juggling stuff
How much is too much?
back home

Imagine a student house with 5 bedrooms but with only 2 people living there. Now imagine these two people are jugglers and they have a Juggling Room, the biggest room in the house, full of juggling stuff to throw about whenever they want to, with a sound system, and nothing breakable.

But then imagine that to cut down on the expense of only 2 people sharing 5 people's rent they invite another juggler to live with them and he moves into the juggling room for his bedroom.

Imagine that all the equipment that used to be in the juggling room has to find a new place to be stored, like in the bedrooms, the office, the kitchen, the lounge or even the bathroom. Where does it all go? Lets take a small tour....

If, when entering the house, you look behind the door you'll probably find at least one bag full of juggling stuff, ready to be picked up at a moment's notice and taken juggling. This is my bag containing 7 renegades and 28 barnesy bags. I carry it most times when I go out anywhere, to work, to the shops...

Turn left down the hall and you find the old juggling room, now Matt's bedroom. Much of his stuff is kept in these big buckets but elsewhere you can find his other clubs, plastic sharks and barbie dolls for when he performs, and a free standing ladder.

Next on the left is the office, a room where various computers are kept. This room is good only for soft equipment use and storage, so here are a stack of 3 hats. Under other desks are kept another top hat and 3 nils poll manipulator bowlers.

Where will a collection of diabolos feel most at home? Why, the kitchen, of course. Elsewhere in the kitchen can be found our specially stolen trays for spinning on fingers and a box of juggling balls under the sink.

Directly up the stairs is the bathroom. Between the 3 surfboards and the table is just enough space for an ugly juggling company mountian unicycle.

Looking along the hall you can spot one pashley unicycle hanging from a wardrobe. Inside that wardrobe, besides a dismantled pinball machine, is a box containing 6 old juggling clubs, 5 plungers, 6 tennis raquets and one home made non-spinning juggling club™. Opposite is a stack of videos, many of them juggling related.

The sitting room is usually the most tidy room in the house, mainly because we hardly ever go in there and watch tv, partly because it is normally the non-juggling room. On the other hand, since I got my new set of renegade clubs my fatheads have been without a home, so I put them in this room until I mend them. Then they will be packed away in a cupbaord somewhere.

This is where I keep all my juggling rings, the top compartment of one of my cupboards. On top, below and beside this same cupboard you could also probably find a rola bola, a modified beachball, a basket ball, a ball for bouncing on my head, 7 huge tennis balls, 5 exerballs, 5 chain maile "bags", tennisball and can stuff, plus assorted knives and sticks and cases and toys for when I perform. I even use some of this sometimes.

Ewan is the most creative when it comes to storing his juggling stuff, as the photos above show. What you don't see is the stacks of other clubs and devilsticks, the bag of unused balls and beanbags or the 2 snakeboards. Or the jitter ring and astrojax.

Last but not least, where is the best place to keep a set of convention specials that you never use but can't bring yourself to throw away? You guessed it.

So that is the tour of our house and where some of our juggling stuff is kept. By no means is this all we own. And believe it or not, neither is this:

Since that photo was taken we have aquired another order from renegade and 3 orders from butterfingers. It was quite fun getting everything we had in the house together in the same room, then not being able to make it to the door to get out.

I'll leave you with another of Ewan's "artistic" creations:

© 2002 Luke Burrage