I have no commitment to "stuff" because I hate clutter. Anything that has no chance of being immediately useful is gone.
My wife, on the other hand, is one of the world's greatest pack rats, keeping stuff forever because "I might need it someday."
I have 1/2 of a closet with my clothes in it and she has 3 1/2 filled with hers, some of which she hasn't worn since before we got married in 1979. Some of that stuff has been moved six times just so it can hang unworn in a different closet. After 25 years and two kids and nature being what it is, the reality is that these clothes have no chance of being worn by anybody in our family unless one of my sons turns out to be a cross-dresser.
She comes by this behavior honestly, I guess. Her mother has saved stacks of magazines from the 1960s and clothes that my wife's brothers outgrew 40 years ago and boxes of things that cannot be positively identified. It must be genetic.
I wonder if your wife was raised by a Depression-survivor mother. I was...and everything with a forseeable use was saved...not because one could not afford to buy the item, but because the item was not available!
My mom had a huge sewing basket full of used zippers and buttons that she removed from worn out clothing and saved for re-use...and she used them. When a garment was no longer wearable, she cut out and removed all the buttons and strung them together on thread and they went into that basket.
This behavior never stopped even when she was in her 60's and 70's! Once I opened her freezer and there were 12 pounds of butter hiding in there. The way they used butter that was possibly a year's supply.
I don't remember us ever having a matching set of glassware for the table. She had a gazillion jelly-glasses for that. (Jelly was sold in a decorative glass and had a smooth top with a lid). No magazine or newspaper ever left the house with any of its coupons, even if she didn't intend to use the product...she knew somebody might want to use it.
I have to watch myself! When items are on sale, I tend to overbuy because of the way I was raised. Sometimes it's a blessing....sometimes it's a curse.
I do feel a twinge of guilt when I open up my coat closet and see an old moth eaten overcoat when I am reminded there are people out on the street shivering for lack of a warm coat. My intention is to take them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Yet, in my closet it remains after hundreds of such self inflicted goadings.
Perhaps it is something deep seated which prevents me from tossing or donating my stuff. Maybe it has to do with wanting to hold on to bits and pieces of my life experiences. Could it be that I hang on to these momentos of days gone by in order to keep the fantasy alive that I can prove Thomas Wolfe wrong and actually go home again?
Might not the thirty year old robe in my closet transport me back to my first job out of college? Could it be that the leather coat that hasn't been worn in 12 years will keep my son always four years old and greeting me at the door with the words "Daddy, I love you so much? Finally, (and since today is Mother's Day) could the old moth eaten overcoat that my mother gave me keep her forever alive?
But Tom Wolfe was right, you really can't go home again. I will never again sit at the dining table of my parents home in North Carolina sipping iced tea with the window opened, feeling the gentle cooling breeze of a late summer day and listening to the creaking limbs of a hundred year old oak. Perhaps what I heard in the creaking limbs was the song of my grandparents reminding me that they once lived here too.
Some of that stuff has been moved six times just so it can hang unworn in a different closet. After 25 years and two kids and nature being what it is, the reality is that these clothes have no chance of being worn by anybody in our family unless one of my sons turns out to be a cross-dresser.
:D--> oh my God that is too funny.....you made my day......
I wonder if straight men are by nature slobs and need a woman to keep them tidy...
Whereas gay men are naturally fashionable!
Trefor Heywood
"Cymru Am Byth!"
I wonder about that, too. I used to clean houses - the biggest slobs I had accounts on were lesbian couples - they were the worst, next to several highly-educated couples I cleaned for (both had PhD's, were professors at the local University, etc.) Gay men usually had pretty tidy homes - and usually the most interesting.
The worst people to clean for were expecting mothers. They expected the place to be spotless and expected you to do it for next to "free". They expected way too much! :-)
This topic gives me a good laugh. My wife and I have been married for 22 years and I still have stuff I want to keep. She has been wanting my stuff moved out of the house for many years. Fortunately, the property where I have my business has a basement.
A few years ago, she couldn't take it anymore and ask me to get rid of it (mostly books and magazines). The solution...I simply moved it all to my basement at the building where I have my business.
Recently, she was in my basement and saw I have been adding to my "collection." Now she says..... "When are you going to get rid of most of that stuff in your basement. Who's going to get rid of it if Christ does not come back in your lifetime?..... Not Me!!!"
I simply thought to myself...like I care (it could all be thrown out in about three hours on a Sunday afternoon) and then I laughed out loud.....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahaha.
She rolled her eyes, shook her head and walked away.
