I hate housework. I was lying on the bed waiting for the dryer to stop. Laundry is usually my starting point for cleaning on the weekend. Oh, I was so terribly tempted to do my favorite pastime. It is a terrible pastime of mine; that is, to just go away from the annoying disciplines of everyday life by drifting into dreamland and taking a long midmorning nap! Then I looked at my dresser and there was my sewing box. I hadn't cleaned it out in several years. My sister-in-law, Melissa, had gotten all of the married women in our family this for Christmas about ten years ago. It was the best pretty yet practical gift I'd ever gotten at a family Christmas party. It really needed cleaned. I'm sure all of my children had rummaged through it with their curiosity piqued. The biggest evidence that this occurred was a stringy tangled wad of thread, ribbon, trim, stringed beads and lace. As I began my task of cleaning my blue sewing box I really didn't mind the tedious process it would take of reorganizing it. I began to realize this wasn't mostly a pile of trash but it was mainly a treasure chest full of memories.

My little blue cloth sewing kit used to have more accessories but they somehow vanished. It had a clear plastic top part with little compartments to organize your small sewing accessories. Now that was long gone. I used to have some big blue scissors but one of the hand grips broke off. Rachelle, my sister-in-law still has her's. I saw them at her house a few months ago. It used to have a blue seam ripper but its been long gone for awhile and I replaced it with two others. I consider seam rippers a "hot item" to my children especially my three boys. I even had an extra red tomato pin holder that I have kept since high school home economics class. I found two of those neat little needle threaders too. I've always wondered why there is the profile of a person's head on the part your grip. All these items have served me well throughout the years of my family life. But the biggest treasured memories were in the waded mess I had to reorganize.

When I began my tedious unwadding many things caught my eye. I found several small cardboard holders of cross stitch thread. I used to do that a lot before my children were born. I did it when I would watch my five year old nephew, Matt, during a summer while I was pregnant with my first baby. Buttons, I had a baby food jar full of them. I like buttons because you can easily make a shirt a whole lot nicer by simply putting fancier buttons on it. I even found a big purple button that was on a long extremely warm purple down coat I had bought during my senior year of high school. I found the old rusted skeleton key that goes to the old traveling chest that my dad got from one of his customers who needed to get rid of some junk. I found a row of the embroidered white flowers with yellow centers that I put on Ginny's dress and hat last year so they would match for Easter. There were two big gold jingle bells I had used a few years back to make my young children red jingle bell necklaces for Christmas that soon fell apart. I was able to reclaim some of them, hoping to remake them sometime. From the "wad" I gathered an old memory from when Danny and I were first married when we stayed with my parents. It was a strip of white cotton eyelet lace. I had used this along with other pretty delicate decorations to make barrettes. I found an old belt loop from some Levi's. When I made Ginny's jean purse I thought I might need it as an added decoration. There was even a Bible verse written on a folded index card. It was part of a passage from a Psalm that was beautifully written describing how much richness of truth is contained within the word of God. The tenth verse of that passage said, "more to be desired are they [words given to us by God] than gold, yea, than much fine gold:" Finally, I found one last article of interest it was a blue tassel. The tassel I would use to open my blue sewing box. I do believe it was my youngest son while in my presence decided to use my sewing scissors to remove this unnecessary decoration from the exterior of my flowery blue cloth box thus causing it to become a memory "treasure" kept within.

My time filler of cleaning out my sewing kit wasn't a chore after all. I really didn't mind. And when I look in it next time I won't have to think like in the past "Oh, I need to clean that out." I'll immediately think that looks so much better and then I won't have to search through the "wad" to find what I need. Besides the best thing of all happened I uncovered and then thought about sweet memories that are now imprinted in history forever never to be relived.