Thursday, May 2, 2013

Imma Become a Freaking Hoarder


A Mother Life



Okay, peeps, here’s the deal. I’m gonna need you all to stop sharing photos of the DIY, upcycled, repurposed, reused and generally altered knickknacks that are sprucing up your recession-stricken cribs. Okay, not yours, because I’ve been to your houses and I know you’re not actually building bookshelves out of ladders, because no one actually has a spare ladder lying around, because ladders ain’t cheap. I also haven’t noticed any herb gardens planted in old wagon wheels (also not cheap) or flowers carefully arranged in “useless,” “old” teapots, or living room sets made from wooden pallets and unicorn shit. No matter, somebody somewhere is getting far too creative with junk and then showing it off and it needs to stop. Not the actual creating, I don’t give a beavertaint about that. It’s the showing off that needs to stop.

For realz, if y’all don’t stop sharing nifty pictures of the neato stuff you can make with Mason jars, ladders, tea kettles, console television sets from 1973, iMacs from 1998, egg shells, plastic soda bottles, milk cartons, cardboard boxes, rusted-out buckets, expired light bulbs, plastic gutters, and Grandpa’s old storm windows, Imma wind up crushed to death beneath a heap of my own rancid junk. All of this stuff looks totally awesome, I know, that’s why you’re sharing it. I’ve ooh’ed and ahh’ed over the broom made out of two-liter plastic bottles and the door mat woven from plastic shopping bags myself. Just the other night a friend shared a photo of seedlings sprouting innocently from milk cartons and my inner voice exclaimed, “Finally! A use for all those milk cartons we’ve been wasting!”

I grabbed my inner voice by the throat and throttled it, screaming, “FUCK YOU VOICE I WILL GROW MY SEEDLINGS IN FLOWERPOTS LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!”

"TAKE THAT, VOICE!"

Because, while I may have the best of intentions, I am not a crafty person, and it’s not for lack of trying. As a girl, I learned to sew, quilt, crochet, dip candles, the whole nine. Grandma thought these skills would make me a better wife someday. Dear baby Jeebus, was she all kinds of wrong.

Let me count the ways.

While I am not a crafty person, I definitely have a hoarding streak. I watch Hoarders and Hoarders: Buried Alive not because I enjoy it, but because I need a reminder of what I can become. The fact that I could do crafts if I wanted to does not make it any easier to resist the urge to stockpile plastic grocery bags because someday, I might weave them into a bitchin’ carpet. Right, and someday monkeys might fly out of my ass.

Still no monkeys.