The problem is this: I'm trying to whittle down the amount of garbage I keep. The kids are too--by shoving it off on me. Which means I'm plowed under by bits of junk everywhere. I should just haul all of this down and donate it. I'm standing with one foot on the precipice of I-no-longer-give-a-crap and the other on
I'm-determined-to-make-some-money-out-of-all-this-muck.
So I've made some difficult decisions for myself, and there will be more in the future. I live with another person who not only holds onto his crud, but hates it if I touch his stuff. It matters not a toenail to him that we have dust bunnies older than most of our kids in our bedroom. It matters not that mice have made two bolt holes amidst his things.
My toleration for filth has come to an end. The fuse is lit and the spark is on its way. How do I remedy this? It's tearing me apart. Either I live in a decades old sea of dust and grime, or I anger my husband, both incendiary possibilities.
A partial not-easy-to-arrive-at solution came to light as our last daughter married and took herself off, leaving the detritus she didn't care about for me to deal with. In fact, she expected me to harbor her junk indefinitely and didn't care to make her own arrangements.
The room which once held three growing girls and their prodigious amount of crap was now available for use. I've worked like a slave to drag everything out of there. Years of things they no longer wish to deal with. It would have been nice to have help, since it's their trash. But no.
So all the things I'm giving away or saving for the garage sale are now in our living room. In a massive Chinese puzzle of move-that-there-so-I-can-move-this-here-so-we-can-move-those-things-over-there, I've managed to puke forth into that finally relatively clean room, the preponderance of the husband's massive collection of computer paraphernalia and much of his other junk.
I've worked like a demon to find new places for things, solving logistics problems that would stump a three star general. In all of this I've gotten very little help and eyeball-deep complaints. "You can't move that there." If I hear that one more time, the answer won't be "Watch me," or "Get the freak out of my way, I'll do it myself," it'll be "Bite me!" And after calming down a ton, I'll say, "As you could see if you opened your ungrateful mind, I've worked miracles everywhere. You should not only be thanking me, but paying me with dates, massive buckets of ice cream, many kisses, and happy complements." (At least I'll say that in my head.)
So now the whole train wreck which has slung wreckage all over my kitchen, living room, the Boy's room, and hallway is waiting on one thing. Hubby must decide on where his massive mountain of magazines will go instead of where it is now. And although we NUMBERED THE STACKS and put every magazine back in the same place it was in before, he won't let me move them again.
Which means I can't move on until his overwhelmed mind is unblocked and he moves the stack. Like I haven't already dealt with enough crap to fuel a third world country. He started to do it and got about seven magazines and some paper moved. There are thousands. I have camp for the next two days and a son coming home from University with his bride. I want the wreckage cleared, but I'm pretty much the only one who cares.
"Sounds like you've got a problem," you say if you are stupid or really good at dodging cinder blocks.
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