Yesterday I found an example of just how muddled the efforts of a clutterer can turn, when said clutterer wants to create a justification for keeping something. It came about after I decided to spend a little time clearing clutter away from the exterior of the garage, given that the weather was fairly decent for doing such things, and since I was tired of looking at that particular clutter, but mostly because I found the ground ivy was attempting to take over the lawn…again. The origin of attack was the area just under the clutter that didn't cover the ground, thus the focus of extermination had to be that same area. You see, I don't much care for ground ivy. When I smoked, I would go out and pull ground ivy up by hand on a daily basis, but I haven't been out for some time, and the ivy knew it. And once ground ivy gets a mind to take over a lawn, it gets the job done. Thus, I needed to get busy before it did.
I faced a choice I similar to ones I faced in the past. Where do I put this clutter I've kept whilst I terminate the growth of the ivy? I thought about putting it inside the garage, but given how long this clutter had been outside, I wasn't sure I wanted the accumulated bugs and slugs to join the accumulated interior garage clutter. I thought about moving it around to the other side of the garage, but the new grass managed to establish well on that side, so I didn't want to kill it off by cluttercation, a most deadly form of clutter suffocation. I thought about the spot on the other side of the shed, but the fencing awaiting a more proper location (for example, around the yard) is stored there. I finally came up with the novel idea of figuring out why I had collected the clutter and then actually tend to that 'why.'
Right.
Some of it was obvious. Screens kept from window spaces that had new combination windows, giving the screens new futures as screeny things. Therefore, screens were to be disassembled and the screen material rolled up nicely and stored. Glass kept from the same window spaces, primarily because it was old glass, the wavy, bubbly kind that comes with older houses, and just so happens to match the glass in the built-in cabinet doors. Therefore, glass windows were to be carefully deconstructed, the glass cleaned and carefully stored. Those were easy enough. More challenging were the long pieces of 2x2 that came from some deconstruction project of days past. Long past. So long, in fact, that the pieces of 2x2 barely resembled pieces of 2x2 and were more like 1.5x1.7x1.88x2 instead. And full of holes, those little kind of holes which explain why old wood is so light, the kind of holes that generally come with little piles of chewed up wood. As I looked at these pieces of wood, I realized that they had long passed the point of reusability, and there had to be some other reason I kept them. It might have been hardware related, as I had other items amongst the clutter that were the keepers of hinges and handles holding out hope for new homes. As I reflected upon this possibility, it hit me that 'hardware' was close, if you consider that nails and bolts and such are also considered hardware. Indeed, I had kept these 2x2 boards because of a discovery of a certain kind of hardware, a square head nail.
OK, so it is more rectangular-headed than square-headed, and it resembles a miniature railroad spike more than a common nail, but I was (at one point) fairly certain that it was old. Maybe even worth something. And where there is one old nail there has to be more. Thus, I kept all of these 2x2 boards until such time that I could cut them to a reasonable size and check them all for nails of a similar style. I obviously found one in the past, which explains why I kept the old wood. I have no idea where it is at this point, but I must have found one, and that is precisely what I found yesterday in that large pile of cluttered used-to-be 2x2 pieces of wood prior to tossing them into the trash bin. All of them, or at least nearly all of them, all saved for one purpose, all becoming clutter for one reason.
One old square nail.