Chattel

 

Chattel is a movable article of personal property. Chattel is tangible property other than land, buildings, and other things annexed to land. Chattel is a human being considered to be property; an enslaved person.

I’d never heard this word before this summer.

It sounds like ‘Chattel’ is your ‘stuff’. Chattel is how you decorate your home, purchase for your entertainment, how you dress and clean or take with you when you move.

I used to call this Chattel “stuff”. It was the accumulation you collected over the years. The items you must possess at a certain point that was meaningful to you. The results of years of purchasing that fills all the drawers, closets, attics, garages and piles up on the floor.

Some may call Chattel ‘assets’ for the value of your pile of stuff. If you have purchased Chattel that increased in monetary value to favor your bearing and status then it was worth the price. If your accumulation of Chattel was from Wal-Mart or the Dollar Store is it worth saving?

So through the years you bring home various pieces of trinkets and necessities that fulfill your life, where do you store all of them? Some Chattel is pass-me-downs that were once necessary or desirable items to an ancestor.

If you like tools then you need a shop. If you like cars you need a garage. If you like books you need bookcases.

What maybe a curiosity can become a passion and then an addiction? Think about all the cookbooks that are in your kitchen. Will you ever be able to manufacture all the meals written by those various chefs?

It doesn’t matter for this Chattel is your comfort zone. This stuff makes you happy and is a conversation piece for people who do not or have not seen this collection of previous purchases that define you.

Think about going on vacation. Which pieces of Chattel will you take with you? Pack the car with bulging suitcases and still regret what you are leaving behind.

Do you take the cat or leave it behind?

What about the cows or the chickens or the pigs?

What about the humans?

In the end, your entire Chattel collection left behind can be distributed in a final will and testimony. Tearful family members will dig through the drawers and pockets searching for a secret key to a treasure or a hidden lottery ticket.  Will your Chattel end up in an antiques store or a yard sale? One’s trash is another treasure or just to be added to history?

From now on I will cherish my pots and pans and computers and lamps and socks and combs and scissors for this stuff I take for granted is my Chattel.

 

http://blogs.wgbh.org/innovation-hub/2020/10/30/crap-we-keep-around/