Finally, I have a whole weekend alone! I’ve decided to use this weekend to clean out all the clutter in the basement that
my husband has been promising to take care of for the last two years. Or has it
been three? Jeez-Louise! It’s been three years since we had the pipe burst downstairs? Wow, were does the
time go? So yeah – he’s been putting this off for three doggone years. I can’t stand it any longer – it has to go. I’m throwing it all out, every bit of it and I dare him to say one word. If he
wanted to keep any of that stuff, then he should have taken care of it himself—but it doesn’t look like he’s touched a single thing.
Armed with a new box of trash bags, I bitch away as I head across the kitchen to
the stairs leading down to the basement. My husband is such a stinking pack
rat! He keeps everything. Just last week I threw out a bag of old golf balls
that had been in the closet for, no lie, eight years. He hasn’t played golf in over ten!
I turn on the light and make my way down the stairs. I only come down here to do
the laundry because it’s such a mess. It drives me insane but it doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. He has a little spot in the corner with a workbench and some tools. There is a
place for his fishing rods to hang on the wall – you know the usual. I try not to look over there in his corner, because there
are cobwebs big enough to suffocate an elephant hanging from the ceiling.
Seriously—an elephant. I refuse to knock them down, waiting to see how long it takes him
to notice. I can’t believe he can stand under them; they are that big.
I hate coming to the basement but I got a used sewing machine at a yard sale a
couple of weeks ago, and want to make myself a little spot down here to set it
up. When I told my husband that I was going to make myself a spot down there he
asked why I didn’t just use the kitchen table. I just laughed at first, but then realized he wasn’t kidding. The thought of more clutter upstairs is enough to make me break out
in hives. Unlike my husband, I hate clutter.
Before he left last week, I asked him to please—please—finally take care of the stack of boxes that the plumber threw over in the
corner when he had to work on the pipes. He promised me he would. He told me
not to worry about it, that he’d take care of it before he left for his trip, told me not to touch anything. It’s because he’s scared I’ll get the Goodwill itch if I get started on the mess down there.
That’s what he calls it when I go on a cleaning spree. He is worried to death I am
going to throw some precious memento—like, say, the broken, mildewed Budweiser lamp that hasn’t worked since ‘72 —in the back of my little blue truck and take it to Goodwill. Or maybe those old
Playboy magazines left over from his bachelor days, the ones that were soaked
through completely when the pipe burst and are now stuck together in a heap of
indistinguishable hardened pulp over in the other corner. I can’t even budge it. It’s stuck to the floor. Do I look like a heartless wench? I would never break his
heart like that. Plus it is a huge heap of paper that weighs a ton. He must
have been a loyal subscriber.
But enough is enough. Three years is plenty of time for him to have taken care
of it if he was going to, and I want a place for my sewing machine so I can
make some drapes for our bedroom. If I make them myself it will only cost about
thirty bucks; about four times cheaper than if I buy them online but I’ve been waiting to start on them until I can set up the machine down here. Our drapes haven’t matched our bedroom since I painted last summer.
The first box appears to be full of crap. Just a bunch of old papers. But, oh, look! There is a painting that our son did in kindergarten. Sweet – it stays. And one our daughter did at summer camp. And there is a postcard from
my father-in-law from Germany. He was the sweetest man ever born on the face of
this earth. That stays. What is this, old Valentine’s cards? Okay, this first box is a keeper. No biggie, it’s a small box.
