It's do or die: the baby is due at the end of August, but my weekly Progesterone (also known as: STOP MAH LABAH) shots end mid- to late-July. Which means we need to be ready and by ready, I mean motherfuckingready for our little baba ganoush by August 1st.
Aaron agrees.
First step with living with a hoarder (as I've learned over the 12 years we've lived together), is to get said hoarder to agree to timelines. Signed documentation also helps.
Having to be ready by August 1st means we have just over two months to prepare.
Gulp.
Ohmyhell.
So, I've been slowly working on the basement, but then I got the sinus infection from hell, which required the antibiotics from hell which came along with the side effects from hell that nearly hospitalized me. Amen.
I'm just now getting over those side effects and the basement is now my biyatch. As in, this is my theme song for cleaning the basement:
Oh yes, it is.
After Wednesday's recycling fiasco (dude, be glad you didn't hear that conversation, my hell), Aaron and I had a frank discussion about The Basement.
As in, we don't need Paper and Cardboard.
This was, of course, after a found a ten foot tower of empty cardboard boxes. I thought Aaron's cardboard box collection was centralized to the garage. Apparently not.
Included in the collection was a box for a VCR that died seven years ago. And a box for an automated scooping kitty litter box. Which we got rid of over five years ago.
::shaking head::
So we had initially agreed to having a garage sale. Let's face it, there's more than just paper and cardboard in the basement. There's a shit-ton of stuff we don't use and have no intention of using again.
Second rule with living with a hoarder: be brutally honest in the likelihood that something is worth holding on to.
I do my very best to respect Aaron's feelings, and I get it: I also don't want to get rid of stuff just to turn around and spend money on the very same stuff again.
This is why I'm trying to clean the basement in the first place: to figure out what we have for the baby. Like, duh.
So far, stuff I've found we won't use: broken electric beaters, 12 boxes of crayons (like we don't already have five boxes currently in use as-is), acrylic blankets from when I was a kid.
And I'm a reasonable person. The Legos and Light Brite (both circa mid-90s) was brought upstairs and put to use:
The real kicker came when Aaron agreed that he likely will not be able to host a garage sale by July 1st (see? timelines) and that I should donate things as I accrue too much to have reasonable work space.
So today I took 13 bags of stuff to the donation center. I have five more ready for another run on Tuesday.
See? I'm not just gonna go willy-nilly and throw everything away.
Pinkie swear.
3 comments:
You are a stuff busting rock star! That's a lot of stuff to donate.
Next time he's out of town, I'll help you. I've got the cold from hell and you don't want to be around me right now. I'm sorry. Mr. Tonks even stayed home today so I could wallow in my miserable cough.
I think you need to get Aaron to agree that no new stuff will be kept and no new stuff will be brought in. Period. End of story. There's no point in all the clean up, clean out, arguments and drama if he's just going to add more crap to the mix.
Having said that, I'm proud of you for kicking ass and taking names!
My mom gave me some great advice when I was married. Every time she takes things to the thrift shop/donation center she usually throws a few of my dad's hoarded items in with the mix. And then she leaves them there- without the knowledge of where they are going in the store or who will buy them. So when my dad asks her "Where is XYZ?" She can honestly say she has no idea. Not that I have ever done that with my husband's missing mock turtlenecks.
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