A Purple Bin

I was the first person in my household to go away to college, so when we were packing for me to leave home, my mom and I diligently purchased everything the school sent us about what I would need. I rented a microwave/minifridge combo, got the extra long sheets, a set of towels, shower caddy, flip flops, an umbrella, and an extension cord, but despite our best efforts to do everything right, there were things we missed.

So it was with this that I found myself in a local Walmart* with a list of things I still needed about two weeks into my freshman year and about $200 in my bank account that had to last until I figured out  a job. One of the things I decided I needed was a larger wastebasket. The wastebaskets in our rooms were the size of a box of cereal and I was struggling with the idea that I would be taking out trash every time I left the room. So I bought a purple kitchen wastebasket.

And I moved that wastebasket into my first apartment post-college, all the way to Minnesota for grad school through five apartments. When Dr. BB and I moved in together, we used it as our kitchen garbage. When we moved to Wisconsin, it came with us. Along the way, a slight hole developed in the bottom, but it still did its job. 

(I think this goes without saying, but I'm going to say it. This stupid trash can represented my fledging independence in college. It represented to me, in a very small way, that I could be trusted to make decisions and that those decisions could be positive. After all, this thing I bought lasted for more than twenty years because I bought something that was quality and I took care of it. It represented that I was a functioning adult.)

When we moved into our house almost five years ago, the purple bin was demoted to our recycling bin and we bought a slightly larger kitchen bin. But Dr. BB took the recycling out a couple of days ago and he banged the purple bin on our outdoors bin and a crack developed. (NOTE: Fragile plastic should not be banged against very durable plastic when it is below zero.) And then the crack met the hole in the bottom and the bin basically stopped any semblance of "containing" things.

I bought a new bin - it's white and boring and sits right next to the kitchen garbage can as if it has always been there.

But I'm not going to lie. When I saw the old bin in the outside trash, I felt a teeny bit emotional. 

What household item are you oddly attached to?  Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels sad when mere things have outlived their usefulness.

*At the time, the town where I went to college had only a Kmart and Walmart. This was well before I was anti-Walton family, so I went there. I was young. I haven't spent any money there in a very long time.