I have a button bag. I have a key collection. I have a box full of cables.
These are not things I dip into on a regular basis. But heck, I might need to someday.
You just never know.
“Why are we keeping this?” the husband asked the other day. He was rooting around in what I call the Everything Drawer. The Everything Drawer is in the kitchen and holds all manner of things. Take-out menus. Scissors. Tape. Pencils, pens, playing cards, matches, chequebooks, Post-it Notes, magic markers, paperclips, golf tees, clothespins.
He was holding the bag that contained the key collection.
“Those are keys,” I said.
“I know they are keys,” he said. “Why are we keeping them?”
We’re keeping them, I told him, because we might need them someday. Never mind that one or two may be associated with suitcases that we may no longer have, and that another one or two may be connected to the shed that we had replaced.
We may need them one day. As I say, you never know.
Then there’s my button bag. It contains perhaps 300 buttons, many of which came with articles of clothing in case a button flew the coop.
We won’t get rid of them either, even though I haven’t the foggiest idea whether the buttons’ matching clothing items long ago went to goodwill.
“But this,” said the husband, “this is really stupid.”
He’d moved on from the Everything Drawer and was holding the box of cables. There were perhaps 20 of them.
“You know,” he continued, “in the interests of de-cluttering, shouldn’t we toss them?”
I’m reluctant, I said. Most households, I ventured to suggest, probably also have boxes of cables that aren’t plugged into anything, but which may come in handy someday.
The husband glared at me.
“OK,” I said. “The cables can go.”
But I’m keeping the keys and the buttons, I said, and everything else in the Everything Drawer.
I may need a key for something someday, even though its suitcase has vanished.
It may be a match for a shed down the road. Hey, you never can tell.
