Precariously Balanced Bits O' Crap

When Darr and I moved into the condo, way back in Dec. 2000, the place felt astronomically large to us. He came from a one bedroom apartment in NW and I had just moved out of a 300+ square feet studio in the Pearl. Having two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, and a patio - it was like upgrading from the inflatable Barbie pools for three year old kids to an Olympic sized pool used by professional athletes. We would get lost in the enormity of our home and call out to each other "Hellllooooooo," using a vocal homing device to locate the other person. It felt spacious and back then we had plenty of room to grow.

Fast forward five years and our place is crammed with stuff in every available spot. Darr's "affectionate" term for this is "ring of crap". And he's right. You can come over and check for yourself. Walk into our bedroom or his office and you can see a ring of crap that hovers near the wall and goes around the entire room. Ugh. How the fuck did we get all of this junk? And more importantly, why do we keep it?

My chore, a project which started yesterday and has carried over to today, is to clean out our spare closet. Up until now, it has been jammed with precariously balanced bits o' crap - old paperwork, photo boxes, scrapbooking supplies, receipts dating back to the late 1900s, stuffed animals, frames, camping supplies, magazines, etc. Some items in boxes, some in bags, some just out there in the open precariously balanced on all of the other bits o' crap. It's scary how much crap we've managed to cram in such a small space. And it's been a daunting task to undertake. I spent most of yesterday carefully extracting the crap out of the closet. Four bags have already been carted down to the trash. Today I imagine the majority of my time will be spent disposing of the obvious crap, repackaging the leftover crap, and putting the useful crap back in the closet. Any remaining crap will go into (1) storage or (2) the trash. I was going to take a before and after picture but I couldn't bring myself to do it. There's too much shame regarding our high levels of crapitude. Now I just hope I can finish the project and get Darr's office back to normal before he returns tomorrow.