September 10, 2005
"Seen it all, done it all, can’t remember most of it,” quips one of my refrigerator magnets.
Thank goodness for these refrigerator magnets that bring us humor, get us to appointments on time, and help us remember our lives—where we’ve been and what we did on our vacations.
No joke. I need help remembering such things.
Although it is quite fashionable right now for Baby Boomers to purge their houses of non-essential items such as refrigerator magnets, I am having trouble going “cold turkey”.
I need those magnets!
Ok. I get it that we should downsize and clear clutter from our homes, and I thoroughly subscribe to the wisdom of Feng shui (pronounced “fung shway”). Just for the record, Feng shui, by definition, is the ancient Chinese art of placement in which the precise location of everything is of utmost importance to the positive flow of energy.
In other words, if you want success to come to the front door of your home or business, practice Feng shui.
We all know how good we feel when we clean out a closet or cabinet—that’s Feng shui. Energy starts to flow in an uplifting and positive way. We feel better and our houses are less cluttered. All well and good, but I still miss my magnets.
Magnet purging in my household started when a visitor commented on how much nicer my stylish, black refrigerator-freezer would look if it was not covered with magnets.
One of my kids got in the act, and said those magnets have to come down.
He said, “The kitchen really looks tacky, Mom.” He began taking them off the refrigerator.
Between social pressure to live more simply, observers who think my refrigerator is too cluttered, and a kid who wants our house to look like a Pottery Barn display window, I lost.
Down came the magnets.
I acquiesced, but, just in case, found a box to hold them. Who knows, I might be allowed to put them back up one day.
It is possible that I may have broken a law of Feng shui here or there by keeping them, but no matter.
My magnets are vital to my well-being.
I miss my green magnet that says, “Real women don’t need guardrails,” if nothing else than to remind me, under no circumstance, to ever drive to the top of Pikes Peak again.
Then there’s the magnet that reminds me I have great courage. It reads, “You can’t scare me, I have children!”
I call this one my Galloping Gourmet magnet: “I love to cook with wine; sometimes I even put it in the food.” You remember the Galloping Gourmet, the once-famous TV cooking show star that put wine in everything including scrambled eggs.
Also, I miss my travelogue magnets recalling trips along Route 66, visits to the Smithsonian, Hershey, PA, San Diego Zoo, San Jose and the Silicone Valley, Disneyworld, Nantucket, Annapolis, and Sedona. All wonderful trips and memories I don’t want to lose.
I depend on those travel magnets to help me remember.
Others are absolute necessities, such as: hotline and emergency magnets, awareness and support magnets for a variety of causes, picture frame magnets for the grandchildren, metallic business card magnets, calendars, and sports schedule magnets.
How can one possibly function without these, I ask you.
Curiously, I have found several magnets on my refrigerator that begin with the letter “C”—cars, cats, circles, crayons, and cows. No idea at all what that signifies.
By the way, I have not stopped collecting either, but I have switched from magnets to signs.
Recently, I bought a cute metal sign in Cripple Creek, Colorado. It sports a blue coffee cup dangling from a wire announcing, “Instant human; just add coffee.”
Unfortunately, since I am no longer allowed to put magnets on the frig, the “coffee cup” sign is hanging in the laundry room.
My new sign hangs near my favorite piece of signage, Erma Bombeck’s directions to her kids on “How to operate a clothes hamper.”
The sign reads like this:
“Don’t be intimidated because there are no dials or instructions on the lid. Bending from the waist, you simply pick up a sock, a pair of pants, or a towel, lift the lid of the hamper, and feed soiled clothes into it. ‘The Good Fairy’ will take it from there.”
There is no way I am parting with my Erma sign!
