THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608070148
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: OVER EASY
SOURCE: JO-ANN CLEGG
LENGTH: 82 lines
Help, I'm a prisoner in a house full of stuff. Lots of stuff.
You might say I live in the stuff capital of the world. I have so much stuff here that it's given birth to a whole new generation of stuff.
Like magazine slip case stuff.
A few years ago I went out and bought some of those cardboard things that they used to have in libraries. The kind that hold a year or two of a magazine in a small amount of shelf space.
The cases come three to a package.
We had a lot of magazines. I waited until they went on sale. At 10:01 on a Sunday morning, moments after the doors opened, I cleaned out the entire sale stock at the neighborhood discount store.
Fifty packages of them, 150 cases.
``That was supposed to be enough to last us a week,'' the cashier told me.
``Not at my house, it's not,'' I told her.
I came home, filled them with back copies of Money, Consumer Reports, Southern Living, Writer's Digest, Yankee, New Yorker and Down East. About 20 years of each.
They filled the bookcase, filled the laundry room and spilled over into the garage.
``Enough is enough,'' I said five years later when the stacks of magazines in the family room were once more overflowing into the hall and the discount store was showing no signs of having another slip case sale.
I carried a car full of magazines to the Seamen's House in Norfolk, where they assured me that my collection would have a good home aboard a cargo ship that wasn't expected to see its home port for another three years.
``Lots of time to read on there,'' the Seamen's Institute volunteer told me, ``they can use plenty of magazines.''
Then I came home and surveyed what remained.
One hundred fifty dust-covered, slightly used magazine cases. My first generation of magazine stuff was gone, but what it spawned lived on.
I decided I needed professional help.
I signed up for a course in clutter control.
``Containerize,'' the teacher said.
``I thought that's what I was doing when I bought the slip cases,'' I told her.
``Clear plastic boxes, that's the answer,'' she told me.
I carted the slip cases off to the Salvation Army and bought plastic boxes for my office supplies. Dozens of them.
Every Sunday morning I'd read the sales circular, then headed out to whatever discount or drug store had them on sale that week.
``The slip case lady is back,'' the checker at my favorite discount store yelled when I went through her line with four loaded carts of clear plastic boxes. ``How many of these things can she have?''
``As many as she can pay for,'' the manager yelled back.
``Whatever you say,'' she told him, ``but I think she's taken the whole week's supply. Again,'' she added.
I came home with my stack of boxes and started containerizing.
Notebooks in one, pencils in another, tape in a third, Charlie in the biggest one.
Oops, that was a mistake.
``Let me out of here,'' the furious Lhasa growled. ``I had enough of containers when I had my knee operation,'' he snarled as I freed him from the 2-foot-long box with the bright purple lid.
Then I finished my labeling operation and stood back to admire my work. Unfortunately, I couldn't stand back too far. I had worked myself into the far corner of what had once been my youngest son's bedroom.
Several dozen containers stood neatly stacked between me and the door.
A few weeks ago I decided to empty the containers.
``No one needs this much stuff,'' I said to myself as I pitched hundreds of pencils, tape rolls, spiral notebooks and mailing envelopes into bags to be carted off to various relatives and charities.
I kept only enough office supplies to fit in one large box. Still, I was left with two problems: I had 79 empty plastic containers still taking up needed space and I couldn't find anything in the big box.
I called my clutter consultant.
``Give the extra boxes away and containerize the contents of the one you have left,'' she said.
``Good idea,'' I told her.
I made another trip to the Salvation Army, then went to the nearest dollar store and bought $17 worth of little containers to keep the things in the big box straight.
I think there's a message here somewhere. I'm just not sure that I want to know what it is. by CNB