Historical Artifacts

Today's project: empty the kitchen. We've decided that the Farberware pots and pans will head off to Geoff to help stock his sophomore-year college house (although a few of those pots will have to stand duty in our temporary kitchen until then).

We plowed through goodness-knows-how-many cans of beans and soup (I have to stop buying them on sale!), placing many of them in the Food Bank donation box. We decided that the 12 boxes of Celestial Seasonings herbal tea was probably about 11 too many. And we are bidding adieu to a few of the Corningware pieces we've had since, well, probably our marriage in 1977.

And then, deep in the baking goods cupboard, we came across this beauty:
That, my friend, probably belongs in a museum. It's a bottle of Karo corn syrup (can you even buy this any more?). You probably can't read the "sell-by" date, but I'll help you: it says "Buy Before Oct. 6 '80".

That's right. We have been harboring a bottle of corn syrup that is more than 27 years past its sell-by date. It was already 6 years past its prime when our first kid was born. We've moved that thing at least 9 times since it should have been tossed out.

Forgive me for this, but for a moment, I thought about keeping it this time. Only for a moment.

Food Fight

Everything has to be cleared out of the kitchen and pantry cabinets. Everything.

Now, I will admit to a little touch of the survivalist when it comes to storing food. I mean, how many packages of pasta does a couple really need to keep on hand? Don't even ask.

I tackled the job with the intention of creating three categories:

• Stuff we'll keep (we still need to eat, even out of our temporary kitchen)
• Stuff we can donate to the Alameda Food Bank
• Stuff to toss out

Filled a box with cans and packages for the Food Bank. Set aside the things I know we'll eat (eventually). And then the tossing began.

Why did we have 4 different half-used containers of garlic salt? How old was that nasty, sticky bottle of chili oil? Who bought the sheets of nori?

Unanswerable questions. But trust me, all that stuff is gone. And so are all the bottles of spices that came with a set I'm pretty sure we got as a wedding gift.

That was 30 years ago. Does 30-year-old coriander qualify as an antique?

Outta Here!

Update: the gigantic oak entertainment center is gone.

I can't tell you how happy I am that the big old monolith found a new home (and that that home isn't the landfill). To make it better, the new owners came and hauled it off. To make it really better, the new owners are opening a "sober home" for women--a place where people recovering from addiction live together and support each other.

That's good karma.

Now, maybe we'll get lucky with the old sofa and chair--before they end up in the dump.

The Calm Before the Storm

We've driven to the edge of the cliff, and we're peering over the edge.

After a year-and-a-half of thinking, dreaming, worrying, and meeting with builders, we're about to launch a major remodeling project at home, sweet home.

We've heard all the warnings: your marriage will be sorely tested by this. Not to whistle past the graveyard, but we've been married for 30 years, raised two kids, moved 15 times, kept four dogs (three simultaneously), dealt with the illness and loss of a parent, etc. I'm pretty sure we'll make it out the other side of this, too.

Right now, before the wrecking bars start tearing out the old so the new can be built, we face a fundamental challenge: how to get rid of all this crap. We're getting to know the guy at the Goodwill drop-off place pretty well, and the people at the Friends of the Library book donation room roll their eyes when they see us coming with yet another load of books.

We're trying to send as little to the dump as possible. E-waste goes to the e-waste place, old paint and bug spray to the toxic-waste place, and so on. But some things just aren't easy to unload. Nobody wants the aging sofa and chair, stuffing oozing from their innards. I did finally find some interest in the enormous entertainment center by posting a listing on Freecycle, a cool people-to-people way of moving unwanted things along the line.

Of course, the entertainment center still hasn't been removed from the family room as I write this, and the clock is ticking louder each day.