Eshtine

basement

I am supposed to clean the basement today.
Actually, I was supposed to be cleaning the basement several weeks running, but this is the first week I've actually gone down here and sat with the express purpose of perhaps getting around to thinking about throwing some stuff away.
Mind you, I haven't spent much time sitting. I got down the stairs, sat in the chair, and remembered I had to call my nephew and invite him to the Science Center tomorrow. "Aunt Jelle?" (I have all my nieces and nephews call me that. Sticking "Aunt" in front of my real name sounds too antagonistic.) "Did you know I'm a first grader now?"
"Oh, has school started?"
"No. But I'm not in kindergarten anymore."
"So when does school start?"
"Monday. Well, I gotta write my name on school supplies and stuff. Bye."
I mope with Mom a bit about how old I'm getting. Then I'm out of excuses. Back in the basement I go.
The chaos of it is impressive, I think. I'm proud of how strange a world I have down here. Various nieces, nephews and unrelated small ones have played down here with the Mardi Gras beads, the six foot tall cardboard lion, etc. Some of the play has been unsupervised, though, which means little bits of my childhood detritus have been flung about in ever-increasing randomness.
Which leads me to my theory about basement entropy. Once something (say, a piece of paper) ends up in the basement, inevitably it will find its way to the basement floor. From there it will get stepped on, shoved aside, drenched in one flood or another, or buried under a cardboard box. Eventually it will end up as a gray clump of inert matter. Everything that gets in the basement inevitably becomes a gray inert material clump.
It is my job today to rescue what I value from the chaotic state. I must see what, if anything, can be salvaged, and if order may be imposed (to say "restored" implies order once was).
First to go is a mound of tinsel in the middle of the room. Once it was fringe at a party celebrating the new millenium. It's been a metallic pile on my basement floor ever since.
There's fabric in the corner. Dealing with this is outside the scope of my expertise. I go upstairs, where the expert is sewing a pillow. "Mom. Say I happen to find some fabric on the floor. It's wadded up and it got soaked when we had that water running off the air conditioner. Do I save it?"
"Throw it away."
So that's next to go.
Sadly, the castle (three cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other and lined with aluminum foil) goes too. I manage to sweet-talk the salvation of the giant cardboard lion and the four foot tall blue unicorn sculpture made of recycled materials. Their day will come, though. It has to, if they're in the basement.