What's In Your Closet?
When the HP left for his Afghanistan adventure, his mother and I immediately identified one advantage of his deployment - once he was safely stowed on the other side of the world, I could get my hands on his clothes and do some much needed weeding, pruning, and downsizing. The HP is not materialistic or a hoarder, he is just a bit sentimental about his clothes. He is always afraid he will hurt someone’s feelings if he gets rid of clothes that were given to him as gifts, and so he holds onto clothes he doesn’t like, clothes that don’t fit, and clothes that haven’t seen the light of day in 10 years or more. A couple times each year he will disappear into the bedroom with a beer and tell me he is going to go through all of his clothes and put aside a pile for Goodwill. When he finally emerges feeling quite proud of himself, he generally has chosen to part with enough clothes to fill a small grocery bag. This is the equivalent of removing a grocery bag worth of sand from the beach.
The HP has amassed a wardrobe that can barely be contained by his dresser and his closet, which is packed not just the things that hang on the bar, but with clothes stowed in plastic crates on the floor and plastic bins on the shelves overhead. He even has some of his running clothes stashed in the bedside table. A quick count of the shirts and jackets hanging in the closet reveals 23 button-down shirts, 9 golf shirts (and I know there are more in the drawers), 4 blazers, 1 suit, and 5 jackets, in addition to all of his uniforms. He’s got 22 pairs of pants, not counting jeans, 10 pairs of shorts, and 3 crates of sweaters. To round the whole thing off, he’s got every tie his ever owned, every belt he’s ever been given, and every shoe he’s ever worn, including some from before we met 10 years ago. If he was a meticulous guy, who kept his closet in perfect order, I might be able to stand it. But as it is, I can’t even close the closet without putting my full body weight on the doors as I try to shove the mess back with my free arm.
His dresser has been obsolete since the day we brought it home, not because it is a small piece of furniture, but because we are asking too much of it. The upper drawers are so full of socks and underwear that they won’t pull open all the way. The lower drawers could contain anything, and a clothing item’s only criteria for being put in one drawer or another is whether or not it can be crammed in and the drawer forced shut. Pajamas, sweatshirts, bathing suits, long underwear, and running shorts all live together in the wonderful pluralistic society that is my husband’s bureau.
Did I mention that he wears a uniform to work? Not only to work, but also to work out? Most weekdays he comes home and pulls on a pair of ratty sweatpants, not even changing out of his uniform T-shirt. He gets the ratty sweatpants from his other favorite clothing storage unit - his clean laundry basket. Although he has more clothes than every other member of our family, he could (and does) survive on the contents of one regular Rubbermaid laundry basket, a laundry basket that he empties approximately once every three to four months. If a t-shirt or golf shirt is lucky enough to be liberated from the closet or dresser, it becomes part of the rotation – the clothes that are pulled from the clean laundry basket, worn, washed, and returned to the clean laundry basket. While a virtual rainbow of golf shirts hang in the closet, he will wear a red golf shirt in the rotation until it begins to fade to some sort of pinkish-orange shade. If he stains one of his shirts from the rotation, he will still continue to wear it unless I remove it and stash it back in the dresser. While his dresser holds approximately 50 pairs of white socks, he only wears the ones in the rotation, which quickly lose their sparkle after such frequent washing and wearing.
For a while the HP and I shared the closet in our room, but I quickly tired of tripping over his combat boots and pushing aside his clean laundry basket to try to wrench open the closet doors. I moved all of my hanging clothes into my son’s room, because he is too little to make a mess that will prevent me from opening the doors. And yet, since the HP left, this arrangement has caused an unexpected development – I am turning into my husband. Since I have a bit more to do at home, I have fewer chances to put away my laundry, and sometimes when I’m ready to put things away, my son is down for a nap or in bed for the night, and I don’t want to disturb him. So my clothes sit in the laundry basket, and then I wear them, and then I wash them, and then they sit in the basket again. I hate living that way, so I should do what any enterprising person would do – I should move my husband’s stuff into my son’s room and move my stuff back into our room.
