Stuff

by tess

Years ago we moved from a large-ish single-story house with 2,600 sf of basement. That space was divided into: a very cold office that could have been used as a spare freezer for eight months a year, a "storage area" (defined by Mr. & Mrs. Packrat as "noun; Excuse to throw away absolutely nothing for years on end"), and a tool room/boat-building area.

Then we moved to Florida. You know, the place that doesn't have basements. So most of our assorted junk went into storage (which is sort of like the witness protection program for belongings, if you think about it). Then we got too cheap to pay the monthly storage fees. Rather than discarding any of the aforementioned crap, we bought shelves and forced it all into our vehicle-free two-car garage.

Now we keep a vat of Vaseline by the door that leads to the garage so that we can liberally slather ourselves before slithering sideways through the booby-trapped garage. One small step to the left or right will set off an avalanche of winter boots, cooking paraphernalia, scuba gear, archaic files, socket sets, and gardening gloves. Mowing the lawn each week requires a small army of gnomes to remove, re-stack, then restore the tubs of clothes, boxes of paperwork, and bags of gear fitting in and around the mower, whacker, edger, and blower.

And this is how we've lived for six years. An epiphany arrived last week in the form of Mike the Moving Estimator. He asked to see the garage, a space we had apparently forgotten existed. The Hubs and I glanced to the left, then the right, high atop the piles, and deep into their recesses. Then looked at one another and agreed, "Nope, this is all junk." And in that moment we recognized the enormity of our problem. With no shortage of belongings, we have apparently binged. And so begins the inevitable purge.

Aside from the ubiquitous collections of broken luggage, dead computers, mildewed books, pegged jeans, damaged furniture, and expired canned goods, our archaeological dig rendered a few artifacts of interest:
*Repair receipts for cars we haven't owned in a decade
*Drafts of college application essays
*Hundreds of pink plastic hangers
*An obscenely tarnished silver baby cup that once belonged to The Hubs
*Resumes dating back to Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch
*Billions of silverfish
*A loaded spearfishing gun
*Thermal paper that was at one time an important fax but is now a discolored roll of blank
*Skeletal remains of a lizard army and their opponents, the frog brigade
*Thank you notes featuring a (poor) rendering of Mick Jagger and his bong
*1991 Pennsylvania occupational taxes which may or may not have been filed
*A three foot tall plexiglass martini glass complete with huge plastic olive

Each Sunday night we pile our kitsch curbside and are amused to discover which belongings are rescued under cover of darkness. One gains a new perspective by watching long-held (and oft-moved) treasures be summarily rejected at the price of Free to a Good Home.