The Vicious Cycle of Crafting

Boss took it upon themself to clean the kitchen the other day. Not just clean, but CLEAN. While this is fantastic on so many levels, it has let Boss in on a deep, dark secret that I have attempted to hide from all but my closest of kin. I am, something of a hoarder.  *shame*

Not the like, 2 dozen cats and 20 years worth of newspapers appearing on A&E kind of hoarder, but the "I'm totally going to use that at some point..." kind of hoarder.

It all started with my mother. The Martha Stewart of recyclable's. I like to fancy myself something of a crafty individual, able to create useful objects from various and sundry bits of crap found around the house and the local dollar store. I have NOTHING on my mother however.  Every event was a potential treasure trove of crafting paraphernalia, every recycling bin fair game. Soda cans? a little spray paint and some googly eyes and they become ghosts for a festive Halloween wreath. Plastic forks you can't seem to unload? No problem, add some lace and spray starch and you have a delightful wall hanging just in time for spring! Plastic bottles, hospital grade plastic tubing, bits of this and yards of that, everything had crafting potential. It all lived (somewhat) neatly, in our garage in the receptacle termed affectionately, "the junk box". No Camp Fire meeting was complete without Mom pulling out a bag of what one would assume is garbage, dousing it in glitter and tempera and returning with art.

I always admired my mothers ability to both save, and create and I have attempted to model this behavior in my adult years. The saving, that I have down, the creating however, not so much. When Boss began the process of cleaning out the kitchen, this became...rather apparent. The most abundant source of craft-ables (this is my new term for shit I intend to craft with) are plastic grocery bags.  I have saved plastic grocery bags since i began to grocery shop. My mother would save them in artfully created fabric sleeves with drawstring, conveniently placed about the kitchen for use as garbage bags, lunch bags, impromptu over night packs etc. I however, do not have the patience to create artfully designed fabric sleeves with drawstring, and instead cram them in whatever bit of space I can find in my kitchen and bathroom.

When questioned about my hoarding of said bags, my response is always;

 "I'm saving them" 

"For what?" Boss asks quizzically.

"I don't know, something...." and I wander off hoping the question will die and the bags will go unmoved. No such luck.

"I googled some ideas for their use"  Boss says helpfully.  Apparently such a thing as "Plarn" or Plastic Yarn can be made from my stock pile of grocery bags. This "Plarn" then can be crocheted into useful objects like reusable shopping bags! genius, I can do all of those things and save the environment to boot! I have a mission, the bags have a use, Boss can no longer justify throwing them away...conversation over...No such luck.

"Will you actually do this?" Boss asks, eyebrows raised.

"Totally!"  an edge of doubt in my voice betrays my optimistic reply and enthusiastic nodding

"Honey, will you ACTUALLY do this? or will they continue to collect here, awaiting your use, until one day I open the cupboards, they fall on my head,  and before I kill you, say once again, 'honey, WHY are you saving these?'

"Well..."

"I'm throwing them out."

"Wait! I might do it!"

"I'm throwing them out!"

And this is how it goes. With my bag of dryer lint that I promise to one day turn into fire starters, my 16 boxes of super cheap paraffin just right for making candles with the 6,000 broken crayons I have stashed in PinkOnes craft drawers (never have to buy Christmas presents again!) My vat of almond oil and bags of dried herbs and flowers I've procured for making my own scented oils, the 2 dozen egg cartons I inexplicably stash about like a junky hiding from the narc squad and the inexplicably large amount of flower-less plastic stems left over from my frenzied need to create 40's era hair clips from dollar store silk flowers.

Dude was not successful in liberating me from my treasures, Vulcan had a little more success, getting me to move them over to my friend Monica's who (luckily) has an equally cumbersome trash fetish with infinitely more space in which to hide them. Boss however, does not accept my plaintive cries of "no really! you should SEE the hair bows I can make out of that!"  and tosses them anyway, like...well like trash.

While I will never take up my mother's reign as Queen of Recyclable Crafting, I do now have actual counter and storage space in my kitchen. I find it challenging to release my habits. Particularly these sneaky, potentially useful ones. I still dream of a day when my mother will say to me "well isn't that lovely! Where DID you buy it?" (we are of course wearing Victorian garb and speaking with affected British type accents while sipping tea for no apparent reason) and I can reply, "Why mother! don't you know? I MADE it!"  (she will then gasp in awe and commend not only my crafting prowess, but my thrifty nature as well, there may be applause involved, I haven't decided) 

But, as Boss says, "If I let you keep these (insert garbage-esque item Boss is unable to see the crafting potential in), the vicious crafting cycle will continue. You will stash it away, look up something to do with it, stash it away with a plan in mind, forget the plan, and then 6 months later come across them again and say...'gee i should look up something to do with that..." Boss is, as usual...correct

Oooh...2 liter soda bottles....