Trash or good junk?

Larry Jones, Democrat Columnist

When it comes to tidiness and housekeeping, I like to think of myself as about average. Although my wife, Helen, might disagree on occasion, I expect I’m somewhere about halfway in between the personalities of the slovenly unkempt Oscar Madison and the neat-freak Felix Unger characters depicted in the show, “The Odd Couple.” I’m a middle of the road sort.

Many years ago, before Helen and I married, a neighbor lady stopped by for a visit. As she was coming in the front door, she pointed out, none too politely, a “few” leaves that were adorning my carpet near the entryway. She asked, “Don’t you even own a broom?” I quickly acknowledged that I had an almost new one. It was hardly used, and I’d be more than happy to show her where I kept it. Would you believe that she never asked again?

My workshop is one area in which I had for many years always taken a lot pride in keeping it clean and organized — that is, until Helen and I married. She brought all of her “junk” and dumped it in amongst my treasures, and I haven’t seen a lot of my things since. A man never knows when he will need a used carburetor for an F-14 Farmall tractor, a set of 14” tire chains, or a round 6 inch piece of inner tube rubber. There’s times when nothing else will do, and if you can’t find yours, what’s a man to do?

This past weekend, neighbors Jerry and Linda Hale had a large moving/garage sale. That is what Helen and I should be doing — getting rid of stuff, but instead, we were among their buyers. Just what we needed was a half a pickup load of another man’s junk to go into our already overflowing house, workshops, and barns. But, I’m sure there will come a day when it will all be very valuable. If I can just find it.

As I’ve always heard, the key to having a neat clean house, shop, or barn lies in the old adage — “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” My shop used to be like that — back in the old days. Now it more closely resembles watching a group of monkeys try to put 10 pounds of bananas in a 5 pound sack. An old friend who recently passed away, Willard Walker, perhaps summed it up most aptly. Quite a pack rat in his own right, Willard said that when he cleaned his shop or barn, he merely moved each pile from one side of the building to the other. Periodically, he would move everything back and that would give the appearance of progress.

While in the Navy, I once had a Wing Commander pontificate to a group of young officers about what it takes to make a good leader and manager. He suggested that you have to separate out all your tasks into three groups: those you have to do immediately, those you need to do but can postpone, and those you’d like to do but will never get around to doing them. Success depends on your ability to decide what goes into each pile. Sage advice indeed, and it applies equally as well to cleaning up a workshop. The three groups that I identified are: things I will need and use almost daily, those things that I will need in the foreseeable future, and Helen’s “stuff.” Therein lies a potential problem.

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Larry M. Jones is a retired Navy Commander and aviator who raises cattle and hay in the Brock/Lazy Bend part of Parker County. Comments may be directed to nowhearthis@pwhome.com. Columns submitted to The Weatherford Democrat by guest writers reflect the opinions of the writer and in no way reflect the beliefs or opinions of The Weatherford Democrat.