When I was in TWI I moved 30 times in the 12 years I was in. Each move gave me the chance to "burn the chaff" - I'd always question if it was worth packing something and moving it again or if I should part with it. For many of those years I had little Ford Festiva and could easily fit all my belongings into it to move. When I got married, I still didn't have a lot of personal items.
Now I have a house, two kids, two cats and more crap than I dare to mention. It's the first time in my adult life that I've lived somewhere for more than one year! Since my house is about 200 years old, we have a root cellar and not a basement like many modern homes. Storage is at a minimum.
Last year I had my first yard sale. When it was over I asked hubby to please shoot me if I ever got an idea like that again! I met some really whiney women who wanted things for free - I was almost ready to pay them to leave!
This year I'm packing up the "chaff" and it's going to Goodwill and the local Greek church for their annual rummage sale - they can deal with the whiney women!
================================================
Another man question:
Why can't men see when they have braidable nose hair?
Trevor....when I tell my wife how neat and tidy I am. She says "yeah right...I see how neat and tidy you are when I come back from visiting my parents for a week."
I am the product of two (2!) depression era survivors, and throwing things away comes easily for me! I can’t stand the thought of having to store things. If it isn’t going to be used within the next 12 months (tools are an exception!), then it is useless in my book. If it doesn’t fit now…let’s face it…it never will fit…and if it does, honey – you deserve a new wardrobe! ïŠ
But here’s my story:
My dear dad, god rest his soul, finally entered hospice and we prepared a room for him downstairs in his home in which to spend his last few days on this earth. As he’s watching us move out the furniture, he starts getting agitated. We’re making room for his flippin’ death bed, for Christ’s sake, and he’s worried we’re going to throw away a “perfectly good desk†to be able to fit the hospital bed in. You’d think he’d have better things on his mind…like meeting his maker! - than to be worrying about losing some old desk he probably scalped from a curb-side pickup night!
Well, apparently the pack-rat syndrome skips a generation, because my kid squirrels things away. I won’t bore you with those details, but I hope you’re not in hearing distance of my future gravesite! The curses I’m sure will shower down upon me while cold in my grave will be fierce – I’m sure!!!!
Get rid of the ballast is probably the only twi thing I still hold onto…except don’t throw away old yarn that might make a good stripe in a mitten, and magazines dealing with my particular passion, and of course books – books are like art – don’t discard… I also pull the buttons off shirts before discarding, and put them in my button box. I don’t use them, I just like having the buttons in there. ïŠ
"I also pull the buttons off shirts before discarding, and put them in my button box. I don’t use them, I just like having the buttons in there. "
Loved this!!! Actually wish I had saved some buttons on occasions when I lost one from a shirt and couldn't find a match. Back then all my shirts came from same maker.
I save .. wood! Seriously, I make stuff, some furniture, some other things. It can get out of hand though.. I had it stacked (neatly) and stored in three or four places in my shop. So much and so scattered I couldn't tell what I had. I decided to make a bin/cart/storage rack thing. WOW did I ever have a lot of wood!!! I have so much the "cart" is too heavy to move!!! I keep lots of things "Guy related"... like when they replaced our furnice I grapped the old squirrel cage fan and motor out of it. Later that year I made a fan with it on rollers (also saved from something disposed). Great for my shop in summer.
But my wife loves it cause she'll say "honey can you make me a _______?" Sure!!!
AND the "need" for that "thing" (you've had for 10 years untouched) will arise IMMEDIATELY after you see the garbage truck turn the corner hauling it off.
" ... I am the product of two (2!) depression era survivors, ..."
Same here, of course. Both sets of grandparents lost their farms during the depression/dust-bowl. My earliest photos show me in a cotton diaper sitting in the sand leashed to a row of grapes .
LOL
My father used to brag that my mother could split one bean in half and feed a family of six. What he left out was all the poke salad that we picked to fillout that meal. :-)
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outofdafog
I think some further research on this subject should be done.....I plan to go to some garage sales today and get some further statistics.
:D-->
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GeorgeStGeorge
I suppose the real lesson is, never throw away something that doesn't belong to YOU.
George
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Jim
No. If you have a kid, you will end up throwing things of theirs away.
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GeorgeStGeorge
Yeah. That's why I had to re-buy hundreds of comic books years later at many times the original price.
I suppose I should have said, "Don't throw away anything that belongs to someone else without consulting him."
At the very LEAST, don't throw away something that belongs to another autonomous adult!
George
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Linda Z
G StG:
I think you're more upset about this than my friend was.
