After listening to me hem and haw over whether I should get one, my honey bought me a soda maker for Christmas. I immediately set it up and used it right away, and have been happily hydrating with homemade seltzer since.
A few days after Christmas, he asked me hopefully “Do you want me to throw that box away?” I declined, insisting I wanted the box to transport my new machine back to Boston.
I have a habit of keeping the boxes of things I purchase. I imagine that when I move I will need those boxes to transport my stuff neatly (NB: I dream about moving almost every day, though I’ve been dreaming about it for at least four years)
Instead of moving, I settle deeper into the life I have. The apartment fills with more stuff. I tell myself I won’t accumulate stuff I don’t need, but find myself “needing” more and more with each year.
So I delude myself into thinking that I could put it all neatly back into boxes. Not just the set of knives and the desk lamp and the soda maker, all the mess and clutter that comes with being an adult.
I keep the boxes around in case I have the chance, someday, to shove it all back into the box: the bills, the responsibilities, the debt, the confusion, the uncertainty, the sickness, the pain. What if someday I have the option of putting it all away and going back to a simpler time, and I don’t have anything with a lid I can close?
As surely as I know I’m not moving any time soon, I know that I don’t get to put any of that back into the box. It will continue to accumulate. So I put a few of my boxes out with the recycling last night. That’s progress.
What would you like to put back into boxes?
I used to keep the boxes my electronics came in, like TV, computer, printer, etc. I didn’t expect to be moving, but told myself I might need the boxes if I had to send the items somewhere for service. But nothing ever gets “serviced” anymore – we can replace it for less than repairs would cost. So I stopped doing that finally and did as you did last night: recycled the boxes. But I totally understand the inclination to keep something that is so perfectly suited to its purpose. Ya just never know…
I hadn’t thought of them that way – as things “perfectly suited to their purpose”. That makes me feel better about my attachment!
In what kind of box would my student loan debt fit? It’d have to be a huge one.
Yeah…I feel you on that. It never goes back in the box, does it?