Where were you in 1996?I've been astonished all year as to how many broken or incredibly old and useless things have been left in our apartment, in our storage unit in the basement, and in my office at the University.
When we first moved in, we had the chance to toss many things in the Big Garbage Day we wrote about at the beginning of the year. Among other things was the couch missing a side.... But since then, we've continued to toss. Finally, we found an IKEA shelf to take the place of the shoe storage case in our hallway that was essentially standing on one leg.
The funny thing is that there's a budget in our program to replace old, useless things. For whatever reason, people have been reluctant to use it, I guess.
I think it's a German teacher/professor thing. It's got to be. Why would people year after year keep stuff that should be tossed. Afraid someone will find out? Who would know if it's suddenly gone.
The final straw came when Jenny was organizing the medicine cabinet the other day. There were countless open and unopened medicines, some of which we did toss. When we saw the unopened bottle of eye drops at the beginning of the year, we must've thought that it was still good since it hadn't been opened.
But then Jenny took a closer look the other day--you can have a look, too--it expired before Clinton was elected to his second term!
There are lecture notes in my office at the University that don't even belong to our program but must've been there when the program started sending a resident director to Salzburg back in 1979. The notes are from the 1960s! I am NOT kidding! Yet, no one has had the nerve to toss them, and they take up a HUGE amount of shelf space. They're the only thing I haven't tossed yet.
Maybe it's the German teacher in me.
