Some People See Art

Others see life plaque.

Gail Blanke, author of Throw Fifty Things Out, calls the things that neither serve a specific purpose nor exist to make you feel good “life plaque”.

I love this!

Everything from stale spices and old mascara to socks missing partners and deflated green aliens from last year’s carnival.

I have read enough articles on creative at-home kids projects that turn trash into art, that the glorious fish sculpture made of plastic water bottles does not fool me.

I see art in limbo waiting to be properly appreciated before it becomes bigger, harder-to-disassemble life plaque. Oh yeah, WITH the added advantage of guilt for destroying something so beautiful.

It’s like life plaque in limbo.

Sure, if we lived on Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro, where the featured fish were sculpted, I might be more open-minded, free-thinking and easy-going but as a working mom with a suburban acre and a half, our sculpture would look different.

Clear your mind. And picture, if you will…

All the plastic water bottles in the house, random empty milk cartons and a couple stray shoes tied together with unused rainbow loom rubber bands.

A smattering of stretched-beyond-their-limit neon blue bands spread across the newly planted euonymus and blooming rhododendron, a one-armed iron man action figures sitting atop the plastic dragon.

The real nails on the chalkboard cringing takes place as they wedge the dragons’ legs (four dining room chairs) back and forth, back and forth, digging deep holes into the fledgling lawn to insure solid balance.

Our grass already looks dangerously close to bad hair-plugs.

We let it grow hippie long to give the illusion of more green sort of like the suburban landscape equivalent of the comb-over. It doesn’t work close up, but if you’re just looking out the window sipping coffee, you feel less disgusted.

So, needless to say, a fun Saturday afternoon creative “life plaque sculpture” will not be happening. Plus, water bottles get recycled weekly.

Our plastic life plaque centers around my personal arch nemesis: Tupperware.

It’s ugly. It never stacks properly with the lids neatly recognizable. Why?

Because the ads never show the new Tupperware assimilating into the wild jungle of mutts and in-breds populating the slide-out drawer.

How many containers do I really need? Why do I seem so reluctant to part with the beloved junk? I don’t know. Insanity? Perhaps latent hoarding tendencies?

The funny thing is I am fairly ruthless when it comes to throwing out or donating everything and anything we don’t use. However my fear of Tupperware loss was recently overcome in one little research study.

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that living with clutter makes you tired, and that fatigue can up the appetite-stimulating hormone cortisol so much that you can eat an extra 200 to 1,000 calories a day.

Holy shit! Seriously? Gone!

We will be engaging in an immediate nip and tuck around the house, starting with the Tupperware drawer. Who needs actual diets when you can just put your clutter on one!