I have always envied minimalist people.
Those who do not have a car but only a scooter, who are content with a few clothes in the closet, whose apartment is not cluttered with furniture, whose kitchen closet has two cups, an opener, a plate and a half cockroach, and move in their ventilated and free apartment the head.
Unfortunately, neither I nor the First Lady belong to this special breed.
Like many good ones, we are tireless fundraisers, and throughout our lives we have amassed an amount of junk that would not embarrass Hiriya in its good old days.
The ease with which we buy clothes, unnecessary appliances, canned corn, fitness treadmills and yoga mats (the only one lying on them was the carrier that brought us the treadmill and got tired of carrying) is unbearable, and the fact that today you can purchase anything at the push of a button and get it to the door Weaning for a particularly difficult task.
Once in a while, when we feel that we have reached the point of exhaustion, we take time to tidy up and go through the clothes in the closet.
Because clothes tend to become obsolete over time, or just do not get on you after developing tires in your stomach, it is relatively easy to drop them in the trash, or contribute to the needy who are more careful about their diet.
This is also true of other consumables, such as broken furniture, rusted barbecues and crooked cutlery that was used to repair punctures.
The problem starts when you are faced with objects with sentimental value, which cost a lot of money but did not survive the test of time.
Our parents' generation invested the best of its savings in purchasing the Hebrew encyclopedia, in infinity and one volume, but after years of glorifying every home library, the Internet, Wikipedia and Google arrived, and we do not know what to do with this monument, whole rain hair cut to produce it.
Because it is difficult for us to get rid of such a glorious literary institution, we convince ourselves that someday we will need its services, although there is no chance that we will ever open this dustbin to read about the white rhino, with all the information on our mobile phones, even though it is clear to Wikipedia Perhaps a 12-year-old boy wrote, who does not differentiate between a rhino and a unicorn.
The grandchildren at home, for their part, do not understand why Grandpa invested so much money in the 1960s in this package of paper that could not be enlarged, instead of buying an apartment in Ibn Gvirol with money.
Some people market their hoarding as collectibles.
I, for example, have a hard time throwing old cell phones, for which I paid NIS 4,000 per unit, and for the past 20 years I have kept every obsolete device in a box.
I have there old Nokia and Motorola devices that are the size of a microwave, but can barely store a Snake game.
Of course, the reason I keep them is not because of stinginess and the difficulty of releasing something I paid for with the best of my money, but because of collectibles and a desire to present a retrospective exhibition on the history of mobile devices as a microcosm of changing the Zionist ethos.
There are guys like Jay Leno or Seinfeld, who are rich enough to pick up old cars, Eric Clapton guitars or Napoleonic weapons.
As someone who at most collects in the back of the fridge a few boxes of Napoleon cheese, I am not qualified to visit them and the excess money and time that have resulted.
I do know people who have collections of shells from wars, electric trains, miniature cars, porcelain dolls or stamps at home.
That's fine, as long as you have room for all this nonsense and there's someone taking the dust off of them for you.
But it's starting to get problematic if the Walt Disney Doll Collection fills the MMAD.
It's an addictive disorder in every way, and it's time to open rehab centers for anonymous gynecologists who can proudly declare that they and their MMAD have been free of snot for a year, eight months and two days.
As mentioned, your loyal servant is no different from other goofy collectors.
Beyond my dumb cellphone collection, I have about ten thousand discs, records, audio tapes and VHS tapes, which I keep in all sorts of crates.
You can find collections of songs recorded directly from the radio, in the days when Gadi Livneh was a soldier and edited the hymn parade, videotapes with TV shows from the era of Ironside and the hotel of Polti, and CDs of the best music from Israel and the world, which in the Spotify era no one needs.
I have often wondered why I do not throw away this irrelevant collection, and why exactly I am waiting.
There is nothing unique about the scratched record of "Music Madness", so the only madness here is mine.
The chance that one day a collector will come and agree to give me more than NIS 100 for the collection is nil.
On the other hand, if I'm wrong, and one day records will be worth millions, one like Yoav Kutner will become the new Jeff Bezos.
The market value of our junk is
measured by the speed at which things are placed next to the garbage. Decomposing furniture we bought from IKEA, or iron objects (which is a much-needed material), will be taken within an hour or two. On the other hand, the "Camp" pamphlets, which we collected from the six days ago, and the old books of the Secret Seven and Chipopo in Africa, which we did not like to get rid of because "do not throw books" (but living in a house with the smell of mold and moth swarms is very pleasant ), We can find there even after a week, neatly arranged next to the garbage.
The world is looking for solutions to all the unnecessary waste, which pollutes the groundwater and suffocates the animals.
Perhaps this time too the solution lies in creative thinking.
For example, records are one of the best waving instruments.
They can be offered every Saturday to the mangalists of Ben Shemen Forest and Hayarkon Park, and in our warming world they can also be used as a replacement for fans, for those who do not like air conditioning in restaurants and cafes.
This solution can also be used by the IDF and slightly cool the soldiers who train in the field, while those who are employed as a DCO (waving records) can say that they are in the Air Force.
The old disks, which have the effect of appearance, can be glued together on large boards, and made from them solar panels for boilers.
They are also sharp enough so that soldiers who specialize in Frisbee can sit on the Gaza border, launch the discs at incendiary balloons and blow them up in the air without the need for the expensive iron dome.
I think the Ackerstein company would do well to find a way to produce transparent interlocking floors, some of whose raw material would be old records and discs.
This can be lovely, if while walking with the baby stroller you are trying to put to sleep you can take a peek at Israeli culture once upon a time, with old records reflected from the tiles.
Instead of Ackerstein, they will call it Kleinstein, Einstein or Alberstein.
According to this idea, you can also make drywall from records and discs, and then you can also say that you really know the man in the wall.
I believe that there is enough free space in the Negev and the Arava to establish the National Junk Hall, which will absorb all the junk that Israeli citizens no longer want to store at home.
The schooners will be displayed there in an orderly fashion in long columns of furniture, Cipolux devices, signage collections, rusty tools, general encyclopedias, old Lahiton newspapers, and so on.
Anyone can come, walk through the corridors like the IKEA collection hall, and take any junk he wants, no money for free.
And even if they did not take anything home, at least they made a nice trip and learned that there are other idiots like them, who have accumulated nonsense all their lives but have at least managed to quit and throw them out of the house.
yairn@israelhayom.co.il