12:53 pm | 03 April 2003 | things and stuff

I am on my annual spring kick of Frantic Stuff Discardation. Every April I suddenly realize that in my quest to assuage my isolation with objects, I have inadvertently buried myself, The-Junk-Lady-from-Labyrinth-style, in mountains of worthless crap. Plastic barrel of monkeys, why do i have you? Why i have i transported you through four apartments, driven you through fifteen states? Yes, you are funny, and nostalgic, and once or twice i have played with you, and this other time you were going to be the Grand Prize at our Dance-Off except the speakers gave out before i could do any serious knee slides, so i didn't, but anyway WHY DO I NEED YOU? O, Barrel of Monkeys, you are just the tip of my iceberg of meaningless debris, and I am an unassuming and ignorant ocean liner.

All hail the four giant Rubbermaid bins of fabric i will never, ever make anything out of, even if i honestly meant to, because the spirit is gone and i have way too many clothes as it is. Speaking of which, Avast, twenty-four coats! Why do i have so many coats? How is it that none of my coats can make me feel the way they once promised to? You, too, ten pairs of jeans, none of whom make me feel one-tenth as good as a bar of chocolate might (this is possibly why they are not working. Anyway). What is up, tote bag of orphaned socks that i meant to make into sock puppets! You cannot be lonely, as there are eighteen of you! I'll just kick you back under the bed. Converse amongst yourselves!

Oh, hi, self-consciously funny bar implements. Ho, ha ha, I am so glad i have two dozen elephant-shaped stir sticks and sixty witty napkins, especially since i only drink straight whiskey and i never spill it. Similarly, I can eat but one meal at a time, which is why it is important for me to have four sets of six-servings-apiece dishware in various themes (Tacky Oriental, '60s molded glass punchware, minimalist black squares, atomic aqua basketweave). And what if people come over and simultaneously demand three Bundt cakes of variable form and dimension? Whew, I'm glad my bases are covered.

People, i don't mind having three bulging bookcases augmented by precarious piles of books in every room, or box after box of cds (there is no good way to store them right now, so i must resort to a few teetering stacks of cd-holding German beer cartons heaped around the stereo). But some of the insanity has to stop. When i realized i needed another box to augment my original collection of "Assorted Metal Bits," i kind of hyperventilated. I try to cultivate a fairly wash-'n'-go existence (i don't see the need for 15 different shampoos, conditioners, body cr�mes, soaps, gels, foams, mousses, and so forth clinging to the lip of the tub--a conditioning shampoo and one magnificent brick of soap will do), but still, i fail. It's embarassing when my more spare-living, minimalist friends saunter into an apartment crammed floor-to-ceiling with happy chaos. All in all, it's not terrible, but when one considers that only three years ago everything i owned fit in my car... WHY DO I HAVE SO MUCH STUFF?!! I'm like some kind of lint trap for the Universe's rejected objects*.

So. In this spirit, i come home, grab a fistful of empty IKEA bags from the RATIONELL plastic bag dispenser under the sink (o guilt! o shame!) and start hauling crap outside, resorting to the dubiousness of books like Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui for the inspiration--nay, guts--required to toss out my precious, precious children. Goodnight, sweet barrel-monkeys. May the bums dig you out of the trash. clm.

*Let us now apply this theorem to boyfriends and solve for x.