Treasure hunt

So yesterday I was not feeling too spectacular and decided to tackle a few household chores.

I finished the laundry, cleaned the kitchen and then (dun, dun, dun - evil music) . . . I decided to tackle the junk drawers in the kitchen. We all have them. Those catch-all cachets that seem to just harbor every little item you don't feel like putting where it really actually goes. Well, yes . . . I chose to do THAT!

The first one was not too bad. It even has a divider in it - to help me keep my clutter in some form of organized chaos. This drawer contains the rubber bands, thumb tacks, scissors, little calculators, dice, paper clips, and oddities of this nature. It also holds all of our playing cards. To look in this drawer, one might think we are poker junkies or something. There are no less than a dozen decks of cards. WHY? We might play gin or rummy maybe once a year. But me . . . being the ever vigilant cleaning-crazed housewife that I am, counted the cards in EVERY one of those decks to be certain they were all viable and useful decks. I'm proud to say they were!

Drawer two is the battery/menu drawer. Do these things really go together? No! But the battery bin fits nicely next to the biggest of the take-out menues. Go figure! And let me just say that if you need a place to eat, call me. I have about a thousand menues from different local restaurants. I chose though, in my diligent dilerium, to actually only keep ONE menu from every restaurant instead of the four to five that we had. I also discarded the saver magazines from 2006. I figured we didn't really need those any more!

And then . . . drawer three! I was concerned about drawer three. This houses hubby's home papers and important stuff like that. Sadly, though, it also houses every magnetic pin from every bar, festival, or event we've attended. It also harbored every loose nut, screw, allen wrench, baby screwdriver (phillips and flathead), and a gazillion other pieces of hardware that I have absolutely no idea where they go. There were several rolls of duct tape ~ a household necessity, a tiny geology hammer that hubby has had since he was like 7 years old that I now use to hang pictures, a fishing game that gets played about once every three years, and . . . are ya ready . . . a pumpkin carving kit! Who knew?

The treasure came, though, at the very bottom and at the very back of the drawer. I came across a breathtaking array of photos and cards. A card from 1999, celebrating hubby's first anniversary at one of his stores, signed by all the employees. A letter from a family friend from when my father-in-law passed away. It made me laugh and cry in the space of just a few seconds. A letter from my nephew that wasn't even a letter. He mailed me a drawing of hearts from New York. I swooned! And then . . . the mother lode! Photos! School photos, fishing photos, vacation photos, and my favorite . . . a thirteen year old collage of family photos. Oh my! What joy! A series of faces and smiles and silliness that took me WAY back to a whole other era of life. I will need to go find a frame today and ensure that bad boy makes it on a wall . . . with hubby's little geology hammer!

Go clean! You never know what treasures you may find!