2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “want.” Make the word “want” the first, second, or third word of your post. Have fun!

Waste not, want not Is the maxim I would teach

Let your watchword be despatch

And practice what you preach

Do not let your chances Like sunbeams, pass you by

For you never miss the water

Till the well runs dry

When I was a teen a hundred eighty years ago, okay, exaggeration, sixty-four years ago, and what’s the dif? I heard the above song and embraced the concept. I didn’t remember the whole song, just the above chorus.

Click below for the lyrics of the whole song:

Waste Not, Want Not

I couldn’t find the actual song. I think it was on Mormon Tabernacle Choir album I came upon way back when. If any of you find it let me know. I didn’t want to spend all day researching while trying to stream my consciousness.

This very song is my blatant rebellion to the ‘if it doesn’t scream joy to you throw it away’ mentality of those who are the haves and have always been haves. When you have been poor you know want, need even more so. If you have moved a lot and threw away as you moved, find yourself needing things you threw away because in the new place it was important. Replacing all that is easy when you have good jobs. Not so much when times get hard. Or like now when much isn’t in the stores.

We may have more than we need right now, making the place messier than Marie Kondo could handle. Not as bad as Hoarders victims. But I don’t believe in throwing out. Those clothes that don’t bring joy? Make them into other items, carryalls, yarn, or patches. Book you don’t want to read? Well, you can donate to the library, which I do, but throwing out? Nope. If it was a popular textbook or best-seller, there are too many out there. They can become new art supplies, journals, decorations. You can build things with books. Heck, you can build walls to whole new rooms should you bring another in who needs privacy. Books insulate sound.

I do believe that giving to others is a good thing. If I can I do. But my energy to gather and lift and carry to the vehicle and then to a second-hand store is close to nil. My same lack of energy makes a yard sale, even prior to the lock-down, nearly impossible.

The thing is, I have had many occasions where I needed something and by having these bits of waste around I was able to build something that fills the need. I’m a firm believer in that maxim. I do not waste so I need not want.