Maybe we bought a blender and it burned out.

Maybe we bought one from Tim and Loren when they returned to the land of the Untied Snakes.

Syd and Gundy gave us one when they were cleaning out storage space. Which I burned up trying to grind up eggshells for the compost pile (thanks for that idea, cuzzie ;-).

So now I’m sort of doing the same. I’m reading The Joy of Less and loving it. Because of our frequent moves in the past — 10 in a 21-year period from 1986 — including two overseas, we’ve done a lot of paring down.* However, even in a non-consumerist culture like Uruguay, the stuff piles up once you settle.

When we made hummus the other day, I dragged out our two blender bases, both of which are pretty heavy duty. One didn’t work at all (ah, another project!). The other did the job. But then a day later a third blender top surfaced. Do we need three? They seem to be sort-of-but-not-quite interchangeable.

And then, when was the last time we used the blender?

Perhaps in 2016. Perhaps not.

There’s something distinctly non-minimalist going on here!

* three of us moving from Mexico: about ten suitcases, three pet carriers (2 trips), plus a single pallet shipped from Houston with 16 cartons, a floor lamp, and a BMX bike.

I’ve been reading The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Guide to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify, a needful reminder.  We may have moved to Uruguay somewhat minimally — ten suitcases and a pallet with sixteen cartons, a BMX bike, and a floor lamp — but oh my, how stuff has collected since! Some of the ideas in The Joy Of Less I had come up with on my own. In the 1980s, I parted with my yearbook collection and (worthless, seriously) old journals in Germany by putting them in a box with a “dispose” date. In 1997, when my father died, I took all the tools and materials in his workshop I’d known inside and out for over thirty years and laid them out in the “wrong” places, making it simple work indeed to sort trash from treasure the next morning. It was like walking into someone else’s garage sale.

In the past week, several boxes, some with perfectly good stuff, have gone to EMAUS, the local thrift store. For example, the electric buffer I bought, thinking I would assume a more conscientious attitude toward our car’s appearance. I didn’t. A nice hard shell suitcase that became “oversize” after its first trip when the airlines changed their specifications. A heavy-duty hoe that I thought just the ticket for cleaning the ditch in front of our house. Wrong. It’s simply taken up space in the garage for over six years.

And for almost two years I’ve had the uncompleted, last work of Tex Farrell stored with our suitcases above the stairs. Haunting as it is, and fascinating a glimpse of his technique as it is, there’s no really good way to display it. And what to do with some large pieces of his leather he left? Aha! Knife and straightedge and now we have dog protection for our “new” leather couches, recently purchased from a couple who moved back to Europe.

But what exactly to do with this?

Today I took the scraps from the couch pieces to Carlos, shoe maker and repairer who has a tiny storefront in Atlántida. I also took the incomplete head, figuring he could at least use some of the leather.

To my surprise, he was absolutely delighted to receive it, and explained that it was of his friend Tex’s nieta — granddaughter. It wouldn’t mean anything for anyone else, he explained in Spanish, but it means a lot to me.

Another de-cluttering win-win!

1) Ah, the joy of little things

I was able to buy the little thingie on the right for my Stihl weedeater! Almost USD 5, but so what. I indicated my relief that it wasn’t just me who lost things. Previously I lost the main nut for attaching the blade, threaded counterclockwise, which cost about the same at the time in USD (and of course immediately found the lost one). Se gastan, the girl said (I think), meaning (I think) they wear out (get spent). Correction appreciated —.

2) Spring is springing

Our fig tree in the campo, in need of pruning. (Search for “figs” for other posts if this is even remotely interesting.)

Cool flower, horrible photo.

3) Dead snake in the road

I’m hoping this was run over, and not killed gratuitously por las dudas. Syd and I recently encountered a small dead snake while dog walking, which led him to find a site about snakes in Uruguay. Unfortunately it’s awkward to ID non-venomous snakes, and I’m tempted to take all their info and organize it into a functional web site. Anyway, there are four venomous snakes in Uruguay: rattlers (widespread, but not here), two vipers (one widespread, one not, but neither here), and coral snakes, distinctive as hell: in terms of threat, if you plan to mess with any brightly-colored red-yellow-black snakes please contact me because I’d like to take out a life insurance policy on you.

And yes, the por las dudas guy at the beach was indeed an idiot.

4) And another stunning sunset

Note the clouds. We’re supposed to be inundated tomorrow. Google weather indicated today that we were in the midst of thunderstorms, though all I could see was blue sky and sunshine. Trust my experience or Google?

200 pesos = USD 6.90 at present. Your choice, a Brother or Olivetti!