Confessions of a Serial Swooper

Anyone reading my blog lately knows that we’ve been on a quest to clear some clutter.  One pile, one box, one drawer at a time.   Serial swooping tends to lead to excessive piling.  So, every now and then, it’s time to actually dig through a pile, remember what’s in it and trash all the stuff we thought we’d “get to” when we piled it up in the first place.

One day last week, while Husband was at work, I decided to clear the clutter from the top of the giant dresser in our room.  It’s BIG, an IKEA purchase (a b*tch to put together) from a few years back.  It holds our somewhat outdated (read: also BIG) clunker of television and sits against a wall a few feet from the foot of our bed.  And, I went after that sucker last week.  In my de-clutter frenzy, I removed the following items from its surface and placed them either in their rightful place in the house or their rightful place in the trash:

• Nine hard cover books
• An old  box full of “jewelry” circa 1988 – 1992 (tarnished silver crap,  hippie-days Fimo bead necklaces, my Tri-Delta pledge pin –yeah, yeah, yeah, judge away– anklets with jinglebells, match-less earrings)
• A pair of fireplace / work gloves
• A random collection of Time US, Newsweek People and National Geographic Boston magazines
• AA batteries
• Tyrone and Pablo (pronounced Plablo) miniatures
• A “Disney on Ice” light up swirley stick
• Two rolled-up retail bags with still-tagged items enclosed to be returned

Like I said, it’s a big dresser.

Husband returns home that evening, greets the kids, kisses me, dodges our always-shedding yellow labrador trying to brush up against his suit pants, and heads into our room to change.  The suspense is killing me.  I shush the kids and wait for the response that will come when he sees my masterful de-cluttering job.  And I wait.  And wait.

Out he comes.  Not a word.

“Hey!  Did you notice the dresser?”  I walk him back in.   “See?!”

“Oh, yeah!  Nice going, cutie.”

Not exactly the enthusiasm I was hoping for but it’s not exactly like I ran a marathon so I’ll take it.  The night continues.

Bedtime.  We finish up watching Masterpiece Theater, World News Tonight, oh, ok….Real Housewives of Orange County and head into our room.  Going through the bedtime routine.  I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I hear from the bedroom…

“Hey!”

“Yeah?”

“What happened to my workgloves?!”

Your workgloves? I kid you not.   Turns out he used said gloves to hold his Blackberry at night so that we don’t have to listen to it vibrate at all hours.  Not a bad plan, of course, but man…sometimes you just can win.

(Of course, we would need these in our bedroom.)