Wife has a few things in her quirk repertoire that should probably be recognized with a nickname, but I haven’t done it. She already has enough nicknames.
For years, I was too busy working to pay much attention to my wife’s domestic quirks. I probably knew of some of them, but with so little available time, I didn’t ask. Besides, as she has always been quick to inform me, the kitchen was her domain and I was only a guest.
Her dad said that as a child she had a propensity to create chaos with her things, yet still be able to immediately pick out even minor items from the pile. She never missed, he said.For years I noticed that our refrigerator became cluttered with various things and old containers weren’t thrown out. Three jars of mayo, a couple of bottles of catsup, and 4 partly empty jars of sweet pickles (I don’t like sweet pickles). I started combining the pickles into one jar and tossing the empties. Bad move…in wife’s mind I had contaminated the new pickles with the old pickles. Hmmm. And so, too, it was with the multiple catsup bottles and mayonnaise jars…don’t get me started on the 9 partly empty boxes of spaghetti noodles.
Then there are the salad dressings and spices. These things multiply as a result of shopping lists being made out upstairs without consulting the existing stock downstairs. Also, when wife is hungry for a taste of something, it is just the taste for which she hungers…not the rest of the bottle or jar.So, we live in a home of selective excess…lots of salad dressings and McCormick’s Vanilla extract, most of them open and only partly full.
Recently she has wanted me to clean out my tool closet located down the hall a bit from the kitchen. This is serious business because it is in that closet that I keep ALL the tools, parts, supplies, bulbs, spare bits from old projects--you know, those impossible to find bits that have been sitting in that closet for 20-years waiting for the things they were left over from to break again, but haven't.
She wants to use all that wonderful and convenient space for storage of some of her specialized, oversize kitchen appliances which have filled every available space in every cabinet of a roomy kitchen. I ask if it might help her space situation to dispose of some of those 9 partly empty spaghetti boxes. My suggestion is not well received.
Truth is, that tool closet ought to be cleaned out and I don't like fixing things much any more. It takes longer to find that long ago stored away repair bit amongst the clutter than it does to go over to the hardware store and buy what I need.
Adios
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