Junk


I thought it was funny the other day when the town sent out an email saying the dump was overwhelmed: partly from cardboard from online ordering boxes, but also partly from people cleaning out their homes and garages. Now that we’re all staring at the walls, we’re realizing that we don’t like what’s on them. Now that we’re spending more time with our stuff, we’re realizing we don’t want it. Everyone’s got their Marie Kondo on. I see it when I walk around my neighborhood:  garage doors are up and people are dragging things out or filling their trashcans.

I liked Marie Kondo, till she started hawking $96 Celebration Ladles. I go through phases where I do what she suggests and I do feel better afterwards. The only problem is I live with someone else who fills a space as soon as I make one, and dirties a surface as soon as I clean it.

My husband and I both grew up poor, with drinky, divorced parents, who didn’t buy us toys or pay any attention to us. We didn’t have a lot of anything. I find it fascinating that our nearly identical backgrounds led us in completely opposite directions.

I grew up with nothing and I’m comfortable with nothing. Practically everything I own would fit in my car. My husband on the other hand, grew up with nothing and decided, like Scarlett O’Hara, as god as his witness, he’d never have nothing again. And since turning 18, he has gone on a quest to purchase, acquire, store and admire every single toy, gadget and gizmo in the entire world. Or so it feels like to me.
This is the gnarliest impasse of our marriage. I said to him today, “I don’t know how to handle this: Throwing things out upsets you, but having all this crap around upsets me. How do we fix it so one of us isn’t upset all the time? And, by the way, I feel like I’m upset a lot more than you are, because—look around,” as I Vanna-Whited with my hands, which probably wasn’t the nicest way I could have approached it. I feel like I’m battling from the low-ground here, because asking him to give things up puts me in league with his mean parents who never took him to Disneyland.

All I want is to take a carload of junk to the dump, like everybody else.

Comments

  1. LeslieApril 7, 2020 at 7:46 AM

    Just as absence makes the heart grow fonder, I expect that all this togetherness will result in an uptick in the divorce rates. I haven't seen any stats on domestic violence but I bet it's up.
    Would a happy medium be corralling all his crap into a few specific rooms/places so you dont have to deal with it all over the entire house? That seems reasonable and (maybe) helpful.

    ReplyDelete

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