A Thousand Lives in a Single Room

April 10, 2025

Writer: Ana R. Zarate

Editor: Kate Winston

Around a month ago, I visited the Austin Creative Reuse Center with a friend, hoping to find craft supplies and paintbrushes. I didn’t expect to find rows upon rows of boxes filled to the brim with trinkets, scraps of fabric, coins, records, postcards, and photographs. Tea sets lined up on shelves, wiped clean of their previous lipstick stains or fingertip smudges, waiting for new hands to hold them. 

Standing in the midst of it all, I began remembering the childhood friends I only think of when my mind has grown tired of worrying about the present, the family members I have not seen in so long I can only guess their last names. How many pictures, videos, and memories do we have together that I have no recollection of? All those letters and birthday cards signed in a handwriting my hands no longer know, addressed to people I no longer talk to. 

I flipped through the pages of family albums, and went through a big stack of postcards written in multicolored ink. It was strange to feel their warmth despite not being the recipient. That we are able to relate to a stranger by words or pictures alone, the same way we cry over a movie or book. There is something beautiful and genuine in connecting with someone simply because we share the experience of being human, of loving or missing someone.

And it is not materialistic to keep these objects as we often think. A worn book with annotations in the margin, a record with scratches from being played too many times, or a doll missing an arm. A postcard written as soon as you get off from a flight to the other side of the world because someone crossed your mind—“Dear Mary, we arrived in Brussels and the weather is lovely…” —. Scrolls of negatives waiting to be discovered and brought to light like a distant memory suddenly remembered. Belongings tell the story of the owner even after their passing, they are evidence of the people we love and the mementos we leave behind.

So if you’re ever feeling nostalgic, curious, or simply bored, consider visiting the Austin Reuse Center. Perhaps you’ll walk out empty handed, but full with experience, or with a piece of someone else’s story to give a new use to.