My husband’s company has been growing so rapidly, that they’re running out of room in the office. Since Bill is rarely ever actually in the office—he’s usually working from his laptop at the various locations he manages—he has to give up his office. He’s still going to need a place to work occasionally, and a place to store files, so we’ve been cleaning out our office at home.
When we were sorting through it this weekend, wading through books and boxes and stacks of crap, I was convinced there were hidden cameras though the house and we were being filmed for the new A&E reality series called Horders. It’s like “Intervention” for pack rats. Instead of drug addictions, we jones for our stuff.
For the most part, our house is pretty clean. The dog is shedding like crazy, leaving puppy-size hairballs everywhere—but our house isn’t what you’d consider dirty.
However, we have so much junk in our house that it gets a little overwhelming. It’s not so out of control that it leaves us with only one path through the house, but we have a lot of knick-knacks, do-dads and whatnot that we just don’t need to display all at once.
When we moved in together, we merged two full apartments worth of furniture, clothes and appliances. It was a lot of stuff to squeeze into an apartment. Before we got married we moved from the apartment to a 2,700 square foot house with a half acre of land behind it. Our stuff fit. In fact, we didn’t seem to have enough stuff to fill the space. But a couple of months after we got married we bought a house that was only about 1,650 square feet. It’s the perfect size for the two of us, but we had a hard time cramming in our crap. Gradually, we figured out what we wanted to keep, what we needed and what fit. Everything else we gave away and donated to Good Will.
Right about that time, Bill’s parents started giving us bags and boxes of things every time we saw them. These were things they thought we’d need—32 containers of dental floss—and things they wanted us to have from their house (full sets of china)—just in case. Bill’s mom was never able to part with a single piece of paper (you never know when you’ll need that phone number), and to some degree Bill has inherited that. He pays most of his bills online, but we still get an obscene amount of mail. I try to stay on top of mine, but there’s stack on the dining room table, so tall it threatens to eat the kitchen. Bill never looks at his. If he does, he opens it, reads it, folds it back up, and places it on top of the envelope it came in. And there it stays. And stays.
We argue about his piles of mail. He’ll put it aside and swear he’s going to shred it soon. And then another pile builds and threatens to take over the dining room. Then he sweeps it all into some place—usually the office at home—where it sits. We have about 10 of these piles stashed everywhere. It’s like contraband.
Add this to my insane collections of stuff. I have collected just about every single Bearista Bear Starbucks has ever produced. I started collecting them in the late 1990s, when they were on Bearista Bear #10 and I will still grab one every time I see them. I have even sent friends in other parts of the country on missions to track down regional bears. I used to display them in my office at my old job, but now they’re all in massive Rubbermaid bins in the attic. All 60 or so of them.
Da Bears
On top of that, neither one of us have ever thrown out a birthday card, anniversary card, letter or postcard. And I have never been able to part with a book.
I still have my Norton Anthology of Shakespeare and Norton’s Chaucer from college. Bill has them too. I also have every book I had to read in college. Some are cherished. Some of there because I never really did read them but I hope to one day. Every trashy novel (not those bodice-ripping Harlequins, although I used to love Kathleen Woodiwiss) by Jackie Collins and Olivia Goldsmith is stored lovingly on my sagging shelves. Every crime thriller (Michael Connelly, Patricia Cornwell, John Grisham) is packed so tight I can’t jam another one on the shelf. My beloved chick lit (Jennifer Lancaster, Jane Green, Emily Giffin) is lined up neatly in all their pastel-covered book jacket beauty.
But there’s no more room. The bookcases are on overload, the closets are bursting, and we can no longer cram all that other stuff we have no idea what to do with into the corners.
So yesterday we got brutal. We went through the office ruthlessly tossing old mail, junk, papers, newspaper articles, warranties to appliances we no longer own, and other random crap that has no purpose.
Then I sorted through the bookshelves in the office and the ones off the family room. I pulled out piles of books that I know I will never read, books that I kept because I wanted people to think someone read them (C’mon, like you don’t do that) and novels that I read, hated and will never look at again. We even got rid of one our our Shakespeare anthologies. I stacked them all neatly, lovingly, by size and genre. Then I packed them up to be donated, hoping they find good homes.
And then I cried.
But I have to say, the house looks so much better, more organized. Cleaner.
There’s more to do. I’ve slowly been tackling my dresser and closet. I donated three garbage bags full of clothes, and I’m sure I can purge more. I sorted through one of the closets down the hall and I need to go through the one in the guest bedroom. It’s stuffed with old pillows, blankets, a computer that hasn’t worked in 10 years, old suits that my husband will never wear, picture frames and god only knows what else.
It’s embarrassing for so many reasons.
But we’re thinning things out, paring down and purging.
Because if we don’t? You’ll see us on Hoarders next season, buried under our own junk.
