Kirby: Much of what we have seems over our heads
Kirby #Kirby
“The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess.”
– James Thurber
Most of us have a lot of stuff, which we keep out of sight and out of mind – in storage.
My attic is probably like yours, defying inventory and straining the ceiling support beams. It is full of keepsakes, busted furniture, outdated clothes, books, boxed dishes and enough old Christmas decorations to brighten a dozen December dens.
I doubt I’m alone.
We sit and shake our heads when we read stories about some old “hoarder” who crammed a home with stacks of newspapers, Cool Whip containers, and a salt-and-pepper shaker collection that could season Saluda.
These stories make the news when the collector is found seriously injured beneath an avalanche of National Geographics.
But we’re not much better.
We think that we are because many of us keep our stuff somewhere else.
Self-storage units are popping up like apartment complexes, and they seem to get filled pretty quick. The AARP magazine says so in its latest issue.
Self-storage, it points out, is an “American phenomenon.” Ninety percent of the world’s self-storage inventory is in America. Not only that, one in 10 U.S. households are self-storage customers. The average rental length of time is 15.8 months.
And younger people, despite their disdain for accepting our old furniture and heirlooms, make up the largest percentage of self-storage.
All this is on my mind because I spent last weekend cleaning out my father’s attic. Now in his 90s, he is no longer encouraged to scale ladders, and I was called in.
You know what he had up there that surprised me?
Wood.
Stray boards, wall molding, chair rails, 4-by-4 posts, odd-shaped plywood sheets, small blocks, broom handles, old ball bats and two doors off their hinges.
“Daddy,” I asked him later, “why do you have so much wood up there?”
“Might need it,” he said with a shrug.
“You could build an ark,” I suggested politely.
“Might need that, too,” he replied.
As usual, he delivers a lesson: Success is in preparation, not acquisition.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Kirby: Much of what we have seems over our heads