Pack Rats and A Cleaning Spree

Oh, my. Aaron and I have a HUGE task ahead of us in the next few days. My brother and his girlfriend are coming to stay with us on Saturday night...and our apartment is not ready for them. We have stuff EVERYWHERE...and most of it is wedding stuff that we have nowhere to put. So you know what that means? We get to throw out all of the junk that Aaron hasn't used since I've known him!

Aaron did a WONDERFUL job of making sure the apartment was spotless before he left to go to Charleston for our wedding in September. He even made the internet wireless so we didn't have to trip over cables in the middle of the floor anymore! When we came home from our honeymoon, the apartment didn't look anything like the bachelor pad it was before I left 2 weeks earlier. But that only lasted for less than 24 hours. Ever since our wedding gifts were piled into the living room the following day, the apartment has never been the same.

I thought I was a pack rat...but Aaron is a million times worse than me. When I first met Aaron more than 4 years ago, he kept old receipts in a box under his bed (or in the drawer of his desk...or in his wallet...or in his car...or anywhere else they would end up). Now, I'm not talking about receipts for big purchases - I'm talking about receipts from restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, and stuff that could never be returned. I broke him of the receipt habit 2 years ago, but we've still got some work to do. I swear that there are storage containers in our guest room that are full of stuff I've never seen Aaron use. The worst space hogs in our apartment, however, are the empty boxes from video game consoles, cameras, electronic equipment, and computer stuff. For some reason, Aaron feels the need to keep them. Sorry, Babe...but those are going in the trash tomorrow :)

Now I must admit, I do have stuff in our apartment that I use infrequently...but it's important stuff. Examples: tupperware containers FULL of craft supplies, photography equipment and negatives from the past 10 years, and...well, that's about it (excluding the wedding gifts we have no place to put yet!).

I'm glad that Aaron lets me go on my cleaning sprees to organize all of his stuff because, believe it or not, he HATES it when I clean without him being there. I think he's afraid that I'll throw away something important. My theory is: if he doesn't even know it's missing, then it wasn't important. To this day, I've never cleaned out the desk drawers, closet, bookcase, or mile-high stack of mail and had him ask me, "Where's ________ (fill in the blank)?" And I've thrown away A LOT of stuff :)

As we were lying in bed last night (after our date to Panera and the $2 movie theater to see Ratatouille!), I revealed to him a little something that I threw away when he moved out of his first apartment. We laughed, and he was like, "You're so proud of yourself right now." I sure was :)

Please pray that our cleaning spree (beginning tomorrow after work) goes smoothly and quickly. And without any arguments :)