First they binge, then we purge

As I sit here watching Bucket of Blood on TCM, I find myself reflecting on the day’s activities and find myself feeling damn smug.    Porque’ Observant, you may ask.  Why have you puffed yourself up to the size of larger-than-life Jack O’Lantern?  

 Because today I purged.

Ken has left town for the weekend and I spent my day reorganizing his crap.  His boxes and boxes of man-crap that were moved into the house over a year ago and have been hogging up space ever since.  Since my son will be moving back home in December, his old room needs to have the old kiddie wallpaper stripped and be repainted (or rewallpapered, depending on the condition of the plaster underneath).  His room is the room Ken moved all his thousands of boxes into 15 months ago, and that is where they’ve sat. 

So today I opened them up and reorganized them.  What was once 10 boxes is now 5.  And they all fit into the hall closet.

But the really exciting part was finding his paperwork.  The paperwork he could not bring himself to throw away when he was packing up to move in.  Yes, I’m talking about 10 years worth of phone bills and credit card statements and auto repair bills (for cars he no longer owns), Ten years of cancelled checks and bank statements and investment statements.  I dumped them all into two large trash bags.  Without his consent.

I was half terrified and half enraptured with myself!

And then I panicked.  What would happen when I told him?  Would this be the one thing he’d not be able to forgive me?   As a compromise, I did not put the trash bags in the trashcan; I left them in the house.  As a gesture of respect, I kept and reorganized his tax paperwork (even though he’ll never need those 1995 tax statements).   

A few hours later he called to say he’d gotten to his destination.  “Honey, I did something real bad” I said in a rush, hoping he wasn’t really listening.  “I got really really busy cleaning stuff up and I needed some room in the closet so I threw away your old receipts and stuff.   But I kept the trash bags for you and if you want I’ll put it all back.  Okay?”    I waited for him to respond.  Would this brazen act of OCDness send him over the edge? 

“Aw, it’s OK” he said.  “That stuff needed to be thrown out anyway.” 

It did?  Since when?  In the conversation I remembered, he explicitly nixed my idea of tossing the phone bills from 1999.  Ditto with the insurance statements from 2003.  I remember him practically snatching his precious files from my careless little hands and holding them close to his chest.  “No I’m keeping these” he said firmly.   The 8 expando files moved into my house, where they sat untouched for 15 months.  

This news that he’d finally “let go” of his paperwork indicated real progress!  

I’m holding out hope that my hoarder-in-residence will see the light and embrace the concept of minimalism I find so comforting.  Maybe someday we’ll go down to the basement together, where the rest of his really important stuff resides, and do some purging as a couple.  And perhaps, while we purge, we can listen to the cassette tape of Hot Christian Favorites I found in his other stuff today.   We’ll groove to the sounds of Change Your Ways while I give him a knowing smile, appreciating the double meaning of the tune, given the circumstances. 

Well, I can dream, can’t I?