Today was the big post-Christmas clean-out. A gazillion empty boxes, wrapping paper, mangled Christmas crafts shaking glitter everywhere. Piles of broken toys headed for the dump, piles of unused toys headed for charity. An obscene mound of new stuff on the dining room table.
This could be a column about materialism and waste in the American Culture. Perhaps it should be. But we all know about that, and it’s as disgusting to me as it is to anyone.
No, this is a column on throwing things out. Because if you’ve watched enough episodes of Hoarders on A&E, you know: unmanaged and unmitigated clutter leads to negative psychological consequences. So if mental catastrophe is the result of hoarding, then the inverse would be true, right? Throwing things out should be ecstatic?
In my husband’s case, yes.
We started slow with the basic trash. Wrapping paper. I watched him hoist the bag of crumpled foil, feel the heft of it. I knew what he was thinking – ten pounds of matter that will no longer sit in our house. I could see the equations on mass, the volume measurements, sketched out in chalk graphics by his head. I think I even saw a formula about displaced oxygen flash by. His lungs expanded. He began to breathe easier.
We moved on to more complicated trash. I began eliminating boxes as I found new homes for bathtime babies, Zhu Zhu Pets, a remote control car. Erin waged the internal war he always does at these moments, battling his two main desires: the one that likes to throw things out, and the one that likes to keep all the Original Packaging.
Original Packaging is a big deal to men in his family. They’ve retained the Original Packaging to items they don’t even own anymore. Dozens of unmarred boxes sit in our attic, awaiting the day they can come down the ladder and serve their noble purpose. So we had a tense moment, particularly when I decided to trash the crisp, pristine boxes that had moments before held two new Nintendo DSi thingamajigs. He quaked a little. I waved the boxes over the bag, taunting him. He paled. Finally, I made peace. I promised to keep the operating manuals and registration cards. We moved on.
Erin was in his element now, his eyes glittering and his breath coming quickly. He reorganized two bedroom closets and a mammoth toy basket in five minutes flat.
And then I got nervous. He cast his calculating eye on my stacks of Christmas cards.
“No, I keep those. No touching.”
“Come on. You read them already. What are you going to do with used Christmas cards in five years?”
I stared him down. “DO NOT THROW OUT MY CHRISTMAS CARDS.”
He sighed and turned his attention to my glass of iced tea.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned. “I just poured this.”
“You’re almost done with it. It’s just ice. Let me dump it and start the washer.” Because even dirt and baked on food takes up air space, I suppose.
It really did get crazy from there. I had to physically throw my body across the two crib mattresses we no longer need since we moved the girls into bunk beds last week. “No!” I yelled frantically. “My babies slept on these!”
“We don’t NEED them.”
“But their ten year warranties are still good!” I shrieked.
Did I mention that I’m the one obstacle between Erin and a clutter-free life? I may not bother with Original Packaging, but I’m hanging on to my dad’s thirty-year-old orange hoodie that stinks, just because he wore it in all my earliest memories of him. And the hoodie comes to mind quickly because Erin just pulled it out of the closet, holding it in his fingertips like a dead mouse, saying “Are you serious?”
We compromised on the mattresses by shoving them into the attic, along with a dresser, some ride-on toys, and quite possibly the cat.
He stepped back and surveyed the house. We could see the floor in the closets. The kitchen bar shone, laid bare of its piles and stacks. The dining room table no longer sagged. And Erin?
He was beatific. And he was vacuuming.
Now if I could just find the cat.
*On a side note, I wanted an image of trash bags for this post. So I Googled them, found them, AND uncovered some wicked cool pictures of slinky dresses made out of trash bags. I’m thinking Erin would totally dig me in a trash bag dress.
The Myopic Life 