My husband has never heard of Marie Kondo. Nor does he subscribe to her renowned KonMari Method of keeping only the possessions in one’s life that “spark joy.” It’s a wonder I convinced him to park a ginormous dumpster in our driveway for the better part of a month, hoping against hope that we’d somehow find the will to purge our home of the crap we’ve accumulated as a family for over 22 years.
I, for one, found it to be a cathartic experience—especially the part where I got to fling stuff into the air with wild abandon. It’s possible I may have even shouted something in triumph each time I tossed one of my husband’s college textbooks or a tangled mass of badminton netting into the giant metal bin. The only thing more liberating would have been to light it on fire.
But there were times I got a bit misty-eyed when faced with the matter of keeping or chucking an embarrassment of cap guns. They were a hallmark of my childhood after all. Never mind that several were jammed or in another way deemed nonfunctional. Not surprisingly, I had great difficulty parting with my kids’ toy machine guns, too, and felt compelled to squeeze the broken triggers multiple times before hurling them into oblivion.
I’m like a kindergartener, only less disciplined.
Needless to say, my excitement grew as the days passed and the dumpster became filled with more and more junk. There was a glut of the ugly-as-sin carpeting we just tore out of the living room. There were also boxes upon boxes of heavy books and lesson plans, circa 1974, that I hauled down from the attic, risking life and limb on a 17-foot ladder. There was an abundance of college notebooks that were spared from the trash for nearly five decades. For the love of God, who does that? A hoarder, that’s who. There was a gas grill, an office chair, three sets of antiquated golf clubs and a bug collecting kit of undetermined origin. Of course, there were still bugs inside it—dead as ever. Even my dust-covered treadmill found its way there, despite the challenge of dragging it all the way through the house and garage. At least we got some exercise in the process.
Even our neighbors got in on the fun when I gave them the go-ahead to deposit their gargantuan television set inside. I only wish I had witnessed its arrival. Instead I had to hear about several family members pushing and/or “riding” their 72” TV down the street and up our driveway. I can only imagine what it must have been like to then lift the stupid thing into the dumpster. Hopefully, no one got a hernia.
As one might expect, my hoard-happy husband and I had several heated debates while we attempted to clean out our garage—most of which involved dumpster diving (his) and emphatic arguments (mine) over the issue of whether or not something “brought joy” to one’s life.
“What do you mean ‘Does this bring me joy?’” he demanded to know as he held a bucket with no bottom in his hands. “I happen to like this bucket.”
“It has no bottom,” I reminded him.
“I don’t care,” he defended.
In hindsight, maybe I should have requested that a marriage counselor be included with the dumpster rental. Judging by our impassioned exchanges, I’m guessing a lot of couples would be interested in such a convenient arrangement. Better still, a copy of Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy could be presented to help the utterly hopeless.
Although we still have a lot of stuff to purge after filling an entire dumpster to the brim and it took two people with master’s degrees to open it, on the bright side, we found a buyer for my husband’s vintage (old-as-dirt) Schwinn bicycle and classic toy trucks. What’s more, we unearthed some marbles while sorting through a hodgepodge of items.
It’s good to know we still have some.
Planet Mom: It’s where I live, anxiously awaiting the arrival of another dumpster for Round II of The Purge. Visit me there at www.Facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.
Copyright 2019 Melinda L. Wentzel
It has been said that success as a parent isn’t fully realized unless and until you’ve become an embarrassment to your children. Apparently, my husband and I have been making remarkable progress toward that end—inadvertent though our efforts might have been. We sing in the car. We make snapdragons talk. We hurl wadded socks at one another. We scream at the TV during tennis matches. And we impersonate Jeff Dunham’s puppet people far too often. All of which, evidently, our brood finds fairly disturbing—especially when friends come to call.
I have a confession to make. I stalk my children. I stalk my husband, too. I don’t know why I do it, actually. It’s a sickness, I guess—an unhealthy obsession with knowing exactly where my loved ones are at practically every moment of every day. Thanks to the fine people at Apple and my friend, Drew, some time ago I downloaded the Find My Friends app on my iPhone and immediately began tracking the whereabouts of the aforementioned people.
Planet Mom 