The new year is the traditional time for fresh starts. Time to get rid of the old year’s clutter and make room for the new stuff that will inevitably take its place.
We tried to make some fresh starts at our house this past month, we really did, but both my husband Mark and I kept getting tripped up by time bombs.
That’s what we’ve dubbed those projects, books, and neat-thing-we-spotted-at-a-thrift-store-and-always-planned-to-use-but-somehow-never-got-around-to-it items. We call them time bombs because they inevitably take up a whole lot more time and space than either of us ever imagined.
Take the vintage needlepoint kit discovered on eBay. I used to love doing needlepoint and have approximately 27 finished canvases languishing in a drawer that I haven’t quite gotten around to making into pillows.
Since some of those canvases are older than our children, I don’t think they’ll ever make it to pillow status. So why on earth would I buy yet another needlepoint kit? Especially when said kit is for a tennis racquet cover and says “Tennis, Anyone?” even though the last time I picked up a tennis racquet was when Ronald Reagan was President?
Because the kit is from the early 1980s and reminds me of when time bombs didn’t exist.
Because the yarn in the kit is a sporty shade of green and reminds me of my mom because green was her favorite color and she loved tennis.
Because it cost $10 plus shipping and that’s a mighty cheap price tag for memories.
The fact that the kit will sit in a drawer or on a shelf for at least the rest of the decade is beside the point which is exactly how time bombs get you: sneaky subterfuge.
Then there are the time bombs that getcha by making you think that you can fix something yourself, like a car repair that shouldn’t be a big deal. This has happened to Mark a few times when he’s watched a YouTube video with a title along the lines of “Change Your (Fill in the Blank) Yourself and Save Hundreds! Easy and Takes Less Than an Hour!”
Those are the days I take myself somewhere I can’t hear Mark swearing at YouTubers who put up those kinds of videos. He has learned that most do it yourself car repairs are among the biggest time bombs of all and NEVER take “less than an hour.” To his credit, he gets whatever needs fixing fixed, but not without a lot of angst.
I’m not sure if there are more time bombs lately because we’re getting older and it takes us longer to do everything or if it’s because the world is more fast-paced and frantic than it used to be. Most likely a combination of both.
We have come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with the various time bombs in our lives is slowly and deliberately. When that urge to buy yet another needlepoint kit, vintage or not, hits me I’m trying to remind myself to go and look at the three other still untouched kits in the front hall closet.
Another coping strategy is to try and be as realistic as possible when dealing with a time bomb. Approached with the attitude that whatever you’re tackling doesn’t have to be done in a day and that more than likely it’s going to take at least three times longer than the “experts” claim it will tend to reduce the anxiety factor.
A final way to defuse a potential time bomb is to simply shut the closet door and pretend you never saw it. True, this approach won’t get anything accomplished but it will make you feel better until you run across the next time bomb lurking in your house.
Nell Musolf is a freelance writer based in Mankato. She can be reached at nmusolf@gmail.com.