The Pile

Half our garage has been storage space for most of this year. We are also renting what I consider to be an unmistakable sign of a lack of discipline: a storage unit. In my view this is $304 per year that we might as well be wiping our asses with. I have vowed that we will not pay any 2007 rent on that thing. It is one of two goals I’ve set for the week after Christmas.

Some of The Pile is seasonal stuff to be taken up to the attic. Some of it is Lea’s: cake pans, infrequently used small appliances, and stuff. Some of it is mine: sentimental stuff that I don’t want to get rid of (my AD&D books, stuff from high school, and so forth), stuff that I’ve deposited simply because there’s a Pile (and what a silly thing to do), and boxes that are a good size to ship watches in (which I do frequently). And naturally, some of it is trash.

I am extremely organized. Like, spin-that-knob-straight-up-to-OCD-territory-and-back-it-off-two-clicks organized. Always have been. Needless to say, The Pile bothers me. So why has it persisted? Well, most weekdays it’s 9:30 or so before there’s any time for Lea and/or me to work on it, and a book in the bed is far more restorative. And who wants to mess with a chore like that on the weekends, when there’s football to watch, geocaches to find, and beer to drink?

Currently I’m processing five things daily from The Pile, and it’s beginning to look better. (I’m trying to whittle the problem down to a point at which I’ll only have to spend one full day on the problem over the Christmas break.) I’m getting there.

When I was a little boy, my parents had 1,000 or so books and a few boxes stacked behind a dressing screen in the living room. They’re there in my very earliest memories. After my parents were divorced and my dad remarried, most of them were there when we moved to Madison in 1986. Only then did that stuff begin to be organized.

I remember looking back on that stuff as a young adult and thinking “why the hell couldn’t they ever do anything with all that crap just lying around the house?”

Now, at a young middle age and with two small children, I know exactly why.

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