A BEFORE picture of my garage.   I don't have an AFTER picture, as I haven't actually cleaned it out yet.  It looks rather spacious in this photo, as I have smeared my camera lens with Vaseline.  It worked for Barbara Walters.

Here is my "office," which I have been working on now for two weeks & have merely managed to clear a path to my computer.  Old bank statements?  Toss.  Armadillos?  Keep.

...a closet.  We have three of them.  When I opened this one, a pile of stuffed animals fells out & landed on the paper bag full of VCR cassettes of My So Called Life and Rosanne & Nirvana videos.  I'm thinking my girls -- the youngest is pushing 30 -- might be done watching them.  Toss.

Really, I started clearing things out a couple of years ago, but then got distracted a few days in & have pretty much managed to ignore the mess ever since, all the while feeling guilty & panicky because what if I die & my daughter gets stuck going through all this shit, like it's not bad enough leaving her with 10 cats & a senile dog.

Actual inspiring conversation with daughter :

Me:  My worst nightmare is that I'll die & leave you to deal with all this shit.

Daughter:  Funny, that's MY worst nightmare, too.

I do not want to end up on one of those Clean House shows, with Vanessa from The Cosby Show leading her perky crew with their obviously scripted banter & a slew of camera people through my house, mercilessly filming as I cry & plead & beg them  to PLEASE let me keep my Commemorative Elvis bottle of Italian wine!

I have always had a hard time throwing things away.  First, there's the Velveteen Rabbit Syndrome, where one believes that inanimate objects have feelings & emotions & live in terror of being tossed into a big cold smelly buried-alive-like landfill. 

Better to be stored in a box in the garage where mice chew on your hair & pee on your dolly dress.  At least you have hope, maybe someday you'll be rescued & a little girl will once again love you!

Secondly, there's the belief that I will someday read all those clipped out articles & boxes of magazines, or that I will, at some point, need to create a collage re:   The Eighties! so it's absolutely necessary that I keep four boxes of old Vanity Fairs.

I used to keep my newspaper clippings in a cobra-sized basket in my kitchen.  I saved stuff on How To Raise Spiritual Kids!  Healthy recipes!  Articles on actors I liked!  Profiles of the 1987 San Francisco Giants!  Columns on How To Get Organized!

Of course, when I actually re-read them, years had passed, the kids were grown, I didn't need the recipes, the actors had fallen out of favor, the Giants were an entirely different team made up of teen-aged boys, & obviously I didn't get organized.

So I'm thinking it's time to toss the clippings.  I don't have time to read Great Literature, much less 30-year-old articles on toilet training.

I started on the kitchen yesterday.  I pulled out a chair, grabbed some Mrs. Meyers Basil-Scented cleaner & a roll of recycled paper towels, hit the top of the fridge, where I discovered a refrigerator coil cleaner, two sewing boxes, a Bug-Buddy, & a dried up gopher snake that I found outside a few years ago & brought in to show the grandkids.  Except I kind of forgot about it, I mean, it was dead & all, & it's been sitting on top of the fridge ever since.

Well at this point it was covered in dust & smelled like cat pee so I (reluctantly) tossed it in the yard.  It was dark out, & raining, & this morning when I walked outside to feed the cats, there was the snake, at the door, looking practically alive!  I guess the rain kind of reconstituted it, & then the cats found it & (realizing it was dead & not worth torturing) brought it back to my door.

Anyway, I finished cleaning the fridge & put my teapots on top of it.  I don't use the teapots, but they were gifts!  I can't get rid of them!

Much of the stuff cluttering my house belonged to my mom.  She was even more of a packrat than I am, probably because she didn't have a husband-who-loves-clear-spaces making her all guilty, sighing a lot & staring balefully at the piles of mouse-eaten boxes in what he believed would be his workshop. 

She had no husband-who-wants-to-see-his-Harley-shining-in-a-big-open-space instead of maneuvered in between old dusty golf clubs & license plates & stuffed animals & games from the 80's.  Boxes of magazines.  Soccer trophies.  Every piece of schoolwork ever brought home by our daughters.

 (80's artifact)

Mom didn't have one of those guys.  She used to get annoyed with Geo because he's a neat freak & hardly ever eats dessert.   I am okay with these things, but cannot believe that he's not even remotely impressed that I have the first issue ever of Ms. magazine AND the Rolling Stone from when Janis Joplin died. 

He could give a shit about my grandparents' monogrammed ashtrays, or the stained baby clothes I kept so that I could make them into a quilt.  He seems to believe that because I use Scotch tape to hem my skirts that the quilt isn't really going to happen.  Just because I flunked sewing in high school doesn't mean I can't learn.  I flunked driver's ed & I drive all the time.  Sometimes -- if he's had enough to drink -- Geo even rides with me.

( Historical documents!)

 (A transistor radio & a...um...piece of wood, I think...wait...that's a tiny God's Eye...I believe this is a God's Eye Tree...yes....)

Have I mentioned the room full of photo albums?  The boxes of photos?  The computer full of photos?  Even my computer is cluttered.

I should confess:  I am a magazine junkie.  I started with Photoplay in 1959 when I was eight years old, & moved on to every magazine ever written practically.  Radio-T.V. Mirror, Ingenue, Teen, 16, Glamour, Mademoiselle, T.V. Guide, Rolling Stone, Clear Creek, Ms., Playboy, Show, California.  Haight-Ashbury hippie rags.  Look.  Life.  Penthouse.  Viva.  

When I left my first husband, I had to get out fast & load everything into one pickup load.  Did I take my antique mirror?  My furniture?  My winter clothes?  Dishes?  Hell, no.  I took my records, a trunk, the stereo, the sheets off the bed, & 30 boxes of freaking magazines.  Which I then moved like a dozen times. 

Until finally my present husband (before he became my present husband) said, Enough! And refused to move them again.  Except to the dump.  Which is where they ended, me crying as he sadistically shoved them off the tailgate & into the landfill.  Goodbye, Steve McQueen doing The Twist with your adorable Neile at the Coconut Grove!  So long, Liz Taylor & Eddie Fisher & Richard Burton!  Sayonara, Beach Boy posters!  Adios, Glamour Do's & Don'ts!  

But really, it was time.  I guess.  I had a baby & all.  I was moving to a small apartment.  What the hell. 

I did manage to secretly stash a few Rolling Stones, a box of  early Ms., & a few issues of Life:  Dick Cavett,  Angela Davis, Kent State, & the ones with my beloved George McGovern on the cover.  No way was I dumping George McGovern into the landfill.  He'd already been through enough.

Ah, but enough tripping down memory lane, I need to clean this shit up!  So I have determined that before my 60th birthday (which lands on Easter this year), I will be organized.  I will have to be ruthless, I'm sure.  I already have four full bags of clothes upstairs ready to give away!

And no, I am not getting rid of my David Crosby t-shirt, even though it doesn't look as good on me now as it did in 1979.  Hey,  David Crosby doesn't look the same, either.

I WILL do this!  I will finally be successful at something!  Because my other option was, Lose eight pounds before I turn 60.  And really, this is easier.