Gibberish: It had to be done

I tried to open one of the drawers in my dresser the other morning.

It wouldn’t slide.

No matter how I tugged at it, the drawer seemed firmly jammed shut. I finally lost my temper, kicked at the dresser, and yanked ferociously at the handle.

There was the sound of wood giving way, the drawer suddenly flew right out of the dresser, and I fell backwards on my butt. Muttering to myself, I went to open another drawer: it too stubbornly refused to budge.

It took me a while to figure out the reason for these “stickages”.

Every dresser drawer was so absolutely jammed with “stuff” that it was physically obstructed and could not slide out.

At this point, I took a good look around the rest of the house.

I noted that there were chairs shoved up against all the closets, propping their doors shut. The medicine cabinet hadn’t actually closed all the way since my last bulk purchase of make up. Things were dangling from gaping kitchen cupboards that appeared left over from some inter-galactic conflict.

In short, I was forced to confront an ugly truth: I had too much stuff.

Something Had To Be Done.

That’s when I decided to go on a marathon clean out, dust out, toss out. Probably wouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours or so, I figured.

A little off in that calculation.

How could one person have a drawer full of nothing but old Valentine’s Day cards?

And not the sort you might actually want to treasure like romantic, lacy, intimate cards, or even those wonderful cards that contain a slot which says ‘place money here.’

Rather these were the sorts of mass-produced, tacky cards that you used to be able to buy in cut-out books, or in large bulk bags. The ones that all started “Roses are red…” and went down hill from there.

How could I have accumulated an entire drawer full of them? (On the same note, there was also one bathroom drawer containing several years worth of “Happy 39th Birthday” cards, but we won’t go there.)

When I finally arrived, mid cleaning frenzy, at my underwear drawer, it turned out to be a Victoria’s Nightmare.

I won’t elaborate on the gruesome details, but when was the last decade that whale bone was used in girdles?

Or, for that matter, that girdles themselves were in vogue?

Then I was seriously taken aback to discover that I had a whole dresser drawer totally jammed full of single socks.

Was I expecting to find mates for them one day on a kind of knit-wear E-Harmony?

Eventually I had to venture into one of my spare room closets. Kind of like heading into that area which, on old maps, used to be indicated by the words, “Here there be Monsters.”

Some of the clothes preserved in the darkness at the back of this closet were pretty scarey.

I mean if I ventured out in public in the stretchy, red velour pantsuit I found draped over a wooden hanger at the rear of the racks, South Dundas fire services would attach a hose to me.

I eventually uncovered an entire jungle of ratty T-shirts suspended in the semi darkness.

Possibly I planned to save them as potential paint shirts (ironic as I last painted a room in ‘91). Or maybe I figured shirts proclaiming “Fuddle Duddle”, “Good night, John Boy” or “I Voted for Mike Pearson: Bow Ties Are Sexy” would one day be back in demand. (Let me state right now, categorically, that if you hold on to an outfit long enough, it actually DOES NOT come back into fashion again!)

Some of you may remember how, in more elegant times, every home possessed a parlour?

Well, the parlour eventually evolved into the ‘living room’, which was a more realistic, if less charming, name for the place where family and friends congregated.

In my home, however, the living room has de-volved into the ‘Heap Your Junk Everywhere Room’.

My coffee table has been submerged for months under what now looks like an alien biology experiment.

Chairs are never for sitting, but rather for coats, purses, mud boots, remotes, laundry, paper backs, dog leashes and some old guy who emerged when I uncovered the green arm chair and said he was my uncle Jim, who sat down to visit in 2016, but couldn’t get out the seat fast enough to escape a deluge of junk.

In the course of my cleaning efforts, I located a drawer in the kitchen containing 36 separate screw drivers. I have never attempted to put anything together or repair anything that would require even one screwdriver. This same drawer also contained two sewing kits and several plastic wrapped cook books.

No wonder I haven’t opened it in years!

Anyway, I would like to report that my cleaning plan is working out splendidly and just in time for spring. I have also found the perfect place for absolutely everything I hauled out of the cupboards and drawers.

It’s called a garage.