After 10 yrs of marriage I had a lot of stuff.
We divorced and split the stuff.
I bought a condo and stuffed my stuff into every nook and cranny and still had too much stuff.
So I bought a van.
But every time I used the van I had to move most of the stuff from the van into the condo.
Over time, less and less stuff made it back into the van and the condo had more and more stuff overflowing onto needed space.
There was stuff on the dining table, stuff on the coffee tables, stuff on the couch, stuff on top of the TV, and stuff on the floor in every corner. I definately had too much stuff.
Finally, I met Mrs Bug who had stuff too but also had room to store her stuff. We dated, checked references, and got married.
BANG!
That's when she told me I have too much stuff.
Her references had not mentioned this.
OK. I'm a reasonable guy, (in real life), so I started selling my stuff. I listed stuff on Craigslist, I listed stuff on the CC.com Yard sale, I listed stuff on Ebay, and pretty soon, stuff started moving. But two weeks before the move-out date, I still had too much stuff.
So I gave stuff to churches, I listed stuff free on CC.COM, and listed stuff free on Craigslist.
Wow.
I got rid of a lot of stuff.
But, shit. I still had too much stuff.
Luckily, the condo had a dumpster. I filled that sucker with stuff. I also sent bags of my girl's stuff to their mom's house.
That was a bad scene. All that stuff came right back.
So I stuffed stuff back into the van and started moving into Mrs Bug's house.
Now I don't mean to complain, but while I was moving stuff into Mrs Bug's I noticed that the area I had to put my stuff was way smaller than the area she had to put her stuff.
Holy shit! Mrs Bug had more stuff than I did!
At first I was a little hacked off that I had been bamboozled into getting rid of so much stuff that I could have kept (assuming we both got to have the same amount of stuff).
But when I really started thinking about it, I couldn't remember what any of that stuff was.
I found myself thinking yeah I could have kept the,..... um,.... the..... well I could have more stuff.
But slowly, over time I realized that I still had too much stuff.
When it is time to go ice climbing, I have to dig through my stuff and get the right stuff.
When I am going out for a day hike, I have to get the right stuff out of the garage and move the stuff from the last trip out of the trunk and back into the garage with the other stuff.
When I take the kids skiing I have to dig though mountains of stuff to get all our ski stuff.
Everything I do requires that I sort and re-sort a shit-load of stuff.
Hmmm. It occurred to me that there were some boxes, piles, and bags of stuff that did not ever come along on any of our trips. I mean, it was cool stuff, but this stuff didn't ever make it out the door.
I wonder sometimes, "Why am I keeping that stuff?" Am I going to adopt a boyscout troop some day?
Or join a militia that is under equipped? They will need those bright red overmitts right?
How about those three midweight pile pullovers? Lots of wear left on those.
I finally realized that my never-used stuff does have a purpose.
My stuff marks my territory.
As long as my stuff is piled on that spot, that spot is mine. Where Mrs. Bug's stuff is piled, that's her spot.
Pile by pile, we have delineated our territories.
Its like a game of Risk. All the pinkish, fluffy, and pastel piles mark Mrs.Bug's territories and all the drab, frazzled, and dented piles mark my territories.
So then I started strategizing.
I offered to put one of her seldom used pastel piles up in the loft for her. Worked like a charm.
Soon I had a place in the garage for another pile of my dented stuff.
Then I offered to hang a pile of the pinkish stuff in the laundry room closet. Heh heh heh. Cool.
Now I had a place for some of my frazzled stuff next to my dented stuff.
And so it went for a few happy weeks.
Then I was screwed.
Mrs Bug came in one day and said, "Hey, how about we clean the garage."