--> BTW, I asked if I could throw them out.
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Trefor Heywood
I wonder if straight men are by nature slobs and need a woman to keep them tidy...
Whereas gay men are naturally fashionable!
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Pirate1974
I have no commitment to "stuff" because I hate clutter. Anything that has no chance of being immediately useful is gone.
My wife, on the other hand, is one of the world's greatest pack rats, keeping stuff forever because "I might need it someday."
I have 1/2 of a closet with my clothes in it and she has 3 1/2 filled with hers, some of which she hasn't worn since before we got married in 1979. Some of that stuff has been moved six times just so it can hang unworn in a different closet. After 25 years and two kids and nature being what it is, the reality is that these clothes have no chance of being worn by anybody in our family unless one of my sons turns out to be a cross-dresser.
She comes by this behavior honestly, I guess. Her mother has saved stacks of magazines from the 1960s and clothes that my wife's brothers outgrew 40 years ago and boxes of things that cannot be positively identified. It must be genetic.
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krys
Pirate:
I wonder if your wife was raised by a Depression-survivor mother. I was...and everything with a forseeable use was saved...not because one could not afford to buy the item, but because the item was not available!
My mom had a huge sewing basket full of used zippers and buttons that she removed from worn out clothing and saved for re-use...and she used them. When a garment was no longer wearable, she cut out and removed all the buttons and strung them together on thread and they went into that basket.
This behavior never stopped even when she was in her 60's and 70's! Once I opened her freezer and there were 12 pounds of butter hiding in there. The way they used butter that was possibly a year's supply.
I don't remember us ever having a matching set of glassware for the table. She had a gazillion jelly-glasses for that. (Jelly was sold in a decorative glass and had a smooth top with a lid). No magazine or newspaper ever left the house with any of its coupons, even if she didn't intend to use the product...she knew somebody might want to use it.
I have to watch myself! When items are on sale, I tend to overbuy because of the way I was raised. Sometimes it's a blessing....sometimes it's a curse.
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oenophile
I do feel a twinge of guilt when I open up my coat closet and see an old moth eaten overcoat when I am reminded there are people out on the street shivering for lack of a warm coat. My intention is to take them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Yet, in my closet it remains after hundreds of such self inflicted goadings.
Perhaps it is something deep seated which prevents me from tossing or donating my stuff. Maybe it has to do with wanting to hold on to bits and pieces of my life experiences. Could it be that I hang on to these momentos of days gone by in order to keep the fantasy alive that I can prove Thomas Wolfe wrong and actually go home again?
Might not the thirty year old robe in my closet transport me back to my first job out of college? Could it be that the leather coat that hasn't been worn in 12 years will keep my son always four years old and greeting me at the door with the words "Daddy, I love you so much? Finally, (and since today is Mother's Day) could the old moth eaten overcoat that my mother gave me keep her forever alive?
But Tom Wolfe was right, you really can't go home again. I will never again sit at the dining table of my parents home in North Carolina sipping iced tea with the window opened, feeling the gentle cooling breeze of a late summer day and listening to the creaking limbs of a hundred year old oak. Perhaps what I heard in the creaking limbs was the song of my grandparents reminding me that they once lived here too.
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outofdafog
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ChasUFarley
I wonder about that, too. I used to clean houses - the biggest slobs I had accounts on were lesbian couples - they were the worst, next to several highly-educated couples I cleaned for (both had PhD's, were professors at the local University, etc.) Gay men usually had pretty tidy homes - and usually the most interesting.
The worst people to clean for were expecting mothers. They expected the place to be spotless and expected you to do it for next to "free". They expected way too much! :-)
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Paradiseden
This topic gives me a good laugh. My wife and I have been married for 22 years and I still have stuff I want to keep. She has been wanting my stuff moved out of the house for many years. Fortunately, the property where I have my business has a basement.
A few years ago, she couldn't take it anymore and ask me to get rid of it (mostly books and magazines). The solution...I simply moved it all to my basement at the building where I have my business.
Recently, she was in my basement and saw I have been adding to my "collection." Now she says..... "When are you going to get rid of most of that stuff in your basement. Who's going to get rid of it if Christ does not come back in your lifetime?..... Not Me!!!"
I simply thought to myself...like I care (it could all be thrown out in about three hours on a Sunday afternoon) and then I laughed out loud.....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahaha.
She rolled her eyes, shook her head and walked away.
