Creativity

In Digging Out, the hoarding help manual I've mentioned before, the authors point out that hoarders are often very creative people. They ask you to do an exercise, in which you envision all the things you could do with a bottle cap. The average person can think of one or two things (including just throwing the damn thing away). The average hoarder can think of ten to fifteen things to do with a bottle cap, which makes it harder for them to throw it away. 

I guess we're supposed to be impressed by that. But, you know what, if Picasso had just looked at canvases and thought amazing pictures in his mind, but never actually painted them, he wouldn't be an artist. Nobody would know who he was; nobody would care. 

I cleaned the kitchen, unauthorized, the other day. My mom was out of the house, and I just couldn't take sitting there, looking at the mess and doing nothing. I literally cleaned - moved the table and swept up an inch of dust and rotting flower petals, etc - and I did some reorganizing. I was careful to throw so very little away. For example, she had a shelf full of mostly empty sticky honey jars with bits of unusable crystallized remains. I cleaned out all of them, wiped down the sticky shelf, and then saved one of each style of honey jar, and recycled the rest. Nobody needs nine almost empty honey jars. Nobody needs five cleaned honey jars either, but I left them on the shelf for her to do nothing with for ten more years. 

When she returned she saw that I had cleaned and went out to the recycling bin and started digging. She pulled out an old take out container and one jar. I was secretly glad she didn't pull out more, but I was still dismayed that she pulled out anything. "This is not trash!" she proclaimed, holding up the take out container. "You have a whole cabinet of actual tupperware, I didn't think you'd miss a take out container," I countered. The take out container in question has a scalloped bowl. "This would make a great mold - for sand, or jello, or even plaster or something." 

True, maybe it would. But she won't do any of those things with it. She'll tuck it back where it was (maybe, eventually, if I'm lucky - right now it's sitting on a ledge where she left it) and eventually probably forget it's even there. I understand, and even respect, creative re-use. I can actually think of a lot of things to do with a bottle cap. Back in college, when I drank more, I would save the cool ones. I made thumb tack sets and jewelry out of them and gave them away to friends. I bought some epoxy and pins and made buttons out of them. My art school roommate covered a whole coat with them. My aunt - whom my mom can't stand that I have a relationship with...another story for another time - flattens them and makes awesome tambourines. I even saved up a whole bunch with the intention of covering a table top with bottle caps and resin. But I never got around to that project, and so, after about a year of hanging on to a box full of bottle caps, I recycled them. Because being an actually creative person means being able to let go of old ideas and run with fresh inspiration sometimes.