the new old thing.

I sit on the floor with a roll of paper towels, a squirt bottle of off-brand window cleaner, and a paperclip. It is a Saturday afternoon, and I have come home from a morning of yard sales. I am sweaty and dirty because I just spent a few hours pawing through unwanted items in the heat. I am wearing yesterday's clothes, pulled off of my bedroom floor at 8 AM. My attention is focused on something I acquired that very morning. I am performing the ritualistic cleaning of The New Old Thing.

I apply a few generous squirts of window cleaner to The New Old Thing and begin wiping off the traces of the previous owner. Some of the stains won't come off, but the improvement is noticeable. I use the paperclip for detail work as I poke into tight spaces to get out accumulated grossness. I find that using a curved edge works better than an extended pointy end and doesn't leave scratch marks. I unscrew parts to examine them for completeness and clean them individually. I turn The New Thing upside down so as to get to some of the harder angles. Looking at this thing right-side up, you'd never even notice those dirty spots, but I am determined to be thorough.

I am welcoming The New Old Thing to my life. It used to live somewhere else, and it gave many great years of service to another. The previous owner never gave it such a scrubbing as it was receiving today. And then it was discarded, maybe reluctantly, but discarded nonetheless. It sat in the hot Saturday sunshine on a table next to other discarded things. Then I saw it, wanted it, haggled over it, bought it, and brought it home to start anew.

I know that I am never again going to clean it like this ever again. If it happened to be on the receiving end of a nasty spill, I might give it a quick wipe-down, but nothing involving disassembly or a paperclip. I bought The New Old Thing so that it could be useful to me, and it doesn't require spotlessness to do that. I already know it well enough to know that it doesn't mind being dirty, so long as it can still get the job done.

This is part of the resurrection of The New Old Thing. The first part was my buying it out of someone's trash pile. Now I'm cleaning it up to give it a fresh start. I'm getting to know it, figure out how the parts go together, what works flawlessly, what squeaks while working flawlessly. I have sat on the floor with many New Old Things, cleaning and restoring them to welcome them into my collection of New Old Things. Sometimes I tighten screws or touch up paint with colored markers.

It's the same feeling as taking a New New Thing out of its box and reading the instructions, popping the bubble wrap, reveling in the ownership of a New Thing. But in this case, we are giving an Old Thing a second chance to be New. And couldn't we all use a second chance once in a while?