The Paper Parade

The cat is still away but I'm tired of all play. So, I've gone to work on cleaning up and cleaning out. It seems to scare my hubby a little when I call and tell him things like, "guess what, there's room for a guest to put a few items in the guest room closet now" or "hey, we'll be able to use the weight bench in the garage now" because the only way to accomplish such feats is to get rid of some of his stuff.

The thing is, he's a Thing-Keeper (ever heard of a Thing-Finder?). He subscribes to the philosophy that you should keep everything possible in case you need it one day. It might not be so bad, but he inherited tons (literally) of stuff from his father and grandfather, so now our 2,223 ft2 house with 3-car garage is FULL to the brim. Every time my mom comes over she groans at the quantity of stuff and marvels at the fact that even with a three car garage we are unable to access everything.

B actually had me promise, literally, before we got married, to never throw anything of his away without permission. I was a silly naive girl in love and thought it wouldn't bother me. But nevermind that! About a year ago I told him I was formally rescinding that promise- not that I was going to make a clean sweep of his closet, but that I was taking matters into my own hands. Since he couldn't figure out what to keep and what to toss, I was going to make some educated guesses. But from time to time I also tell him that I'm on the verge of flipping out and throwing everything of his away... so you can see why he gets nervous. I suppose the moral of the story for him is that you have expect some collateral damage when you leave your wive alone for a month with your one year old...

Just for fun, and to validate my flip out, I'm going to provide an example: the paper parade. I've taken a quick tally of the file boxes and cabinets we own and would like to report that we have 81 inches of family files (which include all the bank records, the insurance paperwork, the old pay stubs, etc.), 35 inches of computer related stuff (manuals for drivers and such), 35 inches for all my files (church stuff, old school stuff, real estate stuff- BTW, I'm a Realtor), 17 inches of blank paper, labels, and tabs, and (drum roll please) 193 inches of Brian's junk that I can't make heads or tails of. What could be in these files? It's not bank records and pay stubs, so what is it??? I see newspaper, old love letters (at least they're from me), kids drawings (I hope they're his and don't belong to some other family he's got stashed away somewhere), and work stuff. Really, do we have to keep it all?

So, just to summarize, we essentially have a 361 inch high pile of paper- that's over 30 feet folks! It's time to do something drastic.