Weekly Posting of the Conservative Cow Doctor

The Gift

If you have ever saved a cardboard box because it was a very good box, this week s message is for you. Even if your passion is not empty boxes but rather some other useless fixture, today s principle still applies. For example, my father favored rusted out water heaters and when we restored our 100-year-old, two-story barn we found five of the empty tanks in the loft. Dad intended on repurposing the tanks into feed troughs but never got around to it. There would have been even more discarded appliances in the loft had we not taken the keys out of the loader ten years earlier.

Hoarding junk mostly afflicts ag people because they have a disproportionate opportunity to store stuff. When you die in the house in which you were born, and your outbuildings also includes a barn, sliding door shop, chicken shed, oil shed, tack shed, puppy shed and chute house, your homestead becomes a collector s paradise. You can stuff stuff everywhere hoping someday it might prove useful.

This is timely because we recently moved my in-laws from their home into an independent living facility. My mother-in-law started life as a ranch kid in Dayton, Wyoming so perhaps that is the origin of her hoarding habit. My father-in-law married into the ranching business but later became a carpenter. Over their life, they moved from Ranchester, Wyoming to Brookings, Oregon, and finally to Laurel, Montana but failed to thin their goodies on their many moves. My mother-in-law had several closets full of unworn clothes sporting Penny s price tags which had survived the trip to the coast and back.

The trophy wife spent the past two weeks emptying drawers, bins, cabinets, cupboards, and closets. When her out-of-state sisters text requesting she set aside their favorite Tupper wear lid, Druann flips into her Charles Manson-on-meth look. I had seen that face years back while standing in our kitchen in married-student housing after I lovingly and gently tossed a basketball into her backside to make a point. I have since quit playing basketball in the kitchen.

People excuse hoarders as being scarred from the depression, but the truth is, my in-laws and parents were born after the depression. Both were just junk junkies, and this brings me to my point. The best gift you could ever give your descendants is to discard your trivial trinkets, treasures, and trash. Open your desk drawer, dump it, then move to the closet, the pantry, and the garage. It is the fitting and proper thing to do.