Jane’s World: #RealityWednesday – What Are All These Keys For?

(Editor’s Note: There are no carefully curated photos or stories in my #RealityWednesday columns – you get the real deal; the good, the bad and the ugly. – JB)

I guess at some point there probably won’t be so many keys in the world. We’re already getting to a point where you can open things digitally or push-button combo or even by scanning your eye like they do in James Bond movies.

But in this household, we’re pretty far away from that world, save for the few British sports cars with push-button starters in the back lot that may or may not ever drive again, much less start.

When I was a kid, my parents had a junk drawer in the kitchen filled with all sorts of little trinkets a farm household might need, including keys to who knows what. We don’t have a kitchen drawer in this household (here’s why), but we do have a set of shelves that serve the same purpose. Anything we can’t find a home for goes there, including the keys in the above photo.

Let’s see … some of those keys are pretty straightforward. We know one is a house key, because it says so right there. And there’s a Volkswagen key (does that say “yes”? what the heck does that mean?) and a Jeep key, likely to cars that were sent to Gene’s Auto Parts for scrap years ago. We currently drive a 1998 Jeep (we prefer to only drive cars from the last century), but the only Volkswagen we own is in a shed providing a great home for a community of mice.

Oh, I do see a Subaru key in the photo. I know that’s current, because we’ve only ever owned one Subie, and it belongs to our daughter (and it’s from this century – yay!). So that’s obviously a spare key (which could come in very handy, based on some of my past experiences – thank you, Northwest Lock).

I’m very curious about that clunky key in the upper right corner, and also that tiny key sort of in the middle. Hmmm … I wonder what those unlock… But the rest of the keys? Who knows?!

Got a junk drawer? A Ball jar full of mystery keys? Share your key stories in the comments below.