Guest Blog: The More the Merrier

ABW here--While I'm busy unpacking, I've asked my friend Dave to fill in again.  This time he provides a unique perspective on my ability to collect (to put it nicely) various items for our household.  After nearly 20 years of knowing me, I do have to admit that he has pretty good handle on my habits.  Enjoy!

Well, here I am guest blogging again while ABW begins to unpack at Fort Carson. Now on day two of guest blogging, I have a sense of how guest hosts on shows such as Regis & Kelly must feel. Viewers are like "oh, Regis isn't here today and now I've got to hear stuff from this random guy." Oh well, that's the way it is today so let's get the show started (play theme music here)...

I've known ABW since college. We met on the sailing team and became fast friends and sailmates--always sailing together when possible at regattas, practices and the like as most people had a partner they sailed with most of the time. Now, though we loved sailing, don't get me wrong--we were often minimalists in terms of the amount of effort that we put into it. I remember our first year on the team when the current leader would say at a meeting "now, some of you need to spend more time on your tacking (which basically means turning in sailing speak) instead of just sailing back and forth across the lake. What? We needed to practice tacking? Um, we had a lot of stuff to talk about and all that practice was getting in the way. We had the wind in our hair and that's all we needed. Well, I exaggerate a little bit, but only a little.

But, I digress. Anyway, that brings me back to the term minimalist. I've always been one as I've moved around quite a bit and see no need to pack or unpack things that I don't need or use. And, since I only have one small dog and no children, this has been easy to maintain. As a matter of fact, as I get older I keep finding more and more things that I feel I can live without. ABW, on the other hand, is not someone that anyone would ever qualify as a minimalist. Now, I'll preface it right now that she has a different set of circumstances than I, what with having three children and a spouse and all, but still... Her husband, Gunner, says about her and her entire family that "if there is a horizontal surface exposed anywhere, it will quickly become covered with stuff." He's not lying.

Now, I'm going to blow the oar out of the water right now and tell you that ABW is basically a hoarder. I'm not talking about one of those that you see on television where they've got pizza boxes from 1997 hidden under a pile of papers or anything--nothing that would entail a visit from CPS or the exterminator or anything like that. But, there's just stuff...and a lot of it. When they moved to the Air Force Academy and she told me they now had a basement I was like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO because this allowed ABW the luxury of having more room for all her "stuff." And, when she didn't want to unpack all this said stuff, she could just leave much of it boxed up in the basement and buy more stuff--replacement stuff for the stuff already packed and new stuff because now she had a basement. You people reading her blog (and particularly those that also see her facebook status updates as well) have got to have figured this out already. I mean, she's gotten rid of over 30 bags of stuff plus furniture and still confesses that there's lots more to go through. They will need close to three trips with the 26' truck they rented and Gunner has packed that thing to the nines. Three truckloads equals 78' of space packed high and wide and that's not including things packed and transported in their cars.

Now, at this point I'll be surprised if ABW even posts this guest blog. The only reason I feel she might is because she's now in recovery. I think having to move themselves this time instead of having the army do it has really caused her to see the error of her ways. I mean, it's not like she hasn't known this about herself. How could she not as I would call it to her attention every time I would visit? But, where she went wrong over the last couple months was not only telling me about how much she wanted to change, but also telling me about examples that I didn't know anything about. For example, she confessed awhile back that they probably have thirty pairs of scissors scattered or hidden (aka lost) throughout the house. The main reason for them being hidden is to keep them away from Abs for reasons that all of ABW's followers already understand. The reason for so many was because they could never find a pair of scissors when they needed one and would have to buy more. Then there are the books. Oh the books. ABW is a book person. She likes having the physical book for any and everything that she wants (or thinks she wants) to read about. That's a lot of books. And that's not including the "teaching" books she buys for her teaching stash for when she returns to teaching. Let's just say the thrift store isn't really her friend. I'll refrain from sharing much more detail about all the other items ravaging the house, but I will leave you with a couple hints such as clothing, pyrex, scrapbooking, teaching stuff, old electronics and any and everything that might be valuable one day. And, do I even need to mention the sock buckets? I could go on. And on. But I won't.

This move has sparked a fresh start for ABW. Life will become so much easier now which is exactly what she needs. To make her feel better, please feel free to share stories about things you've bought or kept (or are still buying or keeping) that are essentially ridiculous. Everyone has their thing, what's yours?