Storage Delight and Childhood Memories

Once in a while, I have a flash of sheerest brilliance. I really, really do.

This one started with my perusal of the Canadian Tire catalogue. Now, perhaps I am the only woman who enjoys paging through the Canadian Tire catalogue beyond the gardening and patio furnishing section, I don’t know. I’m quite sure it stems from happy childhood memories.

I grew up in a small village – a mere hamlet when I lived there, population 600ish – bisected by a small highway. On my side of the highway was the library, on the other side of the highway was “the Plaza”, a little strip mall of small stores: an IGA (groceries), a Peoples (department), a dry cleaners, a hairdressers, an LCBO (alcohol). I’m sure there are others that I’m missing, but the one I haven’t forgotten is the hardware.

A small Home Hardware, and a wonderful place for small children. The creaking wood floors, the dust motes in the air, the smell of grease, and, oh, the possibilities! This sense of possibility is the same I get when I enter a fabric store or a craft store: all the things you could do! My favourite part in the village Home Hardware was the bins of small bits. Rows and rows of open bins of nuts and bolts and washers and nails and screws and various mysterious metal bits and pieces, the names and uses of which I never knew, but the possibilities! Oh, the possibilities!

Kind Mr. Hilliard who owned the place never prevented this little girl from picking up the bits, running her fingers through the washers, letting those cool, smooth metal scraps pour over her palm and tinkle back into the bin. Once in a while he’d take one of those small paper bags and drop a few of this and a couple of that into it. “Here. Take these home and see what you come up with,” he’d tell me. He understood.

I’m sure he and his Home Hardware are the reason I can never let that Canadian Tire catalogue go unexplored. And this time, well, what a coup! In those cool, shiney pages, under “Tool Cabinets”, I found this little gem, a four-drawer DIY Waterloo on castors, and I thought, “MY tools aren’t wrenches and hammers and vice grips. MY tools are glue guns and sparkles and beads and paper”. Hey! Whyever not?

So off to Canadian Tire I go, and now, in my kitchen, instead of a cupboard filled to overflowing with craft stuff, I have this:

The cupboard that used to be stuffed full is now half-empty, and will soon house the things a kitchen cupboard should contain, things which till now have been stacked five-high in unlikely corners of not only the kitchen, but also the back porch.

When we got to Canadian Tire, we discovered that these babies were ON SALE!! Regularly $169, now yours for a mere $99. So of course I bought two. What else could I do? Given their purpose, no one, not even Revenue Canada, could argue their business-expense worthiness. The second one is on order, and when it arrives, some of that stuff stacked on this one, and the remainder of the craft stuff still in that cupboard will go into it.

Look at these drawers!

Is this not wonderful?

I am a happy woman!