And So It Begins

So it all starts with a Toy Story themed birthday candle.  I realized today it starts with something innocent and small.  Just an average everyday item.  Somehow it snowballs from there to a disease.  What?  Remember those fake news blips on SNL that would say something like "this common household item is killing you, more at eleven."  It played on that fear that normal everyday products could be so harmful for you.  They aren't, or at least at the time I think they were all OK.

Anyway, innocent candles to disease.  Here we go.  You might want to sit down.  I am pretty sure at some point you will recognize this in your own life.  So you throw a party for your child.  They wanted Toy Story, but not the alien candles you bought, they want the Buzz Lightyear flying candle.  So you plan to return the aliens.  But, you don't.  It's a special trip to a store you don't really go to that often.  You have kids so it's twenty times harder to walk into a store and return something.  By the time you are ready to go to the store, you forget to take the aliens.  Oh well.  What were they like $3.00.  No big deal you think.  I'll keep them.  I have other kids.  Surely we'll use them.  So they take up a tiny bit of cabinet space.  Next thing you know, Despicable Me sprinkles sit next to them.  Then a box of white cake mix.  You meant to use it, but the chocolate cake you did make was plenty.  Next time.  At some point your cabinet is full of these items.  Never used, but you don't want to waste them.

So Mutt, how are we leaping to disease here?  Empty your cabinet already.  Donate to the neighbor or Goodwill or heck, just throw it all away.  Well.  Those are all good suggestions.  Here is the honest truth.  I can't.  What a waste?  Someday I'll use it (no, I won't).  The disease starts when the stuff spreads to another cabinet.  Soon the kitchen is over taken by these items.  Then something comes along that is not a kitchen item.  Say all the special dinosaur figures you bought for a dinosaur themed party.  Where do those go?  Well, the children will surely play with them.  We'll make a dinosaur land.  It will be glorious.  No.  They play with them a few days and then you have 15 dinosaurs scattered throughout the house.  Get rid of them?  I certainly cannot return them.  I find a nice container to keep them in.  They find a few other dinofriends we already had.  Soon we have a giant Tupperware type container keeping all mankind safe from the Jurassic Era.  It's Jurassic Park all over again and we all know how that turned out.  Bad idea. 

Dinosaurs, birthday candles and supplies, toys, clothes, decorations and more.  They start small and multiply before you know what's happened.  It's impossible to get rid of any of it because "I may one day use this."  Soon you think burning your house down is the best way to get rid of all of it.  I don't personally suggest this, but I see the pros.

The irony is, my husband will want to keep the nails out of an old board or the screws from a door we're replacing and I will tell him to his face "we do not need this, do NOT keep it!"  I have uttered those words and he can sweat by it.  Saying it to me?  It does nothing. 

So what disease are we diagnosing today?  Hoarding maybe?  I'm not sure I would classify myself as a hoarder, but I do have a hard time getting rid of the "stuff".  Some of it is sentimental, some I really do feel like we would use.  Some I think the kids would be heartbroken.  Like they would even notice if we only had 10 Hot Wheels instead of 1,000.  They don't play with them at all.  Most of it could be taken out in the dead of night and the kids and I would never miss it.