Again The Same Fight

Author: siggy

We have the same fight over and over:  it is about things.  I want less to enter the house.  She is, again, active on “Free Cycle”, a web site where people give things away.  The theory is for less to end up in land fills.

Yesterday, she came home with a scanner and some other things we did not need.  It does me no good to tell her I do not want that item.  She gets seduced by things.  She even admits that.

I have been after her to gather documentation for her deceased husband’s pension. (She is the beneficiary.)  The documents she needs are probably in our “junk room.”

I could not believe it among some books piled in one corner of the house falls out her first marriage certificate–over thirty years old the document was.  It was in tatters to give you some idea of the disorder in this house.

A friend months ago came over and made some order out of our “junk” room.  Unfortunately after that she kept putting more stuff in there.

Actually it was me. She kept getting more things and I did not want to “junk” up the living room.  I had to put the stuff somewhere.

And it is true as she said the junk room is no longer neat and it is hard again to walk in that room.  There is so much stuff in there.  She does not want to search for her documents until the room is neater and she could walk around in it.

All this despite the fact the new stuff (since the room was straightened out) was obtained by her.  There is old computers (even ones that run on DOS), extra printers, broken down stereo equipment, books etc.

And it is true I am not as neat as her but she is the pack rat and stuff keeps entering our house whether or not we need them and all I want to do is tear out my hair.  And we periodically keep having these fights.  About things.

About a year ago my other had discovered “Freecycle”.  It is a web site–worldwide–whose goal is things should not end up in landfills.  People give things away they don’t want in their house any longer.

That is admirable but for everything that left out house three things came in.  Our house is bursting with things.

The second time she got involved with “Freecycle” I felt more hopeful that ratio would change:  she got rid of a stove (we ordered a new one), some bookcases and miscellaneous items.

Then she elicited my help on the guise of, “Do you want to keep me company?”  Sometimes she does not tell me what she is picking up.  Someone was giving away boxes of medical legal books.

Had I not been with her, she would have had to make multiple trips from the second floor to put them in the back of our SUV.  She has a bad back.

She took these books despite the fact we have no extra book case room.  A previous lawyer had owned these books and what she was going to do with these books was beyond me.

The same trip she told me she was going to pick up some tile.  I envisioned a small box of tiles.  Wrong!  It was a big box full of whole and broken tiles on a dolly.

The box would have broken if you were foolhardy to attempt to lift it.  We had to transfer them into smaller boxes.  She had some kind of idea she wanted to do mosaics.  All I could do was shake my head.

The same day she picked up a Sony double cassette and a Sony 50 CD deck despite the fact we had at least two completely working cassette decks.  It made no difference I told her I did not want either.

I just have to resign myself that our house is going to be full of junk and bursting from the seams.  And there is nothing I can do to stop it.  My war on the clutter is an unending battle that I will never win and occasionally have pockets of success.

My wife offered two bookcases through “Freecycle”, a yahoo web site and world-wide organization.  Someone was coming from an hour away to get them.  I was skeptical someone would travel that far for a bookcase whose top shelf was broken (the other bookcase was fine).

The two finally came in a beat up truck.  The lady did not blink when she looked at the broken bookcase.  “I came from the South and was ‘dirt poor’.  When something is broken, we just fix it,” she said.  We also gave them an end table.

I felt humbled by her comment.  I am too quick to throw away something out (???) when it is not perfect any more or needs fixing.  People often get rid of perfectly good things.

There is so much waste here.  I remember reading Mother Teresa would write a letter on any scrap of paper.  I am so quick to throw a sheet of paper away.  I am guilty too of waste.

I had a friend who made a living going through people’s junk they threw out.  Freecycle’s philosophy is they want to keep things out of landfill.  Someone’s junk is someone’s treasure.  That lady reminded me (???) that again.