The details seem to be the thing that most people gloss over. The minor, irritating details involved in any endeavor. Right now I feel buried in junk drawers, bathroom drawers filled with the miscellaneous items that we unknowingly have accumulated throughout the years, and the boxes of receipts and paper stuff that seem to keep having babies. I didn’t know what to do with most of this stuff to begin with, much less now.
For example, lanyards… how in the world I ended up with roughly thirteen of them is beyond the scope of my imagination. It’s such a random thing to have, much less thirteen of them. Balloon weights are another item that seems to have held much significance. I have about 18 in various forms…wrapped ones, Mickey ones, smiley face ones….you name it, I probably have it. In fact, just recently my daughter clobbered my son in the head with one of these icons of importance that she happened to find. He claims it was like getting clubbed in the head with a chunk of concrete, and he was bleeding proficiently enough to back up that claim. I’m glad we chucked that one in the trash right after that incident, otherwise I’d have to fess up to having nineteen balloon weights. Who knew I had so many of these dangerous weapons! These are the moments I really want my husband to take over, but his scorched earth policy to the minutia like this worries me too much to let him. He would just dump the whole drawer into the trash, which currently sounds pretty appealing, but I can’t tell him that.
Which is exactly why, even when I am sitting here frustrated and vowing never to hang to one more item in my future without having a specific need for it, I am still feeling guilty over just tossing it. I hate the idea of just throwing away perfectly good items. I’m not a huge fan of Goodwill per se, but the convenience and the lack of judgement I receive when I pull up and drop off garbage bags of stuff is pretty nice. Plus it really helps me to feel like I’m making progress, which is a pretty important motivator right now.
Now mind you, I don’t want to give the idea that my house is cluttered or messy. By most standards I would feel fairly safe in asserting that my house is general tidy and inviting. I try to bridge that balance of having a livable, yet as close to model home as I can get… at least to the best of my ability while having two small children and messy husband. (Yes honey, you are messy. I’m not even going to argue about it). I’m normally really good at organizing and storing things in creative ways that help maintain the idea that the house can breathe and we can breathe while living in it. All such illusion is now gone as the walls are lined with boxes and things I’m not quite sure what to do with. I want to cry every time I pull into the three car garage, which now barely has room for one car. Personally it is getting difficult for me to breathe in the midst of all this.
I’m not alone in bearing the blame for this mess either. It hasn’t helped that we both have a tendency towards being preppers. We are pseudo-preppers, not really fully committed, but just enough to own 12 boxes of refried beans from Costco. My husband has been known to bring home copious amounts of 4 bean canned salad in the past, because he thought it could be good in an emergency. I can’t think of any emergency that would require such extremes, but he evidently could. Thank goodness I made him eat it, since he seemed to think it was such a good idea, otherwise I’d have to be worried about what to do with 4 bean canned salad! As it is, I’m a little concerned about how to store 12 boxes of said refried beans at the Condo, much less all the other boxes and bags of food. At least we’ve gone through most of the alcohol. Nothing like stress to help you clear out your liquor cabinet!
