Spackle and Slatwall
My parents are the proud owners of a newly built home. They spent the last 30 years of their marriage in their “starter” home. This first home my parents built as newlyweds in the late 1970s and it was just going to be temporary until they could move into something a little bigger for their family. Over the years, they found moving not as important as raising their children and having fun memories together. I remember helping finish the basement in the house with my dad, spackling drywall or, I guess, watching him spackle the drywall was more like it. It was a great house and even though we were cramped for space most of the time, it was full of fun times we spent together. I knew it was time to move because our family had outgrown that home, but it was still hard to leave.
The other weekend, I visited my parents’ new house. My father had recently finished the garage with some spackle and a fresh coat of paint. It looked great! I saw a piece of slatwall my father had gotten from a former job leaning up again the side of the garage wall. I remembered how he had saved so many things from our old house that he hated to part with. He had saved this slatwall so he could store these items and keep them organized. I know it’s sometimes hard to leave the past and move on to the future, but we don’t have to completely forget. Little things like this will help us remember. I know when I see our garage full of slatwall and boxes of odd-and-ends, things we’ve collected and saved, it will always help me remember so many memories. Now that I’m married and have a place of my own, I need a way to store things as well. I figure why not buy a piece of slatwall and get started? There’s a website at www.spacewall.com that I’m looking into. There are so many choices and they look better than the one my dad has, but it isn’t always about looks. For me, it’s having a way to keep the things I love in a way that will be manageable. That way, my husband won’t have any reason to throw away my boxes of “stuff.”