Stuff and Nonsense

I have disposophobia. It's not something that keeps me home bound or from boarding an airplane. It doesn't leave me cowering in fear at the sight of a snake or a trembling mass of jelly when I encounter an insect. I can enter an elevator without breaking into a cold sweat and suffering from shortness of breath. Nevertheless, I am a disposophobic. This malady makes me fearful of getting rid of stuff. Now some may call me a pack rat and I will agree. Some may even go as far as to say that this is an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I don't think my problem has quite reached that level. A person who is an obsessive-compulsive hoarder can barely walk through his home. He has acquired so much stuff that he must travel from room to room via narrow paths winding through the mountains of things he just can't live without. The windows offer no view of the great outdoors because of the accumulation piled in front of the panes. Though I have some "artistic" clutter I can still move freely through most of my home. My closets, computer room and basement are the problem areas.

The first obstruction I meet when getting rid of things is nostalgia. I have many items that I just can't seem to part with because of sentimental value. On my closet shelf are two sweaters, knitted for me years ago by my ex-mother-in-law. They are no longer in style and my daughters have assured me they will never want them. Even so, the garments remain on the shelf. In the basement are boxes full of toys that gave my children years of joy and now do nothing but collect dust. I keep them just in case my future grandchildren want to see what entertained their mom or dad as a youngster. I have piles of duplicate photographs because the price was the same whether getting one or two sets. You never know when someone may want a copy of Scott making funny faces or Sarah hanging from the monkey bars or Tobi modeling her cheerleader outfit.

Rationalization presents my next dilemma. I am convinced that there is a direct correlation between throwing something out and needing that exact item the very next day. I believe this rational comes from my mother. She saved everything. If I needed a coffee can, an egg carton or a cottage cheese container for a school project or girl scout craft, all I had to do was ask mom. Not only did she have one for me but she could supply said item for the entire class or troop. Following in mom's footsteps, I find that when my friends have need of an unusual item, I am the one that has it all. Whether it's a get-up for a costume party or a spring-form pan, I can supply it.

I am confidant that if I keep my clothes long enough they will come back into style or I will have lost enough weight to fit into them once more. Periodically I do purge my closets and dresser drawers, but it usually ends up being a very stressful task and I don't eliminate even half of what I should.

Along the same line as "I'll use it someday" is "I'll fix it someday." Scattered around my house are purses with broken handles, picture frames with no glass and garments with broken zippers. It would be a shame to throw those things away just because of one little flaw that is so easily remedied. It just seems that I never get to the repairs.
I'm an avid crafter but have such varied interests that I need a whole room to hold my crafting paraphernalia. I started to organize it but had to make a greeting card in a hurry and the supplies from that project never got put away. Then I had to do a quick craft for children's church and those things are still spread over the counter. In the meantime, I decided to make a gift for a friend at the last minute and just never got around to putting that stuff away either. While the craft room was a great idea, it has become a jumble of paint, paper, ribbon, rubber stamps, decorative scissors, stencils and various other accouterments of an artist.
Adding to all the aforementioned confusion are magazines dating back to 1995 which have many great recipes and tips that I will someday clip and store in nicely organized notebooks. Next to my sewing machine are stacks of fabric that will be sewn into lovely outfits. Laying across the table saw is a partially finished shelf for the kitchen. All I have to do is sand it and paint it and then talk my husband into putting it up. The family room we have planned and started will be great once I get all the overflow of crafts, sewing and rarely used kitchen appliances moved to a better place.

Now should we talk about food? My two refrigerators and large chest freezer and packed to to gills. All my kitchen cupboards are filled to overflowing and the pantry room in the basement looks like a small grocery store. I don't know why I tend to hoard food. It's not a matter of having starved as a child. Though my family wasn't rich, we didn't lack for anything we needed and always had plenty to eat. With my storehouse of provisions you would think I feed an army every day, or at least a large family. Not so. I prepare daily meals for only my husband and myself. We entertain periodically but not on such a regular basis that I need to be prepared at all times. And guess what? I never know what to make for dinner!
When I got home from work today I decided that it was the time to get at least one cleaning project completed. I chose the bathroom cupboards as my victims. We have two bathrooms, so I thought it would be good to do both at once. I pulled things out of those cupboards that I had forgotten we had. Some made me stop and think, "Why did I ever buy that?" After everything was out of the cabinets and strewn across the floor I found that I had: twenty five little purse sized tissue packets, at least five various and sundry wrist braces - all for the right hand, seven bottles of toilet bowl cleaner of which most had been opened, eighteen toothbrushes, five containers of baby powder, four scented powder and two medicated powder, five aerosol cans of air freshener, three opened five hundred count boxes of cotton swabs along with another bag of one thousand, also opened and .... a partridge in a pear tree! Now, I will admit that some items just got shuffled from one bathroom to the other and I did still keep items that will probably never get used, but at least it is all organized. I actually filled a large garbage bag with refuse and loaded a box for the Goodwill. I will give my bachelor son some of the many bath towels that have been accumulating over the years and the worn ones that I received as wedding gifts in 1973 will be put to better use as shop rags.

Now that I've started, I think I'll keep going. Perhaps the kitchen cupboards will be next ... or the top of my husband's dresser ... or the computer room! It's such a hard decision! Maybe I should put in a call to that popular TV show "Clean Sweep" or have a professional organizer come over to give me some guidance. No, I don't think so. I happen to like all my stuff! There's an idiom about "stuff and nonsense" meaning that it is senseless or without meaning. Many would say that all my stuff is a lot of nonsense. My husband's friend comes over and asks why we have all this junk. I always say, one man's junk is another man's treasure!