The HP’s closet looks exactly the way it did the day he left. He has a hanging shoe organizer with 3 shoes in it, one shoe balanced across six or seven hangers at the top of the closet, and the rest piled on top of the crates of sweaters on the floor. Also in the pile on the sweater crates are a few golf shirts, some t-shirts, and a pair of Ho-Ho-Ho Christmas boxer shorts. A garment bag that he must have decided not to use is shoved in on top of everything. Several wire hangers hold only empty plastic dry cleaning bags, and some hangers hold only other hangers. Every now and then when I’m in a hurry, I will pull the closet doors open looking for a shoe that may be trapped somewhere on the closet floor. Later, when I go to bed, I get a full view of the mess in the closet. So why don’t I just do clean it out?
Every month when my mother-in-law visits, she asks hopefully, “Did you get to that closet yet?” and every month I say no. My husband left right before the holidays, so at first I was too busy wrapping presents and baking cookies and trying to entertain the kids so that they wouldn’t get too sad about Daddy being gone for Christmas. After Christmas, I turned my attention to sorting through the toys, donating old ones to make room for the new ones. Since then we’ve had houseguests, we’ve gone on trips, we’ve had a bout of the stomach flu, and with every new development, I push the great closet clean out a little further down the calendar. I don’t look forward to the lifting, and pulling, and untangling that will be required just to start this enterprise, but with three growing kids in the house, I am used to lugging crates and sorting through clothes. I know I will be much happier when I have a clean, organized, easily accessible closet all to myself. But when I finally clean up the mess in the closet, I will be removing the last thing in the house that has my husband’s trademark all over it. Only he could make a mess like that, and every time I look at it, I think of him, how annoying he could be with the stinking clean laundry basket, and how much I’d like it if he was back here ticking me off with his messes again. And when I organize all of his things, fold them up and put them away, everything will be ready for his return, but everything will also be ready if he doesn’t return – if something terrible happens – and how can I get ready for that?
But overall, I’m not a fatalistic or superstitious person, and I fully expect to be sitting at this computer a year from now grousing about how the HP has begun to stockpile clothes again, how he won’t get rid of the clothes he’s outgrown (or whatever you call it when your clothes are too big – the deployment diet plan is very effective), and how he won’t put away his clean laundry. If let my imagination take over and think about what could happen to the HP, I’d never get anything done, so one of these days, the closet project will begin. Once I’ve moved his stuff out to the other room, he’ll never have the ambition to move it back, and I will get my neat and tidy closet space exactly where I want it.
The HP has amassed a wardrobe that can barely be contained by his dresser and his closet, which is packed not just the things that hang on the bar, but with clothes stowed in plastic crates on the floor and plastic bins on the shelves overhead. He even has some of his running clothes stashed in the bedside table. A quick count of the shirts and jackets hanging in the closet reveals 23 button-down shirts, 9 golf shirts (and I know there are more in the drawers), 4 blazers, 1 suit, and 5 jackets, in addition to all of his uniforms. He’s got 22 pairs of pants, not counting jeans, 10 pairs of shorts, and 3 crates of sweaters. To round the whole thing off, he’s got every tie his ever owned, every belt he’s ever been given, and every shoe he’s ever worn, including some from before we met 10 years ago. If he was a meticulous guy, who kept his closet in perfect order, I might be able to stand it. But as it is, I can’t even close the closet without putting my full body weight on the doors as I try to shove the mess back with my free arm.
His dresser has been obsolete since the day we brought it home, not because it is a small piece of furniture, but because we are asking too much of it. The upper drawers are so full of socks and underwear that they won’t pull open all the way. The lower drawers could contain anything, and a clothing item’s only criteria for being put in one drawer or another is whether or not it can be crammed in and the drawer forced shut. Pajamas, sweatshirts, bathing suits, long underwear, and running shorts all live together in the wonderful pluralistic society that is my husband’s bureau.