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ChasUFarley
When I was in TWI I moved 30 times in the 12 years I was in. Each move gave me the chance to "burn the chaff" - I'd always question if it was worth packing something and moving it again or if I should part with it. For many of those years I had little Ford Festiva and could easily fit all my belongings into it to move. When I got married, I still didn't have a lot of personal items.
Now I have a house, two kids, two cats and more crap than I dare to mention. It's the first time in my adult life that I've lived somewhere for more than one year! Since my house is about 200 years old, we have a root cellar and not a basement like many modern homes. Storage is at a minimum.
Last year I had my first yard sale. When it was over I asked hubby to please shoot me if I ever got an idea like that again! I met some really whiney women who wanted things for free - I was almost ready to pay them to leave!
This year I'm packing up the "chaff" and it's going to Goodwill and the local Greek church for their annual rummage sale - they can deal with the whiney women!
================================================
Another man question:
Why can't men see when they have braidable nose hair?
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Paradiseden
Trevor....when I tell my wife how neat and tidy I am. She says "yeah right...I see how neat and tidy you are when I come back from visiting my parents for a week."
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signals
1) It took too long to break in.
2) New stuff doesn't go with the other old stuff we have(new sneakers and old, torn jeans and viceversa).
3) We are lazy and hate shopping.
4) We have no taste in fashion.
5) We feel we still are in as great a shape as 20 years ago.
6) If it bothers you, then YOU fix it (attitude)!
7) Chances of attracting opposite sex are a memory.
8) Had same job for years.
9) Am one with the universe and new stuff are frivolous and useless.
10) Fashion sense is non-existant.
More importanly doesn't that couch go with our butts?
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nellie
Doesn’t that couch go with our butts? Hah!
I am the product of two (2!) depression era survivors, and throwing things away comes easily for me! I can’t stand the thought of having to store things. If it isn’t going to be used within the next 12 months (tools are an exception!), then it is useless in my book. If it doesn’t fit now…let’s face it…it never will fit…and if it does, honey – you deserve a new wardrobe! ïŠ
But here’s my story:
My dear dad, god rest his soul, finally entered hospice and we prepared a room for him downstairs in his home in which to spend his last few days on this earth. As he’s watching us move out the furniture, he starts getting agitated. We’re making room for his flippin’ death bed, for Christ’s sake, and he’s worried we’re going to throw away a “perfectly good desk†to be able to fit the hospital bed in. You’d think he’d have better things on his mind…like meeting his maker! - than to be worrying about losing some old desk he probably scalped from a curb-side pickup night!
Well, apparently the pack-rat syndrome skips a generation, because my kid squirrels things away. I won’t bore you with those details, but I hope you’re not in hearing distance of my future gravesite! The curses I’m sure will shower down upon me while cold in my grave will be fierce – I’m sure!!!!
Get rid of the ballast is probably the only twi thing I still hold onto…except don’t throw away old yarn that might make a good stripe in a mitten, and magazines dealing with my particular passion, and of course books – books are like art – don’t discard… I also pull the buttons off shirts before discarding, and put them in my button box. I don’t use them, I just like having the buttons in there. ïŠ
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Al Poole
Welcome Nellie!!
"I also pull the buttons off shirts before discarding, and put them in my button box. I don’t use them, I just like having the buttons in there. "
Loved this!!! Actually wish I had saved some buttons on occasions when I lost one from a shirt and couldn't find a match. Back then all my shirts came from same maker.
I save .. wood! Seriously, I make stuff, some furniture, some other things. It can get out of hand though.. I had it stacked (neatly) and stored in three or four places in my shop. So much and so scattered I couldn't tell what I had. I decided to make a bin/cart/storage rack thing. WOW did I ever have a lot of wood!!! I have so much the "cart" is too heavy to move!!! I keep lots of things "Guy related"... like when they replaced our furnice I grapped the old squirrel cage fan and motor out of it. Later that year I made a fan with it on rollers (also saved from something disposed). Great for my shop in summer.
But my wife loves it cause she'll say "honey can you make me a _______?" Sure!!!
AND the "need" for that "thing" (you've had for 10 years untouched) will arise IMMEDIATELY after you see the garbage truck turn the corner hauling it off.
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Galen
nellie:
" ... I am the product of two (2!) depression era survivors, ..."
Same here, of course. Both sets of grandparents lost their farms during the depression/dust-bowl. My earliest photos show me in a cotton diaper sitting in the sand leashed to a row of grapes .
LOL
My father used to brag that my mother could split one bean in half and feed a family of six. What he left out was all the poke salad that we picked to fillout that meal. :-)
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