Peanut Clutter and Petroleum Jelly

by Kaya

We all have too much clutter around us. Papers, unread magazines, old mail, dishes, empty malt liquor cans, CDs, etc. We tend to surround ourselves with crap. And this crap then clutters our minds, or so the ‘Feng Shui for Dummies’ book told me. It’s time to get rid of the trash, stack the magazines and recycle the Schlitz cans. Clear our homes and our minds will follow.

My fiancé began the new year throwing something away each day. The battery charger that only works in Australia and New Zealand? Gone. The plant that died shortly after Alf went off the air? Trashed. The single oven mitt that’s been horribly burned, stained and offers little to no protection for your hand against heat? Sayonara.

The only downside to the “throw something away each day” methodology is that you eventually run out of stuff. We found ourselves combing garage sales and swap meets for unnecessary items simply for the purpose of throwing it away at a later date.

“Ooh, look at that painting of the dragon standing fiercely in front of some snow-capped mountains. That would go perfect in our wastebasket. What about this “Ab-Cruncher 3000” with the pads missing? Don’t you think we could toss this on Tuesday?”

Now that my place is little more than blank walls and a bed (the cluttering pillows were discarded after a few glasses of wine when we decided to throw away something every hour...soon leaving us with nothing to drink wine out of nor pillows to rest our drunk heads on), I headed over to my parent’s home to help pass on the joy of detachment from useless, material things.

She had gone through the bathroom and medicine cabinet and pulled out items that she wanted me to claim or help throw away. I walked into a surprisingly full room of crap. The floor was covered with tubes of expired ointments, nearly empty “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific” shampoo bottles from 1974, ancient cologne and enough aged Vaseline to get every horny junior high school boy in town through puberty.

I think every house has an old container of Vaseline. I don’t know anyone who’s ever actually bought a jar of petroleum jelly, but it’s always around...and it’s probably older than you are. The bucket that I was planning on throwing away had been sold for $2.87. Granted this could have been during the time of Pangaea as what we now call continents were breaking apart from one large land mass, but even then this was not very much money. A bucket of Vaseline sells for practically nothing and yet the amount of petroleum jelly needed at any given time is miniscule.

Our family bucket (perhaps they were distributed to every family during the Nixon administration?) made it through two babies and diaper rashes, thirty winters of chapped lips and two boys in a house that promoted self-love. Still, we haven’t made a dent in this thing. I can’t even finish the Vaseline lip therapy containers before I eventually lose them or throw them away during clutter clearing frenzy. How can petroleum jelly be so affordable, and petroleum in it’s non-jellied form be so expensive? Maybe the invention of petroleum peanut butter would speed up the purchasing of its jelly.

With the bucket ‘o’ petroleum jelly thrown away I moved onto the collection of colognes that my brother and I had used at some point in our lives. Each scent helped me revisit a different stage in my life.

“Ah, this one smells like insecurity,” I remarked about the Drakkar Noir bottle that I bought to impress Michelle Miller in the 8th grade. She was the first girl I ever French-kissed and I give most of the credit to my manly aroma. “Forty squirts of Drakkar oughta do it!” There’s nothing subtle about a teenager wearing cologne.

The familiar scent reminded me of trying hard to be cool and wishing I was taller. Of being scared to ask the pretty girl to dance to the slow song by Lionel Ritchie. A time when I was still riding my bike to school with my friends, but couldn’t wait to start driving, drinking and getting naked with girls. A conflicted time when I didn’t know who I was, but wanted to be older, bigger and more confident. A gallon of macho cologne may not have been the answer, but it was a start...and less obvious than spritzing Binaca in my mouth every seven minutes.

Perhaps “Insecurity” could be the name of a cologne for junior high boys. “Somewhere between the 8th grade dance and getting a varsity letter is Insecurity.”

Needless to say, these well-aged colognes found a comfortable spot in the bag of garbage.

Not everything was so easy to throw away. There was an electric shaver that I thought might be of interest to The Smithsonian. This thing was a piece of work. It might as well have had a hand crank to get the motor running. I think it was the first electric razor ever made. It was a big plastic block with three razor heads at the top. No fancy smooth curving sides to cradle your hand. No easy on/off switch or razor flip to cut sideburns. Just as the Model-T Ford didn’t have a DVD player in the headrest or spinning rims, this razor had no bells and whistles.

There’s a few reasons why this medieval electric razor was kept in the first place. You see...no wait. There is NO reason why this razor has been kept. My mother is simply so compassionate, that she can’t bear to part with anything. And she’s a pack rat. The razor has been returned from whence it came. Whiskers to whiskers, dust to dust.

I do notice a difference when my living space is less cluttered. I believe having junk everywhere does clutter your mind. Each day eleven more credit card applications arrive and threaten to destroy my solitude. Every changing of clothes is a chance to throw a pair of pants or shirt on the ground ruining the clean floor. And each Schlitz malt-liquor beer I shotgun is another can wrecking the sacred, clear coffee table.

And once I sober up, I promise I’ll clean up. Well...maybe tomorrow.