Homemade Apple Sauce, or, How Unbucket Got Its Name

Well, this was an inevitable blog post.

Joe Queenan wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend entitled, “Boring Bucket Lists Are Nothing to Die For.”

His main point is delivered around the fifth paragraph:

“A bucket list is not some cute, ironic prop for a dubious midlife crisis. A bucket list has the scent of the graveyard about it. Moreover, to possess the moral authority to compile a bona fide bucket list, you need to be as decrepit as Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, the ornery old coots who bust out of the cancer ward in “The Bucket List,” the Rob Reiner film that started the bucket list craze. A bucket list isn’t some namby-pamby Little Things I Gotta Do List, like picking up a quart of milk or calling your mother or buying tickets to see Gretchen Wilson. A proper bucket list is Grim Reaper material.”

We get the question a lot, “Why Unbucket? Is that like, a bucket list?”

This might surprise you, but our response is usually, “No, quite the opposite. That’s why we called it ‘Unbucket.’”

We find the fixation on doing things for the sake of doing things before one dies morbid and misguided. Life should be lived now, today, and in the company of others while one is still living.

That’s what Unbucket is all about.

Queenan writes, “And sorry, nothing personal, but a bucket list should aim a bit higher than seeing Jane’s Addiction in Dallas…”

Well, not so. While we loving seeing lists on Unbucket full of the most adventurous things you can imagine, we’re just as happy when we see the completely achievable and generally unexciting find their way on to an Unbucket list too. We created Unbucket because we fundamentally believe that it doesn’t matter whether you aim high or aim low, as long as it’s with those you care about.

Only yesterday, someone added, “Make my mother make her apple sauce.” A mother and daughter bonding over homemade apple sauce is the fabric of a good life, and we created Unbucket to help millions thread a needle through that fabric over a long and joyous lifetime lived.

So we challenge you: make the most out of everything you do – big and small – and just make sure you’re enjoying it with those you care about most.

Photo credit: sweetbeetandgreenbean

P.S. This is a good place to credit our Mom, Debra Darvick, for actually suggesting the name Unbucket!