The Old Lawn Chairs

I usually spend most of my lunch break sitting in the windowsill of the lunch room at work. As such, most people probably believe I am part cat. On the contrary, I believe I am actually part rodent—packrat to be precise. Maybe not anywhere near as bad as those people you might see on reality TV shows, but I still have trouble throwing away something that might have some value in the future or could be repairable. Or in some cases I know it has no value, but I just never get around to throwing it out.

Case in point: I have a pair of lawn chairs that I bought about 7 or 8 years ago I think, which I purchased for the purpose of being patio furniture. The problem is that after years of sitting on an un-shaded west-facing patio they got a lot of sun. This caused two problems. First, the color of the fabric faded. But secondly, and more importantly, the constant sunlight started degrading the fabric, making it much weaker. My brother and I learned that the hard way, when we discovered that they could no longer support our weight without tearing.

I think that was around three years ago, maybe even longer. And until a few weekends ago, they were still sitting on my patio, just that they were folded up against the wall in the far corner. I usually completely forgot that they were even out there, and when I did see them I'd think that I should finally get around to disposing of them but always got distracted and never ended up doing so.

That all changed a few weekends ago, when I got inspired to finally sweep and mop up my patio (I contemplated using my Roomba, but had visions of the edge detection sensors failing and watching it fall 30-or-so feet to its death). Because I needed to get everything off the patio to effectively clean it, I knew it was finally time to dispose of them. They didn't get very far though. Since then, they've been sitting by my door, waiting for me to take them the rest of the way.

The problem is that I started getting thoughts about whether or not they could be repaired. All they needed was new seat fabric, after all. The metal frames were in perfect condition. But when I actually thought about it more, I realized that with the amount I'd be spending on buying the supplies I'd need plus the time required to do so (not to mention that I don't even know how I'd go about making new seats!) it would end up being cheaper just to buy brand new lawn chairs.

So, after all those years of just sitting there, it's time to finally throw them out. Not tonight, though. I'll do it tomorrow.