I used to occasionally watch a show called If Walls Could Talk on HGTV a while back. Basically, it showed people talking about the amazing treasures and historical artifacts they found in their fancy old homes. The camera would follow people up and down creaky old stairs while they explained how they discovered this or that. Examples (paraphrased and possibly made-up):
- “I was in the attic trying to escape from my family’s oppressive neediness and while I was rocking back and forth in the corner, I noticed a loose floorboard and lo and behold, there was a first edition of The Wizard of Oz under it.”
- “I was burying my mistress, I mean, some jars of pennies in my crawlspace when my shovel hit something hard. Turns out, it was an old tin box with a perfectly preserved Civil War-era flag in it. I’m lucky to be so homicidal, I mean, thrifty.”
- “I was having a good wank in my ‘jack-off shack,’ which is the hall coat closet, and it finally dawned on me, this trunk that I always sit on in here while I look at Hustler didn’t belong to us. So I looked inside, and it was a whole bunch of stuff that used to belong to Chester A. Arthur!”
You know, things like that.
Well, I had my own If Walls Could Talk moment this week. As you may know, we’re currently staying with my mom while we try and figure out what we want to do while our still not bought house is not bought. Our cat is currently staying in the large room over the garage, which for the last 25 years has been called “The New Room” since its addition in the late 1980s.
In the early 2000s, my sister lived up in The New Room while she attended college. The New Room has a bathroom with a small closet. I’m currently using this small closet (which also houses Kenbie and all his/her friends) to store the cat’s food. Well, and here’s my moment:
- “I was yelling at my cat to for the love of God shut the hell up and getting out his food to hopefully appease him, when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, taped to the inside wall of the closet, this:”
Y’all, it’s just like finding the diary of a Union soldier that shows great bravery in the face of turmoil, except it’s about not mixing up your shit and shower sponges and I see the person who made it multiple times a week. Still, it’s so amazing to have such a historical glimpse into the house’s past.
Have you ever found anything interesting in your house? I know it will be hard to top the sponge color code but I’d still love to hear about it.
I LOVED that show!! I taped like 100 episodes and watched them when I was on the stationary bike for months. Then when I’d seen them all, I found it didn’t seem to be on the air anymore. Sucks!
Love the examples of how people found things…
Yeah, these days their programming is mostly about people who don’t even own a house yet (House Hunters, etc.).
Maybe all the cool old stuff has already been discovered.
When I was a kid, I was digging in the dirt with a shovel in front of our barn and I dug up some old chunks of coal. The barn where I was digging was about 75 years old back then, and that was 36 years ago, so . . . 1901.
Well. . . I thought I’d discovered coal and we were going to be rich. Dad thought perhaps since it was under the coal chute in the side of the barn that it might have just been waste coal that nobody cleaned up. And now we’re not rich because we never dug up that rich seam of coal that I uncovered.
So frustrating! The same thing happened to me. My friend and I dug a huge hole in the front yard because we found a dinosaur bone and my dad came over and said it was a tree root and stop demolishing the landscaping. I could have had a dinosaur named after me.
old tiles… that’s about it. My house isn’t very exciting.
That still more exciting than a sponge chart.
Wow. Civil War soldiers were really anal-retentive. Who knew?
This post is like weird juju or telekinesis or something, because I just bought and entire junk store (!) and I’m hoping it’s filled with treasures like this. Minus the whack-off shack.
Whaaat? Did you really buy a junk store?
Yes. (oh.my.god.i.did.)
You’re going to own and run it? I’m completely fascinated.
When we moved into our current house I found a really old sticker in the basement that said “Brown Butter Beauty” on it. Seven years later and I’m still trying to unlock its mysteries.
Is it from here?
http://www.brownbutterbeauty.com/
Mystery unlocked? Yessss?
I’m often surprised to find my wife in the house.
(JUST KIDDING!!!)
On another note, I saw that show once. Is that the only other thing the kid from eight is enough ever did?
They should have done an episode of you constantly being startled by your wife’s existence.
Apparently, my cat has really been missing out by not having a pink sponge for her litter box. Oops….
It’s the cutest, most fashionable way to get those last bits of urine up.
I love that someone put time and effort into making that chart look nice.
Just because it’s a sponge code doesn’t mean you don’t put your all into it.
My favorite part of the sponge chart is that the border is color coordinated with the sponge colors being used. Now THAT is anal retentiveness at it’s finest. And very eighties themed as well. I wonder how many mix-ups there had to be before that chart was mandated.
Knowing my sister, there were no mix-ups, this chart was purely preventative.