The Tin Can Story

Have you every been in a situation where you had very little at the moment but you knew that in the near future you would have plenty so for the time being you just had to get-by? That is the premise of the Tin Can story.

When I first moved to Vancity I brought very little with me.  I didn’t need much.  I was living with my brother is his great little one bedroom apartment on Main St and he had everything we needed, and could fit into his place.  Plus we lived near everything I needed.  Then after I moved out in the Summer I knew that I would just have to get-by until Christmas, my next trip home, where all my stuff was presently being stored.  Why spend the travel expenses twice!?

So I settled into my three bedroom basement.  All tenants just moved out so I had the place to myself, which was great because I got first choice of rooms and future roommates, but it also meant that I had a LOT of open spaces.  My place was bare.  At about week three I noticed that my diet had gone sour when I could hardly work out in the gym more 20 minutes for lack of energy.  I wasn’t eating out so much as I was just eating a lot of artificial and processes foods.  I needed to cook!

Some of my favorite dishes required a pot or at least a pan, both of which were up in my storage in Quesnel, so I was in a bit of a pickle.  However, one night I was chopping up a number of veggies to put into plastic bags to eat throughout the week and when I was putting the scraps into the garbage can under the sink I noticed a large tin can; yes, ‘The’ tin can.  I remembered setting it aside to recycle later that week.  And I had an idea.  I picked out that can from the rubble of recyclables and decided to instead ‘re-use’ this item.  It was bigger than most Cambell soup cans, three times the size I’d say, and after I peeled the paper label off it I wondered to myself if I would be able to boil water in it?

And indeed I could.  Instead of bread everyday I would enjoy Pasta for carbs.  Replacing a some of the tuna I ate for protein I substituted boiled eggs.  This tin can saved my diet.  I never appreciated the joy having a cup of herbal tea to settle my nerves at the end of the day quite so much.  This tin can motivated me.  I started to look around the kitchen for other items that I could cook with! Ha!  And I found something!  In the stove tray beneath the over I found an old, very small (about  a third the size), cooking sheet.  I used the tin can to boil up some water and let it soak for about an hour in soapy water before I tackled it with a scrub brush.  I used it to make Eggs, fry Beef and Chicken, and with a little butter even make Toast (ok the latter was a little gross)!

This tin can serves as a constant reminder to me what great things can come from such a small, seemingly irrelevant, thing.  I use it now to store my scrub brush in at my sink.  I use it everyday. I drop some soap it in and fill it up with hot tap water to use to scrub my dishes with.  Not only did is serve many purposes for me in the past and has a practical function today, it also led me to that cooking sheet which drastically increased my diet options.  The Tin Can Story.  A solution, a catalyst, a reminder.