Toy box

As a kid we had a toy box, I don’t remember where it came from or when we got it. I’m guessing it was there before me. It had weird padded wallpaper around it; not wallpaper but something like that. It was wood and the top opened and had wood slots on the top to hold books or papers. Of course it also had a metal hinge that could probably take off our little fingers, no safety then.

When we moved from our house we brought the toy box with us despite the fact that we no longer played with toys. It maybe held old toys for when we had young visitors or just held stuff, I don’t know. From there it was in an attic or a basement storing sweaters. It was a fairly functional piece. At some point we took the weird wallpaper off and it was just a naked box.

After college I moved into an apartment with friends. I had no money for furniture so I took whatever mismatched crap I could. The toy box came with me, again for storage. A few years later I moved cross country, guess what came with? It fit perfectly in my trunk and held a lot. Again, not having a lot of money for furniture it was a great little storage piece.

Another move cross country and into another apartment it went, my little toy box buddy and I. At some point the top came off as the hinge unhinged and the particle board bottom bottomed out. It still made it as a storage piece, though no longer for clothes. I have painted it, first white and now red. It sat on my porch to collect shoes.

I recently cleaned it, repainted it and now use it in a closet. As I was repainting it and marveling over the journey of it I thought “Wait, is this even the toy box?” “How did our toys fit, it’s so small?”

I don’t know if this stupid thing is my old toy box. I’ve made up this crazy Giving Tree story in my mind and now think that it might be some wood box I picked up somewhere. I’ll still stick to my story of it being my old toy box. Who else has childhood furniture with them?

(The “toy box” is in the background, clearly the dog in her raincoat was my intended subject)