My wife, like most women (I think), has a small clothing problem. She can never have enough clothes. She has a walk-in closet that is 15 feet high, has 43 rods for hanging clothes, contains 132 pairs of shoes, boots, slippers, cleats, clogs, sandals, flip-flops, and two pairs of Scuba Diving Flippers (Though she hates the water). This closet is of course, too small. You cannot step more than 3 inches into the closet due to the large plastic tubs, filled with clothes, that are stacked on the floor.
There are only 365 days in a year (see…I paid attention in 11th grade!)….yet my wife currently has over 14,380 DIFFERENT outfits.
At this rate, given her age, she would have to change clothes about 18 times a day in order to wear everything she owns before she turns 90…..
My own walk-in closet, identical in size to hers, is located on the other side of the bathroom. It too is stuffed to the gills with clothes and boxes……most of which are not mine. Me, I have 7 outfits. Three pairs of shorts, three shirts, and one sweatshirt and I am set. Down the hall, in the computer/autograph museum room there is another closet. This one is packed floor to ceiling with clothes and none of them are mine.
Our garage contains about 28 tubs and plastic containers, all packed with women’s clothes. These clothes are “the garage sale clothes” that my wife is somehow content to part with and which she intends to sell to other “clothesaholics” at her next garage sale.
(The factory in Indonesia where the Wal-Mart plastic tubs are made had to add a third shift to keep up the increased demand once we started buying tubs.)
The only problem with the clothes is that for the most part, they do not sell. These clothes have been placed out in successive garage sales for about the past 12-15 years.
I could throw a single blood-stained dirty tube sock of mine out onto a table at our garage sale and it would sell in minutes. (Fat man clothes sell really good)
My wife’s problem is that the poor thing is not even five feet tall and barely weighs enough to defy gravity and stay planted on the ground. She is also over 40 ye….I mean 30 years old. Given her height and weight, a lady shopper with a 7-8 yr old daughter would probably be eagerly looking for clothing for her kid….but that young girl would not want to wear what a ….30 year old….woman normally wears.
So the boxes pile up. Clothes that do not sell in a garage sale are placed into a tub for the next garage sale. The cycle never stops. Adding to the pain is the fact that my wife’s sister only adds to the misery. My dear Sister-in-Law passes much of her wardrobe down to my wife. The clothes arrive in our home in a number of buckets and tubs, the wife tries them all on, and then they are sent off to new homes either on the overcrowded racks of our closets…..or are placed into more tubs.
We have tubs stacked seemingly in every room of the house except the dining room. I take that back, I just looked under the table and sure enough….two tubs! (that explains the lack of legroom)
I opened up our pantry one night and reached up onto a high shelf only to be knocked unconscious by a falling plastic tub labeled “Garage Sale November 1994″.
We have no end tables in our living room, just tubs stacked on tubs on which we place lamps, drinks, magazines etc.
I don’t blame my wife. It is in her blood. My Father-in-Law is a successful self-employed business tycoon (Insurance King of the Southwest) who owns two Insurance Agencies. At one of his offices there is a large room in the back of his building. This huge storeroom is about 20 yards wide by 40 yards long.
In it…..are about 1,000 plastic tubs.
All filled with my Mother-in-Law’s tubs of clothing.
Upon reading this, she will rant and rave that the room is in fact, filled floor to ceiling with the junk of her married daughters and their spouses….but the reality is that we only have about 2 small boxes stored in there……. There was simply no more room in between all the tubs.
My wife recently brought home one of those plastic portable clothes hanging contraptions that people use to hang clothing for garage sales. I don’t know where the thing came from. Maybe her office at work is now so crowded with clothes, and tubs of clothes, that there was no longer room for the rack. I suspect that she has devious plans that would include that plastic rack now becoming the new home of all MY clothes.
It is only a matter of time before the plastic clothes rack, placed right next to my side of the bed, becomes my new “Walk-in” closet.
Of course to get that “closet” I have to round the corner of the bed, step over 2 tubs of her clothing, sidestep some shoes and flippers on the floor, and then I might reach my area of the bed.
After she reads this, I would not be surprised to find my clothes piled in a nasty heap out on the front porch…….just past the 3 tubs of clothes that she already stores out there.
The cycle never ends.
My wife is planning the 189th Garage Sale of her married life for later this year in late October or early November.
This next weekend, her and her friend Teresa are going shopping,
Clothes shopping.
Me, I have orders to go to Wal-Mart….to buy 4 more plastic tubs.
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