Originally published in Beyond the Nest on March 17, 2022

I wonder how many other families out there have ended up with a cache of clutter courtesy of Amazon and the pandemic?

In the past two years, our family’s clutter factor expanded exponentially. The question is: Now what?!

One of my “favorite” acquisitions is the collection of slide rules my husbanded decided he desperately needed to measure…what? The hours of boredom in a pandemic?

In case you’re wondering about the function of a slide rule, I had only the vaguest notion, so I looked it up. It’s a “mechanical analog computer.” No, not the kind you tap numbers into in order to calculate fuel costs and mileage, budgets, or how many calories you’re over your daily diet allotment. It’s the kind that looks like one ruler embedded in another, where you slide the two parts back and forth to perform mathematical wizardry. If only that wizardry worked to reduce taxes!

Alas, in school, I was born too late for slide rules, and too early for computers. No wonder I was abysmal at math.

Anyway, when I think of slide rules, I think of Katherine Johnson of Hidden Figures fame, computing John Glenn’s trajectory of the Friendship 7 capsule. In truth,  she may have been so brilliant, she didn’t need a slide rule. 

But back to my husband’s collection.  I think we now have enough slide rule power to chart our way to Pluto and back. In the event NASA does not need my husband to navigate to the farthest almost-planet in our our solar system, we could always open a museum.  Hey, if the JELL-O museum in Leroy has had success, maybe one for slide rules could be a hit, especially if we add amusement park rides, vintage rock music and an adjacent home style diner that serves booze in tall glasses, the quantity of which would be measured by slide rules.

In frustration over the burgeoning collection of antiquated measuring tools piling up in a chest in our bedroom, I commented (okay, complained), “There must be $500 worth of slide rules in those drawers!”

He countered: “Oh, I’m sure there’s a lot more than that.” 

I couldn’t help but notice the slightly self-satisfied look on his face.

For lack of a better option, I choose to look on the bright side. If the cost of fuel keeps going up, we now have ample supply of kindling, albeit, valued at only slightly less than what the fuel would cost.

I also have to take satisfaction in knowing that if any scientists ever want to measure the amount of clutter caused by the pandemic, we can provide them with lots of the perfect measuring tools!