I Have a Lot of Stuff

About, oh, 15 years ago, one of my co-workers was doing some repairs to her house, and she had to box up all her clothes and put them in storage. And she said that it took about six wardrobe boxes to accomplish it.

And, at the time, I had recently moved, and I think I'd done it in about three wardrobe boxes, and couldn't imagine how one person could require six wardrobe boxes for all their clothes.

And now I think: "Amateur."

I have four wool coats. Four. Wool coats. And I live in Southern California. It's perfectly logical how I ended up with four. Bought one when I was really thin. One when I gained a ton of weight. One when I lost a lot (but not all) of it. And the fourth one when I was living in the shithole, the other three were in storage, and it was really cold. So it all makes sense. And yet I have four wool coats. And not knowing exactly what my weight intends to do in the future, and knowing that they're all perfectly good coats, I figure I might as well keep them all.

And that, in a nutshell, is the story of my closet. (Closets, if I'm going to be totally honest.)

I'm sure I've mentioned the box labelled "Towels and videotapes you like." This does, in fact, mean that there's a box of videotapes I don't like someplace. It's mostly stuff I taped off TV to share with my friends. Like Madonna videos off MTV. Or about ten years of figure skating competitions. (Some of which were taped off a TV with rabbit ears and crappy reception. Yes, videotapes of "snowy" figure skating competitions in the late '80s. And yet, for some reason, I thought I'd save them. Because you never know when you'll get a hankering to squint at the TV to try make out Tonya Harding back when she was just a good skater.)

Honestly, the quantity of crap here is amazing. I'm going to try to call a junk hauler tomorrow, to see if he can clear a lot of it away -- largely because it is completely occupying my dining room -- even though I'm not yet finished unpacking, and I'm sure I'll find more.