time to send it to the incincerator?

[lauradi7dw]

Disclaimer: I know the country's on fire, either metaphorically or actually. Send money to bond funds. Get ready for more tonight (not actually expecting much to happen in lovely suburbia). Somewhat academic question - is this summer going to be more like 1968 (which I spent mostly in front of the TV, swimming, or reading The Hobbit) or 1919?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer

OK, I've acknowledged reality. In my super-easy life, we have almost decided to haul to the curb an old dresser that was used when I got it in 1977. For ages, it has been either in the basement or the garage as storage just a flat surface to stack stuff on. It's still pretty sturdy, although as one might imagine, the drawers aren't great. Other part of the backstory: our garage is home to squirrels and/or birds and/or chipmunks. Over time we have made ineffectual efforts to stop the garage being a storage place for black walnuts, which the squirrels love. Alert readers may remember that in a wind storm in mid-April, a tree crashed through the garage roof
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/596637.html
The roof was finally repaired and re-shingled on Wednesday. We shuffled around some of the stuff inside the garage, and I opened one of the drawers in the dresser. Full of black walnuts and leaves. Another drawer, the same. Large bottom drawer was full of nesting materials. Click to enlarge


I can't stand the idea of clearing everything out, so we are probably going to trash it, but I feel a little regretful.

Comments

[negothick]

I vote for "kick it to the curb"--provided you don't injure yourselves in moving that squirrel nursery.

There are many parallels with summer 1919 ("Red Summer") besides the pandemic--the President was incapacitated and there was really no one running the country; there were lynchings and riots against Black people in the cities; and there was so much anti-immigrant sentiment, often in a search for scapegoats for the flu pandemic. The anti-immigrant sentiment was part of the First Red Scare, reacting to the Russian Revolution, and there were plenty of attempts to muzzle the press. Just like now.

[nosrednayduj]

I fear that your dresser doesn't look like it'll really be worth anyone refurbishing it. You may never get the smell of squirrel poop off the bottom of the drawer, and it might seep into anything someone tried to put in it. I had a pile of tshirts on an unfinished pine board for some months, and the ones on the bottom STILL smell a bit of pine, even several years and several washings later.

[lauradi7dw]

We haven't been using it for clothes for a long time. It had tarps and a few small things in it. Without the dresser I guess we will just dump the tarps on the garage floor. Anything we replace it with might just turn into a different sort of squirrel dormitory.

[nosrednayduj]

Open shelving units are pretty useful, the sort with no walls, and crosshatched shelving rather than solid shelving. Might allow organization without allowing squirrel nest areas...