just recently, in the garage of a house our daughter moved into, we found a turntable of this sort--evidently something someone else couldn't bear to throw away either. We were encouraged to bring it home, where we dusted it off and pulled out the old albums and voila! We were in stereo heaven again.
In all our years of riffling through CDs here, there and everywhere, we had forgotten totally some of this music. Just hearing the songs made us feel like 17 again, and any "scratching" in-between only added to the charm. We think we'll keep the thing!
Maybe my favorite story about rescuing something from the trash (or long-term storage) took place in a setting literally meant for "trash."
It was in the days prior to recycling bins, when landfills were predominantly one-pile-catches-all. When the pile got big enough it was bull-dozed into the farther-reaches of the landscape, if you can call such a sight a landscape after all.
My trash had just joined one such pile when another pick-up sidled up near mine. A woman exited the cab, lowered her rear gate and hopped up to the bed, then proceeded to heave her contributions toward everyone else's garbage. I quickly noted, as I rarely had cause to do, that this lady's trash was my treasure.
What was she throwing? In earnest she was shoving off dozens of aqua-blue glass canning jars, complete with their classic zinc lids and in varying sizes, in some cases with their preserved foods still in them. She was tossing away her grandma's (or mama's) hard work. In ridding herself of something she really didn't want, she was adding to a landfill something that would be welcome to someone else in their home--if only they knew about it.
I didn't know the woman, but I was pretty sure if she knew of someone who would take those jars off her hands, she would gladly have handed them over. And so I spoke up. I always kind of liked those jars, I said, and as long as she was throwing them away, would she mind if I took a few?
With a generous wave of her hand, she stepped aside and let me have my pick. I took those jars home and washed them to a shining. They wore their years beautifully, retained their soft tint as well as the day they were born, and even boasted here and there a teensy bubble--a signature of their time in manufacturing history.
Topped with their flawless lids, these jars have always held a prominent place in my kitchen. I keep them in the open, where they can be easily seen and accessed and where they make a most natural fit for my farmhouse kitchen. To realize I rescued them from crushed and broken to purposeful and beautiful is a satisfying, happy feeling.
This, I think, is the gift of not wasting. Certainly we all find ourselves at times dismayed over purchases we shouldn't have made or that didn't work out. But we can work harder to find better homes for our unwanted things......and we can look harder for things that are still very good but not necessarily new. I can tell you for sure that you can find new glass canning jars in almost any store, but you will not find any more beautiful or useful than these old ones I just told you about.
There are people who truly walk the walk in a "green" minded world. Like you, I know many and I know OF many more. I used to think their monumental in-house efforts were like swatting one mosquito after the mosquito had time and opportunity to lay a gazillion eggs. But now I think that BECAUSE of this uphill battle, these efforts should be admired all the more.
I have much to improve upon in leaving less "footprint." My last blog about not wanting to waste a whole building--the pondering over it--inspired me to try operating "Corner Cupboard" as a specialty resale store. I've seen many a Main Street building left empty and unused, and one would think it might be the easier thing to do. For me it's not, and I hope my story about the beautiful blue jars gives you an idea why.
For "inside" pictures and details, check out Corner Cupboard-Darlene Ramos on Facebook.
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