Junk, Crap, and other things

I just spent a few hours in our cluttered back room. Ok, cluttered isn’t the right word for it, its more like a hoarder’s dream room. Boxes and boxes, piles and piles, stuffed, crammed, and over-flowing with junk.

We haven’t used anything back there in years, so I have no idea why its back there. Oddly enough, we have a storage room that we rent that is also full of crap that’s never been touched in about 5 years. Why?

I DON’T FREAKING KNOW!!!!

Every time I walk through there to let the dogs out back I think “I need to purge this stuff”, and then I’ll walk back into the house. Well, enough is enough. It got to me today, and I spent a good 3 hours ripping the guts out of computers, and stacking broken non-working monitors into a pile. How did we collect so many computers? Where did this stuff come from? Why are we keeping it?

I suspect that my husband is a hoarder, as none of this stuff is actually mine. I’m a minimalist. I have clothes, I have one laptop, everything I’ve bought fits on one bookshelf, and the rest is his. I’m currently surrounded by 5 other computers, a printer (that doesn’t work with my mac) 2 filing cabinets full of stuff that isn’t mine, 5 wall shelves filled with junk that isn’t mine, and frankly I’m getting claustrophobic.

Dear hubby always says “we can sell it on ebay”. Um, who is going to want a viewsonic 15 inch monitor that doesn’t work? Who is going to want a container full of computer parts that we really have no idea what they are? I’m sure that 9600 baud modem will go for a lot, maybe to a museum, but museums typically expect you to DONATE things to them, not pay for their exhibit materials.

Purging all of this junk is tricky when it comes to circumnavigating a hoarder. First he wanted to “inspect” each computer before I took it to the dump. Why? Don’t know. I tried to hook up an old printer to my mac, but it wouldn’t even turn on, so I tossed it in a contractor bag and hauled the bag to the curb. He got mad that I was throwing HIS stuff away. It doesn’t work... would you like me to make it into a bookend? That thought has crossed my mind, taking the bin of computer parts and welding it into something artistic like a swan.

Little by little I fill up a garbage bag of junk and take it to the curb, disguising it as common household garbage. On Fridays, when I’m off and he works, I giggle fiendishly as I drag bag upon bag, load upon load to the local dump. I do have to be careful that I don’t toss something that he may actually want later on. “Honey, what happened to that Windows 3.1.1 video card we use to have for a proprietary computer that was bent into the shape of a “U” that I need for something right this very second?” Yes, its happened before, that look of a deer in headlights when he asks for something that I know full well went to the dump one friday. Usually I guide him to the back room and point to the precariously piled plastic boxes that will tip and crush a human at the slightest touch and say “I think I recall it being in a bin on the bottom in the back”. That usually deters him from trying to get it. Then he’ll make some snide comment about cleaning up that room, and it takes everything in my being not to bash him in the head with the weed whacker I just uncovered after 4 years of being buried beneath the pile of junk.