To Hell With Jeannie...I Dream of Crate & Barrel

My house has become this giant repository for an unbelievable amount of crap. Far more crap than any two people should reasonably be allowed to accumulate in a mere 12 years (yes…Nick and I have been together for 12 years, given an few short lived breakups, this is an entirely different story altogether). Something has got to be done, because it’s driving me more than a little bonkers. That we have so much stuff…not that we’ve been together for 12 years, although there are days that that drives me a little bonkers as well. No, I’m not being a pissy little bitch, I’m fully aware of the fact that it probably drives Nick a little batty as well. Hell…after all, he’s the one that has to live with the whirlwind of crazy that is me.

The problem is twofold. One… Nick is a total packrat who will freak out if I throw away the essay he wrote for an art history course in college when he was 18 or so. Even though the last time he actually looked at it was when we were packing up our apartment last March to move into our new house. Yes, he actually packed and moved that essay rather than throwing the damn thing out.

The second problem? Well, that would be my shoes, and my clothes, and completely unreasonable amounts of bath, hair and makeup products that I absolutely cannot live without. I do, however, feel that the first problem is more of an issue than the second problem. The first problem makes me trip over plastic replicas of Yoda or a jigsaw puzzle someone gave Nick on his 8th birthday (oddly enough, this is fairly likely to have Yoda on it as well). The second problem? Well…that just makes me pretty, so we’re all going to have to find a way (albeit a more organized way) to live with it.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. It’s not like there is all this stuff all over the place and you have to move books and old magazines in order to be able to sit down on the couch and you’re afraid to use the restroom because it’s filthy, that’s not the case at all. You won’t find moldy glasses lying about or wonder what that strange and disgusting smell is upon entering the house. My house is really very clean; it just has too damn much stuff in it.

Personally, I can’t stand it anymore. I really hate disorganization and I really hate clutter, but how do you go about getting rid of said clutter without it resulting in a huge fight with the above mentioned packrat husband? I can only come up with two options and neither of those sounds very appealing to me.

Option One: Bargaining. I’m imagining the conversations will go something like this:

“I’ll throw out the boots I haven’t worn in over four years if you throw out the 12 plastic E.T. figures”. Or perhaps “I’ll trade you two half empty bottles of lotion that make you sneeze every time you smell them for the Information Society t-shirt you wore exactly once in 1992”.

The problem with Option One? It will take somewhere in the neighborhood of 8.73 years for us to actually get past the bargaining and start getting rid of some of this shit.

Option Two: Randomly throw stuff out in small increments that will not be immediately noticed and feign ignorance when Nick asks what happened to his “Class of 1989” coffee mug. I think we all know that while this sounds like a good idea…no good can come of this and I’m better off just throwing a tantrum until we reach some sort of mutual understanding. Again…that will probably take approximately 8.73 years until we actually get around to throwing stuff out.

I’m tired of looking around and seeing completely useless crap. I want neat, I want orderly, I want canvas covered containers on my bookshelves that nicely conceal the crap. I want all my picture frames to match. I want cushions on my couch that are not occasionally substituted as puppy toys. I want soft lighting and Crate & Barrel and to FINALLY get around to painting my bathroom.

At this point I’ll settle for not seeing anything StarWars related displayed in public.

Sigh.