What To Do With All Those Old Reeds? (Part 1)

If you're like me, (and I know I am) you blast through about two boxes of reeds a month. AT LEAST. That's 20 reeds a month, 240 reeds a year.  Whether they sound good or not initially, they're all inevitably bound for the same destination.  I have cleverly named it: The Realm of Complete Uselessness.

Before you send them and their plastic container counterparts to the landfill, consider these friendly options for keeping them around just a little longer...

1. Fill an empty jar that once contained foreign food.

This one is the most obvious, but start throwing all your reeds into a jar and watch them pile up from your elementary music years all the way through high school marching band and beyond!  It serves literally no real purpose other than to have a painful visual reminder of where all your money has gone.  But if you have a somewhat attractive jar, it can actually make a nice piece for your living room decor.  One of my clarinet professors from Michigan State had a GIANT FISHBOWL full of reeds that he kept in his office.  One of my good friends has a reed filled LAMP. Moral of the story: if it's glass, if it's hollow, if you possess it, fill it chock full of reeds.

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2. Make a reed family.

Most of us have played all the auxiliary clarinets, and this is a beautiful thing because now we can draw faces on our reeds and create...
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REED FAMILIES!  See? The two bass clarinet reeds are the two parents (they can be whatever gender you want because they're REEDS) and all the BABIES!  Am I a tad TOO excited about this?  Perhaps...

Here are a few things that Reed Family can do!

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Go on a trip to visit Bach and Beethoven!

Give you a friendly greeting in the morning as you brush your teeth!

A few more reed personalities include:

Hippie reed and High-School-Gothic reed.

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3.  Completely destroy them and set them out as an example to all your new reeds as incentive to work properly.

Call it a reed graveyard. The pictures I have of these are just too grotesque, even for the internet.

That's all I have time for today!  I'm breaking this up into two or more parts because honestly, even for me this is a little too much anti-social behavior for one sitting. 

Be on the lookout for Part 2!  And remember that on average only 2 out of 10 reeds per box will actually work.  Enjoy your weekend.