Old broken plastic dog toy bins

Is there anyone else who just doesn’t like new things? A new phone, a new car, even new clothes…. they just don’t excite me. There’s something about the old, the familiar, the well-loved, that just feels so comfortable. It feels like home.

I wear my clothes out until they’ve disintegrated to nothing. My favorite pair of black pants has holes in the butt, but it’s fine, I just wear black underwear, and no one can really tell. No one’s really looking at my butt that closely.

 I had a favorite gray long sleeve waffle knit shirt that I wore and wore and wore until it fell apart. The collar had come off, the cuffs had come off, the holes in it were too big to keep wearing it, even around the house. I still miss that shirt over 20 years later.

 It’s also as if my old clothes know me. They know how I like them to fit; they know how I like them to feel and when I get up off the couch they say, “ Oh, are you going to get yourself another glass of wine?” Then they high five me  because my clothes know if they are lucky, I will spill some on them and they will get some wine too!

New clothes are all tight and stiff, and uncomfortable. They try to be all high waisted. No one likes a high waist! I like a low waist. I know that’s your name and what you were made to do, but don’t try to do that stuff around my house. Go low.

They’re also very judgmental and questioning. “Are you getting ANOTHER glass of wine?” They also freak out when I spill stuff on them.  “Quick! Get the stain stick!” They yell. “Oxy Clean! Shout! Where are you?!”

“Chill!” I tell them. “You don’t need a stain stick! Or any of that other stuff. We love stains around here. It gives us character!”

And then there’s my car. I’ve only had it for eight years, but I’ve put over 230,000 miles on it. The back right door doesn’t close properly; the left turn signal doesn’t work unless you push it down really hard. If you just push it down normally, then the right turn signal will come on. I give it a break because sometimes I confuse my right with my left also. 

The air vent on the far right doesn’t work, the paint is peeling, it has more than a few dents and scratches, and the radio is very finicky. The radio sometimes stops working, but over the years, I have found that I can easily reset it with my earring.

“Oh, not this again,” I say pretending to be annoyed with the radio and I drive along, pull my earring out and reset it quickly.  Usually resetting the radio fixes it. If not, I just wait until the next day and then it starts working again magically. I guess you need patience with used and well-loved things.

My car knows me. It knows what I want to listen to, it knows that I like to go below the speed limit and it doesn’t give me a hard time about it. Not like some rental cars that I’ve been in that just want to go fast. My minivan likes going slow and enjoying the view. Just like I do.

I was going to say it knows exactly how I like my seat, but I just discovered last week that I can adjust the seat so there’s not a big bar sticking in the middle of my back! Who knew?  After eight years? I guess you can still learn new things about old cars no matter how long you’ve known them. And people too. With all its quirks and inconveniences, I love my car and I’m hoping it’ll last another million miles.

My phone was the worst though. It was really old and well loved. It knew me so well. I don’t think another phone could ever know me so well. I know, I know, people talk about an Apple ID and you just sign in on the new phone and all of a sudden, all your stuff is there and then the new phone knows you too. I don’t really believe that. I got a new phone and I tried it. It doesn’t understand my typos, like my old phone did. This new phone corrects my typos to actual words!!! 

“That’s not what I meant at all, New Phone! Old Phone would have totally known that” I actually said out loud the other day.

It doesn’t know that I lose my phone all the time and there’s no reason to panic. Old phone just sits there and rolls his eyes and waits and waits for me to figure out where I left him. 

New Phone is all panicky. “Where have you been? Why did you leave me alone? I thought you were lost forever!!!”

New Phone needs to chill out.

I do think it is pretty cool though how you can put one phone next to the other phone and they just transfer information and send stuff between them. How do they do that? It’s like magic!

My old phone got to the point where it just wouldn’t send texts sometimes. (Maybe it knew I really shouldn’t send those texts, but still, it should do what it’s told) It just wouldn’t receive texts sometimes. I would get a notification that I got a text, but I couldn’t find it when I opened my text messages.

There was also NEVER enough storage on my old phone so every time there was an update I have to delete everything. And still, there was not enough room for the update. Sometimes there was not enough storage for me to clock in on my work app. And don’t even get me started on pictures! There was never enough storage for me to take pictures.

Sometimes I would delete and delete and delete a bunch of pictures I didn’t necessarily need (although I really wanted) and still there would be no room for me to take one picture. 

“I just deleted 30 pictures!” I would say to Old Phone. “And you won’t even let me take one?”

My phone said “no.” I get it. He was tired. I am too.

I was at the vet’s office and they had the cutest little sign saying if your dog has anxiety, take this little bandana and lay it over her/him because it has been sprayed with something calming. (Well, the sign said it in a much more eloquent way. That’s why I wanted to take a picture!)

I thought it was the cutest little sign, and I took one bandana and laid It over my dog. It had autumn leaves on it, and she looked so cute! I wanted to take a picture of the sign and take a picture of my dog to send to my family chat because I knew they would love it. But Old Phone said “no.”

Even after I deleted so many things I just begged it for just one more picture and it said “no.”

Also, the camera only worked in selfie mode. I’ve gotten pretty skilled though at taking every picture I need to take in selfie mode. I mean, doesn’t everyone just want my face in the corner of every picture I take? OK, probably NOT everyone.

So I finally got a new phone, and I don’t know what the hype is about a new phone. I don’t know why people are so excited. It’s just a phone. It’s fine. It sends my texts. It receives my texts. It lets me take pictures. But really, I just miss Old Phone. My old phone was comfortable, well worn, and well loved, even with all his bad habits.

Sometimes I think I want nice new things. The other morning, I was sitting on my couch looking around my house and I thought to myself that I really needed new baskets for the dog toys. This was after I woke up that morning and said to myself that I’m not going to buy anything unnecessary today.

The current baskets are not even baskets! They are plastic bins the dog toys have been in for years. (and they have NEVER bothered me) They were bins that used to hold my kids’ toys when they were babies. These bins are over 15 years old. They don’t match and they are cracked down the side and cracked down the back. They are just not very pretty. Doesn’t my dog deserve better? For the toys she NEVER plays with. And besides, wouldn’t it just make my house look so pretty?

So, I hopped on Amazon, and I bought my dog two new matching baskets for her toys. We have one in the front room and one in the back of the house. Honestly, she doesn’t even play with toys. It was the other dog that played with toys, but they are all still here.

The new baskets are very pretty. They are woven baskets with a the cute little dog bone on them. 

I was all excited when they came and I switched out the dog toys and showed them to my dog who didn’t care. She loves old well-loved things the best too.  After all, she loves me.  

After three days of looking at them and how pretty they made my house look, I decided that I didn’t like the new dog toy baskets. 

They were too nice and too new and too fancy. And the old ones reminded me of my kids when they were babies. They also reminded me of my old dog too who would often pull out all the toys.  And not clean them up.

Good thing I hadn’t thrown the old bins out. I just threw them in the garage. I dug through the garage and found those old plastic broken bins and I returned those new dog baskets. It’s funny how you don’t really realize how much you love something sometimes. It is funny how they look perfect to me now.  Mismatched, well loved and all.

It’s like that with people sometimes too. We get old and we get broken and we get worn out and we get boring. I hope no one will ever trade me in for something new and shiny. 

That’s the thing though, we learn to love people just like we learn to love things. We love them with their faults, and with their broken parts. We love them because we know them so well, and even their annoying habits become endearing. We love them because they are not perfect. And neither are we.

The world would be such a better place if we were happy with what we had instead of wanting something new and pretty, if we appreciated a little more our old well-loved things that brought us comfort, and if we were just happy with our old broken plastic dog toy bins.