Did I mention that he wears a uniform to work? Not only to work, but also to work out? Most weekdays he comes home and pulls on a pair of ratty sweatpants, not even changing out of his uniform T-shirt. He gets the ratty sweatpants from his other favorite clothing storage unit - his clean laundry basket. Although he has more clothes than every other member of our family, he could (and does) survive on the contents of one regular Rubbermaid laundry basket, a laundry basket that he empties approximately once every three to four months. If a t-shirt or golf shirt is lucky enough to be liberated from the closet or dresser, it becomes part of the rotation – the clothes that are pulled from the clean laundry basket, worn, washed, and returned to the clean laundry basket. While a virtual rainbow of golf shirts hang in the closet, he will wear a red golf shirt in the rotation until it begins to fade to some sort of pinkish-orange shade. If he stains one of his shirts from the rotation, he will still continue to wear it unless I remove it and stash it back in the dresser. While his dresser holds approximately 50 pairs of white socks, he only wears the ones in the rotation, which quickly lose their sparkle after such frequent washing and wearing.
For a while the HP and I shared the closet in our room, but I quickly tired of tripping over his combat boots and pushing aside his clean laundry basket to try to wrench open the closet doors. I moved all of my hanging clothes into my son’s room, because he is too little to make a mess that will prevent me from opening the doors. And yet, since the HP left, this arrangement has caused an unexpected development – I am turning into my husband. Since I have a bit more to do at home, I have fewer chances to put away my laundry, and sometimes when I’m ready to put things away, my son is down for a nap or in bed for the night, and I don’t want to disturb him. So my clothes sit in the laundry basket, and then I wear them, and then I wash them, and then they sit in the basket again. I hate living that way, so I should do what any enterprising person would do – I should move my husband’s stuff into my son’s room and move my stuff back into our room.
The HP’s closet looks exactly the way it did the day he left. He has a hanging shoe organizer with 3 shoes in it, one shoe balanced across six or seven hangers at the top of the closet, and the rest piled on top of the crates of sweaters on the floor. Also in the pile on the sweater crates are a few golf shirts, some t-shirts, and a pair of Ho-Ho-Ho Christmas boxer shorts. A garment bag that he must have decided not to use is shoved in on top of everything. Several wire hangers hold only empty plastic dry cleaning bags, and some hangers hold only other hangers. Every now and then when I’m in a hurry, I will pull the closet doors open looking for a shoe that may be trapped somewhere on the closet floor. Later, when I go to bed, I get a full view of the mess in the closet. So why don’t I just do clean it out?
Every month when my mother-in-law visits, she asks hopefully, “Did you get to that closet yet?” and every month I say no. My husband left right before the holidays, so at first I was too busy wrapping presents and baking cookies and trying to entertain the kids so that they wouldn’t get too sad about Daddy being gone for Christmas. After Christmas, I turned my attention to sorting through the toys, donating old ones to make room for the new ones. Since then we’ve had houseguests, we’ve gone on trips, we’ve had a bout of the stomach flu, and with every new development, I push the great closet clean out a little further down the calendar. I don’t look forward to the lifting, and pulling, and untangling that will be required just to start this enterprise, but with three growing kids in the house, I am used to lugging crates and sorting through clothes. I know I will be much happier when I have a clean, organized, easily accessible closet all to myself. But when I finally clean up the mess in the closet, I will be removing the last thing in the house that has my husband’s trademark all over it. Only he could make a mess like that, and every time I look at it, I think of him, how annoying he could be with the stinking clean laundry basket, and how much I’d like it if he was back here ticking me off with his messes again. And when I organize all of his things, fold them up and put them away, everything will be ready for his return, but everything will also be ready if he doesn’t return – if something terrible happens – and how can I get ready for that?
But overall, I’m not a fatalistic or superstitious person, and I fully expect to be sitting at this computer a year from now grousing about how the HP has begun to stockpile clothes again, how he won’t get rid of the clothes he’s outgrown (or whatever you call it when your clothes are too big – the deployment diet plan is very effective), and how he won’t put away his clean laundry. If let my imagination take over and think about what could happen to the HP, I’d never get anything done, so one of these days, the closet project will begin. Once I’ve moved his stuff out to the other room, he’ll never have the ambition to move it back, and I will get my neat and tidy closet space exactly where I want it.
posted by Shannon at 9:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home