Spare parts

I wish my brain had spare parts, like a memory card I could insert to remember all of the thousands of things I seem to forget: the names of kids’ friends’ parents, that awesome gift idea I had for our son, whether I left the stove on.

It would be nice to have spare arms, too. So I could do more things at once. Although I guess those wouldn’t be spare arms: they’d be extra arms.

I’m not sure how many things in my daily life require spare parts. I do have multiple keyboards and headsets for work, and we keep a massive supply of AA batteries on hand at all times. I have one spare ink cartridge for my pen. We have a couple spare chargers for electronics. Other than those things, I don’t keep a lot of spares around. I’m sure my husband could name a dozen spare parts I’m not aware of.

Or maybe not. We’ve done a lot of work to streamline our lives. We don’t keep a lot of extra anything around. We own one car instead of two, we throw items away when we no longer need them: our old tea kettle, the kids’ outgrown clothes, trinkets we’re tired of dusting.

Clutter is enemy number one in our household, including in the garage, where spare parts would tend to accumulate. I’m not as good about throwing things out as my husband. He’ll throw anything away. I used to resist. I clung to stuff for sentimental reasons, and still do. But when I see how much lower maintenance our lives become the fewer possessions we own, the more on board I can get with tossing things with abandon.

Thanks to Geoffrey for the prompt “Spare parts.”

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.