what I found in the basement

It has been a few months since I attempted to clean the basement and found a whole bunch of… stuff…. so, yeah, this is not all that timely. But I made a list of the strange things I was finding to entertain myself as I excavated, and I stuck it in my FiloFax. And now I’m bored out of my mind — all the "graduating" seniors have settled down for the moment, and I have exactly nothing to do. Which is weird. SO I’ll just post my list of all the Things I Found In The Basement for posterity.  

• Water for emergencies. This is a good thing, but we must have a half a million plastic bottles stuck under the old futon. And some of them are very very VERY old. I don’t know what the lifespan of bottled water is. Especially when bottled in potentially-killer-plastic-from-the-90s.
• A vacuum cleaner from the 50s. That is round, and aqua blue, and once belonged to Mrs. Roveano, an old family friend from my childhood. She went to our church and was very good friends with my mom. She lived in a trailer on a bit of my parents’ land for years. I was very fond of her, as a kid and as an adult. Why do I have her vacuum cleaner from the 50s, which I do not recall ever actually using but have toted around with me for, oh, 25 years?? No.Clue. Why can I not just haul it to the Salvation Army? Again. No. Clue. 
• A Tupperware cake holder which once belonged to my mom. That I KNEW I had somewhere, and I looked for it for ages at Thanksgiving, on one of the very rare occasions I actually needed a cake holder. Oh. There it is. Covered in grime. Yum.
• A box of old colored bottles my inlaws bought at junk shops years ago and gave to me. I love old bottles, and I’d totally forgotten about these. I have a few in my kitchen window but it’s a small window and I didn’t have anywhere to put the rest of them. They were fun to find, though. Maybe one day I’ll have a nice big display area for them!
• A turntable. That my first husband and I bought in 1982. I was still using it in the mid-90s when Baker B and I were living in Durham and our cat Colfax jumped on it and broke it. I’m sure there’s a very good reason it’s in the basement in its original box. Which I kept for packing it carefully every time we moved, so it wouldn’t get damaged. Even after the cat broke it
• Five coolers. Yes, FIVE. Of varying sizes and shapes, although all of them are on the small side. I can not think of the last time I used a cooler.  
• A big bag of birdseed. Inside one of the coolers. ?????
• My teeny little one-man pup tent that I bought in college. Back in the days when I actually liked to camp. (Oddly I just bought a luggage tag for Upcoming Trip, one of the hilarious Anne Taintor ones, with the perky 1960s woman saying "I love not camping!"

• It goes with the one I already have:

• Okay. Back to the entry. 
• A Pendulum kit that Kim gave us years ago to aid us in telling our fortunes. Without the pendulum. Fortunately I know exactly where the pendulum is. It’s on a bowl of assorted odd things on the kitchen counter- which is kind of a little microcosm of the basement, now that I think of it. 
• Another turntable. I have no idea where this one came from. Or why it’s in the basement. Or if it works. 
• 12 glass canning jars in their original box, taped up with very very very old tape. I have never canned a thing in my life, and don’t recall any mad urges to take up canning. 
•  Old lace. Where did that come from???? And why isn’t it somewhere that isn’t, oh, the mildewy nasty icky basement?????
• About five thousand little colorful toy mice. They are everywhere! Much better than finding real mice, although I’m sure that’s well within the realm of possibility down there. Maybe all the real mice have been transformed into colorful toy mice! 
• Now I know where all the cat toys have gone. 
• Including the very large dark grey toy mouse that nearly gave me a heart attack because it looks pretty much exactly like a great big dead rat when seen from across a poorly lit basement. 
• Medical supplies. Yes, medical supplies. Gauze, tape, bandages, little cleaner pads… I think my dad brought them home from one of his hospital stays. I’m sure they are perfectly sanitary after being down in the nasty basement for years. 
• Nearly as many colorful ping pong balls decorated like little baseballs and soccer balls as there are toy mice. Now I know why I can never find Eddy’s ping pong ball toys that he loves. 
• Enough books to start our own library. Seriously. And I’m sure they are perfectly fine with being stored for years down in the nasty damp mildewy basement. Well, it’s not as mildewy as it once was since we tore out the carpet and replaced it with… um… nothing. Concrete floors are fashionable!! Baker B has all his books in his "study" and I have most of my favorites in the spare room, so these are like overflow books. That really need to be given away.
• Enough old tins and basket to start a tacky-stuff gift shop. Oh, hey, we can start a gift shop/used bookstore!
•  Aunt Mabel’s fireproof safe. Which I took home with me after Aunt Mabel died so that we could put our own important papers into it. What’s in it? Aunt Mabel’s papers. How long has she been gone? Not that long!!! Just… maybe nine or ten years????? Meanwhile the only important papers of my own that I could definitely find without a massive search is my passport. And that’s because it’s been stuck in the Random Papers Thing in the livingroom since we went to England two and a half years ago. It was just joined on Friday by Baker B’s shiny new passport! So, those two things I can find. They are the most important things currently anyway. 
• Potpourri. Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Even better, it’s probably 20 years old and had been at one point in a plastic bag. Which at another point apparently exploded. It even still has a teeny bit of fragrance. There were several different kinds from my long-ago Potpourri Days. Some of it was Crabtree and Evelyn, I think. Something quite pricey, anyhow. One kind was supposed to smell like the ocean and had tiny bits of seaside stuff like little starfish and shells in it. 
• A handmade map of "Sabrita". No idea what or where Sabrita is, or who drew it.
• A bunch of old collages from both mine and Baker B’s Collage Making Days.
• My mom’s old sewing kit. Inside a round box that’s decorated with a kind of cornucopia design.
• Upwards, that fun word game that we used to play with my nieces and nephew for hours and hours. The box has strange holes cut out of it so is surely missing letter tiles.
• Empty boxes everywhere. EVERYWHERE. While there is random unboxed weird junk everywhere else. If only the two could, oh, be somehow put together….

And that was only the tip of the iceberg! No mention of all the strange old furniture, random tools, bits of material, and boxes of stuff that came from my grandparents’ house and my aunt’s house and my parents’ house and probably other houses as well since I seem to be a Junk Magnet for everyone who has weird old stuff and doesn’t know what to do with it. "NO, NO, don’t throw that set of plastic plants out!! Or those dophin-shaped ash trays!!! Or that smiley-face teapot!!! I’ll take them!! It’s history!!!!

I really really wish I’d gone into the museum business.