Several years back, Teenager wanted to take a jewelry class at a local bead shop. We took the class together and it was fun. Part of the cost of the class included a couple of tools and, of course, we purchased some more items afterwards. For a couple of years, I did the occasional bracelet or earrings; the craft didn’t catch on with Teenager. I put the tools and assorted wires and beads into a yellow tool box and eventually drifted away from beading.
In May, I found a jewelry kit on sale online from a company I knew; since I was officially looking for ways to fill time during shelter-in-place, I purchased it. Most of the items I needed were in the kit but I did need one of my tools to adjust the bracelet size. The yellow tool box was not in the first place I looked. Or the second. Or the third. I spent quite a bit of time over the course of a week, looking and re-looking in what seemed like natural spots and then the unnatural spots. I’ve done a lot of tossing/donating the last couple of years but I was SURE I would remember if I had gotten rid of the toolbox. And I couldn’t imagine that I would do that either. Eventually I gave up, assuming I’d gotten rid of the box, and re-purchased the tool I needed.
Last week, I decided to do some organizing and cleaning in the attic; when I had brought the holiday decorations down, I had promised myself I would do this before the boxes when back up. YA came up to help me and we ended up really clearing out some stuff and generating a large bag of trash. At one point I was putting a plastic bin away and realized I didn’t know what was in it. You know where this is going, right? As we dug through the box, we found items from last year’s stocking gifts (which I had vaguely missed) and…. drum roll please… the yellow tool box! Because it was inside the bin, when I had searched the attic in May, I hadn’t seen it.
I can envision how everything else in that plastic bin ended up there, based on my normal habits, but I have no clue how that yellow box ended up there. Nothing in the box was irreplaceable but I’m happy to have found it, if only because it means I’m not crazy!
Anything you’re still looking for? Do you have trouble finding things you’ve “put away for safe keeping”?