tossing memories

I have been married for almost 20 years to a pack rat. A very sweet pack rat. The way I cope with blog-Stedman’s multitude of treasures is to give him his own space and shut the door. I don’t go in. Ever. It is scary in there. He currently has several areas which are zoned Holly-free:   the room he has his drums, his master bedroom closet, a majority of the attic and his study.   When we built the house he worked outside the home so his home “office” was a place for books and a computer.   It is right off the main hall of the house. Now that he works at home full time his home office has turned into HIS space. I don’t go in. Ever. Except to kiss him goodnight. And I close my eyes. Over the last few weeks I have been organizing the house.   I have been tossin’ and givin’ things away.   The boys’ closets, the boys’ toys, my closet, the kitchen, my office, etc. have all received my ruthless organizational treatment. Whew.   I feel lighter. Before we left for vacation, I decided to tackle blog-Stedman’s office. *Hold me* Because I value my marriage, I didn’t throw ANYTHING away.   In fact, I didn’t even take it off the shelf.   What I did was buy a ton of black cardboard boxes and magazine holders and merely re-locate things that were piled on shelves INTO boxes on that same shelf. Yep.   I am a genius. The office looks AMAZING.   Every time blog-Stedman asks where I put something, all I have to say is that it is in the exact same location ONLY housed in a cute little box. BUT the makeover did invade his space and has created some wariness that I might start in on some of the other untouchable spaces. As we were unpacking from vacation this afternoon, I was taking my suitcase back into HIS closet where it has been stored for the last 5 years when I noticed the mountain of suitcases on the floor.   Most of the suitcases that are taking up valuable blog-Stedman closet space we haven’t used in years. I decided I was going to take out all the suitcases and put them up in the attic. STOP! Blog-Stedman decided he better stop me from throwing out all the suitcases help me. We pulled out some suitcases that we have used in the last few years and I made a pile to go upstairs. We pulled out some suitcases that we have NOT used in the last few years and I made a pile to go to the garage for the giveaway pile or the trash. Blog-Stedman was NOT on board with the second pile. As I was emptying out the pocket of one of the doomed bags, he grabbed the papers in my hand. Him:   What are you doing? Me:   I am going to throw this away. Stop! Why?   We haven’t used this bag in 15 years. He grabs this brochure out of my hand: Yes, but 15 years ago we went to Paris with this bag. So.   If we haven’t missed what was inside this bag for 15 years, I think we can live without it. YOU ARE THROWING AWAY MEMORIES! OK.   That last statement stopped me in my tracks. I don’t want to throw away memories! I love memories! I apologized as I reached for the Paris brochure so I could set it aside and save this cherished misplaced memory in a safer place when it fell open: Yep.   Our cherished misplaced Paris memory was the suitcase informational booklet. And then I organized the rest of the suitcases without challenge from blog-Stedman. The end.