Getting Rid of the Stuff

When I started spending a lot of time in my fiance's condo, I thought it was a one-bedroom. There was a second door off the hallway, but I assumed it was a closet.

Technically, it was. When I finally poked my head inside, I was shocked. It was full of...stuff. I've hardly ever seen anything like it. I take that back--it looked like a fresh move. My parents' basement looked like that for awhile, after they moved into a newer, smaller place.

In this second bedroom, the closet was bulging with boxes, there was a bike leaning against some shelves that were in front of a wall of boxes, and things were strewn everywhere, atop the boxes. Everything that he didn't want around, but didn't want to make a decision about throwing out--landed here.

It only got worse after I moved in. We managed to beat back the mess to the perimeters, but I had some furniture that my mom wanted to reclaim (eventually) that got in the way. I had a spare bed that we could've set up in there, but it had to stand upright, because there wasn't enough clear floorspace to put it down.

A couple of months ago (this tale begins in December 2005, by the way, when Fiance and I began seeing each other), we got a large piece of furniture crated up and shipped 1500 miles to my mother, and that cleared out a large patch of workspace. I shuffled things around and got the bed to fit in lying down. We've tackled it in small bits and pieces as we happen to think about it, but I started to take a real inventory yesterday afternoon.

There's so much neat stuff! Hockey skates, bike & helmet, a golf bag with a set of clubs, an unopened printer, a TV, 2 VCRs, a PS2 (in need of small repair and long promised to a friend), a Sega Dreamcast, tons of Legos and baseball cards, fairly nice speakers and stereo system, older computer games...much of which he does not wish to part with. But then, there's also his old college textbooks and all of the presents he's received over the years that have just gotten put aside (unburned candles, a golf ball cleaning tool, &c.), and of course all of the empty boxes for computer monitors and TVs and furniture that was always just easier to put away than throw away.

Not to mention that closet full of boxes, which turn out to not even be his! He's storing them for his ex-girlfriend, whom I gather is somewhat mobile by nature, and we've had probably 700# worth of her stuff for over a year. But I digress.

I had a nice pass through the room yesterday, and I wish I'd been taking pictures all along to show progress, but I worked for hours and it doesn't look much different, really. The junk pile is much lower (not ceiling-high anymore) in the corner, that's it. But with the wedding in less than five months, I'd really like to see if we can have a viable guest room. I'm going to try to put travelling people in locals' guest rooms before making them book hotel rooms (lots of my friends are just out of college, and the reception hotel is quite pricey, even with the group discount), and I think it would be wonderful if we could host some folks too.

But not with boxes of Legos covering the guest bed!