My Eccentricity

Although my Wonderful Husband and my children would be very surprised to hear me admit this, I do have a few – just a few – quirks, eccentricities, habits and odd behaviors.  I blame them all on my genes.

“It might come in handy someday” was Dad’s mantra.  After he passed away, I had to clean out his garage…among other “collections”, there were dozens, literally dozens of glass jars filled with bent nails.

It wasn’t just Dad!  Mom could squeeze a buffalo nickel until it cried.  My grandmother would write her grocery list on the tiny, clear margin of the newspaper rather than use a piece of note paper.  And no piece of paper was discarded until it was used on both sides.  “Do without.  Make Do.  Do it yourself.  Make it yourself.”  These were unspoken but very important laws – not to be broken.

For instance, I need to save the twist ties from bread wrappers. I keep short lengths of ribbon.  Tissue wrapping paper gets smoothed out, folded and saved for next Christmas.  Brown paper shopping bags get folded and stashed away.  There are clothes in my closet that I last wore in high school (not that I’ll ever be able to fit in them again).  I can’t bring myself to discard a nice glass jar with a good lid – after all, it might come in handy someday.

I also can’t stand to throw away any plant that could, conceivably, with luck, grow a root.  It doesn’t matter if I don’t have room for it, don’t need it or already have several plants of the same type.

“It Might Come in Handy Someday”

The other day, I was watering my spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum) which I’d brought indoors for winter.  This spider plant is amazingly prolific – full of baby plants.  As I was rotating it so a new side could face the light, one of the heavy, full runners snapped right off.

A normal person would have shrugged, said, “Too bad!” and tossed the broken piece into the compost heap.  Not me!  Finally, my compulsion to save glass jars “came in handy”!

I collected eleven empty glass spice bottles (all the same style) and filled them with water.  Dipping the root ends of the baby spider plants in rooting hormone, I inserted the tiny plants into the bottles and sat them under grow lights.

I had such a good time!  I was happy!  My slightly obsessive habits paid off!  Of course, they are all doing very well and are growing nicely.

Now…just one problem…what am I going to do with them all?  Spider plants, anyone?