I recognize that for all my yammering away this past year, you all still don't know me as well as you should. So please allow me to continue chipping away at that barrier.
Have I ever shown you my widespread, impromptu collections of ancient, now-illegible receipts for transactions under $3? How about my utility bills from college? My many broken pieces of childhood toys? Never seen my "perfectly good" clothes that in my darkest moments I secretly acknowledge I'll never even want to wear again?
Perhaps that was a little extreme.
In all fairness to my compulsions, what if someday soon, I get: 1) called up to participate in a 4th-grade non-competitive soccer or basketball league; 2) re-hired as a store inventory auditor or movie theater supervisor; or 3) transported back to the early '90s on some kind of compelling mission that requires me to blend in with other toolbags?
I don't want to look like an incompetent moron that day, scrambling to dig through the musty back room of the thrift store where a full half of my clothes rightly belong. Paying for something I already owned at some point in my life? I refuse!
The Boy Scout motto is Be Prepared, after all, and I can assure you that I am prepared not only to suit up for a return to domination of smaller children on the soccer field, but also to be buried under a mountain of useless shit.
The only question is, which mountain will be the one that gets me?
17 December 2008
I would be embarrassed to host a yard sale
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
23 comments:
It sounds like you are suffering from a serious cast of packrat-itis. Purge the closet!
'toolbag' - now my word of the day!
Oh, I wrestle with this. I probably wear about 30% of what's in my closet, in a good year. For whatever reason (weight gain, weight loss, stains, etc.) things just don't get worn again.
I have non-clothing items that I wouldn't want to show at a yard sale either.
Not the least of which is my wife's collection of Christmas trees. I'll show those tomorrow.
-Chris
Weather Moose
I have come to the conclusion that OCD children should NOT be Boy Scouts.
Ha! Most of the people who "garage sale" would look at your useless mountain of doo doo and say, "Hey! That's perfectly good!" and then think to themselves shiftily I can't believe this toolbag is getting rid of this great stuff! Wonder if I can talk him down to a nickel for these shin pads...
Trust me, I know. My husband comes from garage sale-ing people. They get your bargains and then give them to us to keep in our basement.
So, by all means DO NOT have that yard sale!! (Just give it to goodwill.)
- MM
You know? Last year I forced my husband (former Boy Scout, by the way) to throw away a "perfectly good" pair of Bugle Boy jeans, circa 1989. He's still angry. Which probably means he'll have a closet full of acid-washed pleated-front jeans until he dies....
dude, i'm the one wondering if after the clothes go through three kids, get stained, and then are used as rags -- could they be used for something? why throw away a rag?
I haven't heard toolbag since at least 1999, which puts you right in line with your closet of crap.
Having a Garage/yard sale is like saying to a complete stranger....
"Here, you throw this away."
I'll keep my Walkman and my J. Giles and my Aldo Nova tapes. Never can tell when you'll get a hankerin' for Freeze Frame.
NO! IT'S THE MIDDLE OF WINTER AND THERE ARE NAKED CHILDREN IN AFRICA WHO WOULD LOVE TO HAVE YOUR 90's CLOTHES!
But if you didn't save all these valuable items, what good would the garage be, after all?
You are lucky we aren't married. I sneak bags of shit out every other weekend and throw it away. He never seems to notice...am I mean?
I'm with Allison. I'm also glad we're not married.
Last week I threw away all of Honey's law school notebooks. At first, when I suggested it, she thought I was crazy. What if she needed it? It then became, "I just don't want to know." So she doesn't know.
This is the exact reason I carry the mother of all hand bags. At any time I can pull out a rock band, art studio, bistro, salon and toy store. And my Eagle Scout husband will thank me someday. I think.
my dad is an eagle scout. my older brother is an eagle scout. my YOUNGER brother is and eagle scout. so when i pack for a trip? good lord. all i can EVER think is 'be prepared'.
christ.
xo!
b.
oh no, I used to be like you! I saved everything, down to pieces of chewed gum from a particularly splendid date to napkins from a restaurant that had great grilled cheese sandwiches. I have learned that, in doing this, I couldn't find ANYTHING that I actually needed in my life. So although I am not a perfectly organized neatfreak, I have gotten much better at purging out the unnecessary.
Throw away the parachute pants man, just do it.
My New Years Resolution is to clean out my closet--NOT just reorganize it like I've done the past couple of years! (I'm a bit of a pack rat too!)
I've got a rule that if you haven't used it in the last 12 months... you don't need it (except for stuff like photos, knick-knacks)... otherwise... it's going to the Goodwill.
Do you have any bicycles that are so small you could only ride them again if you were disfigured in an accident and rendered practically legless? Preferably somthing with a basket and hockey cards in the spokes?
I save a lot, but not everyhing. I AM a good clothing purger.
But I admit to having my college (and even some high school) papers. But I do look at them sometimes. Really. I do!
Yeah, I got a lot of shit myself that I really need to just get rid of. I keep telling myself one of these day, but in the meantime I keep accumulating more shit. Shit.
Oh, Dan. Please don't do that to your family. When Grandpa4444 died, we had to rent THREE HUGE dumpsters to get rid of his stuff, including 16 boxes of recipes clipped from the newspaper for that "some day" cookbook. Okay, I'll admit, we did get $100 for the Playboy collection, but it really wasn't worth all the work.
Post a Comment