What to Do with the Medals

Don't worry, this isn't a rant-y post about "always earned never given" or why we should or should not give grown-ass adults participation trophies. Take the medal. Don't take the medal. Wear it. Don't wear it. Put it a trophy case or a trash can or wherever makes your little heart the happiest. (File under: internet arguments I have no energy for.)

Emergy for a snarky gif, though? Always.

Personally, I kind of like medals, but I like them the way I like neat little memorabilia from cool stuff I've done. I don't see them as awards or prizes so much as souvenirs, just a little something to run across from time to time and be, "Oh, right, that time I did x cool event! Good times."

So, anyway. Before we moved I had a men's tie rack on my bedroom wall where I'd used the tie hangers to hang up all my podium medals & the shelf above it for some non-medal awards (which I thought looked reasonably attractive), & the rest were in a shoebox under the bed because I had no idea what else to do with them.

Then when we moved into the new house, I didn't bother putting them up because we were just going to start tearing most of the place down, so then they all went into a shoe box in the unpermitted storage area downstairs.

Now, here's the thing about unpermitted things. Generally 'unpermitted' usually means 'done by someone who is shall we say less than a pro at this' who is maybe not so great at things like 'installing proper drainage' and 'sealing walls and such against moisture,' so one of the key characteristics of the downstairs storage area was a faint whif of mold and/or mildew. Which is why any textiles that went down there were sealed in plastic bags and/or large plastic tupperware.

I didn't really think about this when I threw the medal shoebox down there, but man did I think about it last February when we had to clean the place out before construction started! I opened the box and was promptly punched in the face with a giant whif of wet dog smell. Plus the medals themselves were covered in a thin film of I don't even want to know what. I didn't really have time to do anything about it then, so off they went into another giant tupperware and into storage.

Very soon, though, the construction at our house will be kinda-sorta done-ish, and all of this business will be coming out of storage and back home to live with us again. Of course, the medals will all need to be washed first, which is not a thing I thought I would ever say, and maybe I'll put my same old podium medal display up somewhere. I'm not really sure what to do with the others, though. I definitely want to keep them, but I definitely do NOT have the space or personality for the kind of thing you get when you google "race medal display".

And no, I will not be turning them into Christmas tree ornaments or some other kind of questionable art project. I just want them to have some kind of real place, nothing too public or audacious, but also not the shoe box under my bed.

Internet: Hit me with all your best ideas.