One Man's Trash...

I've been lucky enough that I haven't had to move too much throughout my life, and the few times I have, I've always had a
"back home" to return to, a place to leave the things I couldn't take with me. When I went to college, I moved everything out of my
bedroom at my mom's house, my childhood bedroom, and I moved it to my dad's house. Then, my mom moved, and the fate of my childhood home was
sealed. Later, after graduating, I was lucky enough that my mom and stepdad could afford to get a cross-country UHaul to bring all my
tchotchkes from college back home with me.

What I'm getting at is that my bedroom now (and the side room I've been granted due to my brothers not wanting to spend time at our dad's house)
is full of a wide variety of stuff ranging from as far back as elementary school. Things I've held on to, for better and for worse. And
of course, I've still managed to lose things over the years, things I wish I could get back. But the collection I've amassed is not
something that just happens overnight.

And of course, it comes with drawbacks. A week ago, I had my 3 year anniversary of graduating from college, and it's an incredibly
mindfucky experience. As it relates to this, it means it's incredibly easy to stagnate and let things pile up around you. I consider myself
a maximalist, so clutter and visual noise has never bothered me, but I want to be able to have clutter that actually reflects who
I am, and not just clutter for the sake of it. So, I've been trying, slowly, over the course of many months, to really preen my
shelves and get rid of stuff that doesn't suit me. And in doing that, I was reminded of the treasure chest.



Ah, the treasure chest. You can really tell how old it is because of the fact that I painted it lime and turquoise. The tassle is unrelated,
but it's from a similar time period. I think it came off a pillow or something. You can't see it in the picture, but I drew a face
on it and kept it for some reason.



Filled about this high with random stuff. Let's spread it all out, shall we?



Hm, yeah. Y'know, I like to use an older digital camera to take pictures for this site, because I feel like it gives off a better
aura than just using my phone. But for this, I think we need to crank the quality up a notch.


That's better. And numbered for your convenience!...So you can see me describe what it was, and potentially rationale as to why I kept it!

