Pocket Treasures & The Machine

I don't know how it manages to continue to work week after week. It's not industrial strength. It's 10 years old. Somehow, each week it manages to survive and thrive through all the abuse and filth thrown at it. This monster usually just eats things like this, but today, the Machine Monster must not have appreciated the love offerings from my children.

Yes, people, I'm talking about my beloved washing machine. I tell the kids to empty their pockets before they put their clothes in their laundry baskets, but it just isn't enough. I don't have time to go through each individual pocket (because there are about 50 of them total in each load of jeans). So, my poor washer ends up having to empty the pockets for me. Here are the spoils of war from this week:


Clockwise from the fish: A Rainbow Fish broach pin, a glass bead, some chenille pipe cleaner concoction (who knows what it looked like prior to the washing), a broken rubber bracelet, some random piece of something (plaster, maybe drywall?), a mulch wood chip from a flower bed (probably from school), and a flower charm from a bracelet (the bracelet is nowhere to be found).

Oh, and let's not forget Mr. Dryer. He ended up with a few treasures of his own. The picture below shows a rock, a piece of recycled tire mulch, and a penny from the dryer.

These made horrible noises, but I thought it was just because I had a load of jeans in there. I honestly thought all that banging around was the metal buttons from the jeans, but then I realized that my kids don't have jeans with the grown-up metal buttons; they have the snap closures on their jeans. So, I went to investigate and found all new treasures!

So, let's recap. Just how much could all those pockets secretly hold? Even I'm surprised this go-round:


Remember back to when we were kids and we thought all this stuff was treasure? And we were so shocked when our moms made us throw it away? I'm on the other side of this now and I am so shocked that they think these things are treasures--especially treasures worthy enough to put in their pockets!

I just really hope that my machine lives a few years longer. If my children want to make offerings to the washing machine monster, so be it. It would be even better if it was money next time. Like, a $20 bill--OOH! Or maybe even a $100 bill! Wouldn't that be great? No, probably not. That would just cause me to wonder what the heck my kids are doing on the school playground!