Over the weekend, because we were trapped in the house (well, not really trapped, but did you know about the air quality because of the fires? Yikes! If you want to see a really great photo montage of a golf course with fires in the background as well as fire choppers picking up water, I would suggest you go over to this awesome blog, which you really should be reading anyway), we started this project that Stephan thought was a really good idea, and I really only went along with because leaving the house hurt my lungs. And, that's really the best attitude to have going into a big project, right? I think it also really helps if you scrunch up your face and say sarcastically "Yeah, that's JUST what I want to do tonight. Totally." Because that really fosters the "can do" team environment.
Anyway, his project (because, as we've discussed, he has a little OCD) was "clean out all the cabinets/ drawers/ file cabinets," in keeping with our minimalist aesthetic, which I thought was still looking very sparse despite knowing that every drawer and cabinet was secretly full of stuff from 1999. So, Saturday night (Saturday night!) after dinner he decided that now was the time, today was the day to start this odious project, and he was all "I'm going to clean out the kitchen…..and you don't have to if you don't want to," which of course then I had to, because what kind of butthead sits upstairs and watches Sex and the City while their husband cleans everything out. OK, I admit, this DID seem like an appealing option, but I thought maybe I would just give in because a) it was good for the marital harmony, and b) I doubted I would ever be motivated to really clean out my file cabinet otherwise, since I don't even like filing stuff in there.
Oh, and also c) I was looking for something in my desk the other day and found (among other things):
--a ticket for the Boston subway that expired in 2005 and had no value.
--three small mirrors (people think I'm vain, so they give me mirrors as gifts)
--eighteen unlabelled keys, not on a ring
--a bag of foreign coins
--two dead cellphones
--notes for a book proposal I forgot I wrote
--a bottle of Advil that expired in August of 2001
All of which seemed to indicate that some kind of purging was necessary.
So—we worked on this project for three or four hours, during which I shredded THREE GIANT BAGS of old files and records, and said at least twenty-five times "I HATE THIS PROJECT, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE MAKING ME DO THIS ON A SATURDAY NIGHT" while stomping around and sighing (again, good for team spirit). I know, I know, it's good to clean— somehow it was just getting through the giant mess and the organization and the shredder overheating four times.
All in all, we got rid of:
--Three (hefty-size) bags of shredded paper
--Four (similarly large) bags of garbage
--Three file boxes to the storage unit
--One big bag of stuff to Goodwill
This brought up the following questions for me:
1. Does medicine really expire? I had some totally vintage cold medicine that said it expired in 2001 and I was going to keep it, because apparently my morbid fear of spoiled food does not extend to medicine. I think I still have it in the back of my mind that the "expiration date" thing is just a ploy to get you to buy new medicine. Like, remember when you were a kid and you had the same bottle of Robitussin in your house for five years? Maybe it was cherry flavored (or maybe this was before cherry flavoring—I don't know how old you are, ok?), and your mom used it EVERY TIME you got a cough, and it never went bad or lost its efficacy. Still, the mere presence of an expiration date that passed that long ago started to kind of bother me, so I threw out a whole trashbag worth of stuff just from my bathroom. Then I broke my sink and had to have Stephan fix it, which, I think you'll agree, serves him right for making me clean on a Saturday night.
2. Further on the subject of "throwing things away," what's the common thought on whether it's ok to throw away pictures of other people's babies? I know, people think my heart is made of stone, but I like some babies, or at least pictures of them. Also, when you don't have any kids, people tend to really send you pictures of their kids, which is totally cool. I'd so rather have a box full of photos than a baby right now. However, if it's a really old picture of someone's kid and you barely even talk to that person anymore, is it kosher to just toss a picture of their pride and joy? This is really becoming less and less relevant as everything goes digital, but I'm just checking in with the kid-having masses. Would you think I was a really bad friend if I didn't keep EVERY photo, or Christmas card of your kid? I'm sure someone will have an opinion on this—probably someone who's sent me a Christmas card of their kids. Not you, ok? I didn't throw YOUR kids' photos away. YOUR kids' photos are in a box in my storage unit in West L.A. Someone else's kids' photos are in the garbage.
3. Speaking of cards (Christmas, birthday, otherwise), are we keeping those? I tend to not be a card-keeper, except for the occassional one that's really funny or if it was given to me by someone who is now deceased. I know some people keep them all, and I'm wondering—are you taking these out and looking at them at regular intervals? This is interesting to me.
Anyhow, after the cleaning was over, I had to admit, I did feel better. Lighter, perhaps. And I found a few things in my desk (including a crisp five dollar bill) that I forgot about, so that made me happy I cleaned. Crazily enough, when I dropped the bag of charity stuff off at Goodwill the next day, there was a big pile of stuff there, and the Goodwill guy was like "damn—everybody's been stuck inside all weekend, and they're all cleaning out their stuff!"
So, I guess Stephan was on to something after all. I'm sure that one statement more than makes up for all the whining, and stomping, and generally stinky attitude while I was doing the project, right?