1. Blocks I stole from elementary school.
2. Another block I stole from elementary school, but this one can open up and be laid out flat.
3. The head of a mooshroom.
4. A quarter machine roller blading alien. It's kinda sticky.
5. Pencil grip that reminded me of those Albanese gummy bears.
   I just realized I somehow put five twice so the second five is two grocery store display grapes. The yellower one is kinda sticky.
6. Three pencils that have been sharpened down on both ends. A childhood friend of mine loved making them.
7. Big plastic sword painted silver and detailed with red sharpie. Was my stepbrother's.
8. Blue-beaded bracelet with a tiger's eye effect. Was once worn by a beloved Oshawott plush that disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
9. A pen cap with a rubber band tied around it. I really liked making stupid crap like this. The rubber band was completely disintegrated.
10. Small plastic gun. No clue where it came from.
11. Blue orca bath toy. Very cute.
12. Green gator bath toy. Very cute.
13. Orange toad bath toy. Very cute.
14. A piece of sticky tac. Stuck into it is a piece of a paper clip that an old crush gave to me, and a cat whisker from my childhood cat.
    I was very obsessed with clay and sticky tac as a kid, I'd steal it off the back of the posters in class, and other kids did too.
15. Little blue frog eraser. Very cute.
16. Cardboard Pokeball coin from the Diamond and Pearl Pokemon Yahtzee clone... I think.
    Two sixteens too? Wow I'm on a roll. Sixteen 2 is an original release Hex Bug. It used to be gray. But the battery still works!
17. Yellow turtle bath toy. Very cute.
18. A tiny blue-green Play Doh plate with...
19. A very, very, very tiny seashell resting on top of it.
20. Yellow ray bath toy. Very cute.
    Listen... I really like bath toys, okay?
21. Red diamond eraser ring, never used.
22. A puffball creature with googly eyes and antenna. Do they have a proper name?
23. Littlest Pet Shop cake and drink (with an umbrella of course). The cake was always one of my favorites.
24. A spring from a pen.
25. Two brass(?) buttons. They aren't familiar to me at all.
26. Hamburger jibbit with a kawaii face.
27. Owl carved out of granite(?) I should've laid it on its side for the picture...
28. A piece of something... Blue plastic with two hexagonal holes on its sides and a rope that can coil around its base or be unfurled.
    Strangely, I'm very attached to it. It was one of my favorites. I used to keep the rope rolled up like that and pretend it was a little tank.
29. Small plastic ankylosaur. Not visible in picture, but it has a very soft face, as if it were a baby.
30. Schleich baby crocodile. I remember I got this from Blain's Farm N' Fleet.
31. A ceramic basketball from my cousin's basketball player bobble head. He dropped it on the driveway when we were waiting for his mom to
    come pick him up. We used to be pretty close, especially for two kids who only saw each other every few months. He was always very reckless
    with his belongings, and I have his old silver DS Lite. I don't talk to him anymore. He lives pretty far away.
32. A tiny little jar. It's dirty like it was full of pencil leads, but it's way too small for the ones from the mechanical pencils.
33. Somewhat flat plastic circle, with sculpted facets like crystal. No clue what it's from.
34. Two marbles with blue and red modeling clay bases respectively. I used to put clay on the bottom of marbles and pretend they were crystal balls.
35. A hard chocolate chip shaped piece of dried clay, light brown.
36. My OG 3DS's circle pad. It fell off at some point, and I guess I kept it. Weirdly yellowed. I wonder if there was something in here releasing fumes
    that it and the hex bug were reacting with.
37. LEGO SpongeBob jellyfish piece.
38. A mangled corpse of a little green stretchy guy, and an extra head.
39. A bottle cap from a glass bottle of Mexican apple pop. Pop was very rare in our house growing up, so it wasn't until I was in high school that I was
    able to finish a whole can or bottle by myself. I hated the taste of cola, (I love it now) but also hated grape and orange. Outside of
    root beer, this was the only pop I really liked.
40. Half of a rock. I used to collect rocks with tiny fossils in them, but this doesn't have anything visible in it.
41. Adorable little sea turtle. Dated to 1995.
42. Extremely small rubber shark. The teeth are the only painted feature. Sharks were peak boyhood to me.
43. A pressed penny from the House on the Rock in WI, specifically of my favorite exhibit-- the famous whale. It's a lot more popular now than it used to be,
    and I can gladly say I loved it way, way before it was cool.
44. The decorated front of my childhood home's original bathtub water knob.
45. A plastic blade painted silver and blue. Similar to #7, no clue if they're related or not.
46. A quarter machine ring with a green diamond shaped gem in it.
47. A button shaped like a dragon creature thing. It came in a bag with other buttons shaped like other monsters. No two were alike. My mom
    bought it for me as a part of a board game I had to make for a project in elementary school, and I was obsessed with it from the moment
    I laid eyes on it.
48. Bread tie, likely taken from the grocery store, twisted to resemble the main character from Dust, the Powder game.
49. A token from a water park I've never been to before, "Wet n' Wild".
50. Owl eraser that I was obsessed with as a kid. I, like many others, had a whole bunch of those puzzle erasers. Not sure how common it was to
    treasure them and not use them though. And even more, how many people used them as toys. This one I loved so much, that when
    his beak fell off, I colored a piece of paper orange and glued it to his face.
51. Plastic omnitrix from some Ultimate Alien playset or figure pack.
52. Another puzzle eraser, this time, one without a head or any identifiable details as to what it could've once been, beyond the bellybutton.
    It seems like I drew pecs on it, and I put a green pushpin in its neck hole to make a new head for it. Any leads would be great!
53. A very flat lizard that I think was supposed to glow in the dark. The bottom half of it is completely flat and smooth.
54. A glow in the dark turtle sqwishlander. Not sure why this one is separated from the rest of my sqwishlander collection.
55. A dirty earplug, but just one.
56. Temporary tattoo from a radio station.
57. Two hero factory LEGO chest pieces.
58. A piece of plastic shaped like multiple rows of gold beads in a pile. No clue what it's from.
59. A smiley face eraser.
60. A plastic bone, I'm pretty sure it's from Littlest Pet Shop.
61. A hardened piece of brown gray glay or putty with a bunch of lines pressed into the bottom of it. It vexes me unlike anything else in here.
62. Shitty plastic toy coin.
63. A weird plastic piece shaped like a bottle or weapon of some sort, clear with a blue core. Very pretty to look at.
64. 10 LEGO coin.
65. A hard piece of blue plastic with white speckles in it. Maybe broken off of something?
66. Broken strawberry puzzle eraser with a creepy face drawn on it. Not my artstyle, probably drawn by my stepbrother.
67. Shark-shaped mini sillybandz.
68. Smallest glow stick I've ever seen, it was once red but is now completely clear. It's got rusty stuff inside of it, some kind of mold, maybe?
69. SpongeBob's spatula, from a Krusty Krab playset. Interestingly, I don't remember ever having the rest of the playset, or the figure.
70. A 1 yen coin.
71. A 10c (pesos) coin.
72. Weird red gear thing. Reminds me of the cartridges from those cheap dollar tree pop-gun things, but doesn't have the white caps on its spokes.
73. A piece of a Star Wars ship thing. I have no idea what they're called.
74. Broken pieces of these Pokeball toys that once held Pikachu and Shaymin.
75. A blue Star Wars guy. I remember getting him from a blind bag (before blind bags were literally everywhere). Thought he was cool even though I don't
    recognize him at all.
76. Piece of a string off a bag or a hoodie or something that was used to keep the string tight. I always thought it looked like a water bottle.
    No clue why I thought that made it important enough to keep.
77. A few more little erasers. The dragonfly was always my favorite.
78. A little razorblade. Not sure what it's from.
79. Two little pieces of charcoal.
80. A handful of rubber frogs. The two green ones were from a water snake that dried up and I cut open.