Shelves

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Shelves are really good to organize stuff, and I happen to need some in my newly built shed. I never had extra storage space around the house, yet now I do have some I fully intend to use it in the most efficient way possible.
The interesting thing about shelves is that they don’t only hold a lot of things, they also serve well whenever we want to shelve something. To put it up because we are essentially done with it, but we don’t want to toss it out just yet. So we shelve it.
On the other hand we can take whatever we hat put there off the shelve when it is needed. We don’t have to reinvent it again, we just take it off the shelve…

It is those connotations that make me think twice about putting those shelves up.

I really don’t intend to shelve things I have no intention of using in the not so far out future. Yet by the very nature of shelves, that is exactly what we tend to do. We use them to store stuff that is no longer needed. Often until we run out of space, which tells us it is time to reevaluate.
In all reality, this is not just true for shelves necessarily; we may well do this with any storage space that has no specific designation.

The question then becomes why we do this.
Why keep things we are truly and definitely done with. Only to come across them over and again; every time deciding that we really don’t want it ~ and then we put it back on the shelve where it may have been for quite some time already. What makes it so hard for us to toss that which we no longer need or want?

Is it the thought that we might, in some far out and unforeseeable  future, still need it ~ and it would be so handy to just be able to take it off the shelve. And wouldn’t it be a shame to have to buy it again while we have it sitting there on the shelve. After all “it is not eating bread”; it doesn’t cost us a dime to just keep it where it is right now. And by the way, it is still perfectly good ~ so why toss it?

Do we ever think about the chance of that particular future happening in our life time? Or how that which we have shelved may be totally outdated by the time we may need it? Or, for that matter, how much more time it would cost to find it on the shelve, rather than to buy it new?

So I guess I’ll be careful what to shelve, as soon as I have them, that is…
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