day 12: pile of stash under the stairs

A few days ago, I found the stash of our books from when we moved 3 1/2 years ago. They were tucked away in the worst enabler we have, our cupboard under the stairs. While this saying invokes Harry Potter’s ill-treatment (in the keep pile of books), I was reminded more of the book Pile of Stuff At the Bottom of the Stairs.

To sum up, the lead character, Mary, tracks her husband’s habits (good and bad) on a behaviour chart. Without ruining the ending, doing this exercise doesn’t lead to the results she intended. Balancing part-time work, with full-time family management, can make me feel stretched to the limit. When I perceive that Crono isn’t doing his share, I can go to a dark place, imagining that it would be easier to just be on my own. I don’t mean to diminish how hard it is to be a single parent – or the long hours he commits to his daytime job. But sometimes, you just get tired of picking up another adult’s socks….or dealing with their stash.

Under the stairs, there were 7 boxes of books (5 of which were mine), but there were also 8 boxes of stuff, 2 boxes of VHS tapes, and 3 boxes of music. 9 of these were his. He keeps things like toys from when he was a kid, 18 years of Road and Track magazines, 12 years of Car and Driver, personal papers from too far back to be relevant, and two boxes of notes and texts from University. My original plan was to toss or donate everything without consultation, but thankfully, he’s agreed to move the boxes up into his man cave – our garage – where we can sort through them together on the weekend. He even agreed to go through the CD’s so I may have to stop calling him Crono.

For my part, I ended up going through 1/3 of my boxes of books and culled 80% of them for donation. My two small boxes of stuff were treasures from my childhood, that I asked the girls to pick a few things from, and then I put the rest in my staging area.

Once we have cleaned up the stash, I’m hoping my dad can help us finish a variation on this playhouse for the girls. Maybe it will help lessen the impact of culling toys and moving the toy room into the basement. Surprise Dad! We have another project for you when you come to visit at the end of the month!