Can a "Throw-it-away-we'll-never-miss-it" kinda gal find long-lasting happiness with a hoarder? I contend that the homefront is MY sphere so I should have more control over its state of being. My husband disagrees. He thinks I should work around his "piles" without so much as thinking about moving or sorting through them. If I were to completely submit, make no mistake, our house would be one giant pile within a week. I can't live with that, so I've spent the last 13 years trying to keep the piles at a minimum with a variety of techniques designed to keep the peace. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
We have an 18 gallon bin labeled "Todd's Ugly Clothes" They are several years old and several sizes too small, but heaven forbid I donate it to the fashion-unconcious, thinner men of the world. Another 18 gallon bin holds old tapes and cd's, most of which feature rock stars/drag queens with questionable sounding song titles. In a day of mp3's, do we really need to keep those?? Two footlockers, 3 desk drawers and at least 2 more 18 gallon bins hold a collection of valueless football and baseball cards on the off-chance that someday we have a son who gets a thrill from gigantic worthless collections. Add to that old textbooks from college, more board games than even a fully-committed geek can play, and rotting, moldy memorabilia, and you get a sense of the issue.
The problem is he wants to keep everything around with a half-committed intention of getting around to dealing with it at an undetermined time in the future. As a result, I'll find mail from 2003 cluttering up my desk. Some things I KNOW he would never miss, never even think of again, but if he knows that I tossed them without his having gone through them first, we would most certainly go through the argument that has become almost ritual in our house:
"What happened to the stuff that was right here?"
"It got cleaned up. What do you need?"
"I need you to stop cleaning it up."
"I can't leave it there forever!"
"Just leave it until I take care of it. Don't touch it if it's not yours."
"There are 6 other people living in this house; we can't live with your piles!"
and so on...
I'm not a neat-nick, and I couldn't be one even if I wanted to with all the opposing forces sharing my turf, but there is a certain level of disorganization that I can comfortably live with and function in. It is my claim that since I have the responsibility of maintaining and running the home, I should make the call on its state of being. I know and love my fair share of keepers, and the state of being in anyone else's house causes me zero anxiety whatsoever. Actually I probably like keepers more than tossers because I think they tend to be the easygoing, non-anal, fun types. Keeper or Tosser, the homemaker should be able to define their space. It's their turf, after all, and they should be able to run it in a way that THEY function best in.
I love my keeper, but don't know if I can live with his piles. At whatever your comfort level is, how do you deal with a partner who counterracts your attempts to live comfortably in your own home? And do you have a truck I can secretly borrow to make a trip to the dump?
The girls were so excited about the impromptu party that they made this sweet powerpoint slideshow for me - and it wasn't even mother's day OR my birthday!
