Scraps - The Purge

It was just last Tuesday that I realized it was time again. 

The thought first popped up when I was going through the foyer closet looking for some of my tools. Instead, I found a pile of skateboarding wheels and extra ball bearings. I closed my eyes and huffed out a breath before calling out loudly to my wife.  

“Lil! Come here!” 

A few moments later she shuffled in from the living room with a curious face. “Hm?” 

“What's all this?” I asked with an exasperated sigh and pointed to the pile in the closet.

Lil raised her brows and shrugged. “I was thinking of working on my board sometime this week.”

“You never work on your board. You always get Jessie to do it,” I said flatly, a pointed stare directed at my wife from where I knelt on the floor. “Is this why I can't find my tools? Did you put them somewhere?”

“Uh,” Lil uttered dumbly and began to inch back to the living room. “Maybe Henry was playing with them?”

“Henry's nine,” I said and stood up to put my hands on my hips. “And he's never shown the slightest interest or any kind of mechanical aptitude. Try again?”

Lil rubbed the back of her neck, offered up a dopey smile that did not make me feel better, and silently shuffled back from where she came. Gotta start a list, I guess, I told myself with a growl in my throat as I watched my wife's retreating figure. Purge time again already. 

My second clue came while I was doing laundry. It didn’t actually hit me until after I had washed and dried all of the hampers in the house and began folding through the huge mess of clothes this family created. Most of it from Lil.

“Hey,” Lil said as she walked into our room while I was sitting on the bed, folding laundry.

“Hey,” I replied in a low mutter as I dug through a pile of socks. “How have you amassed so many socks, Lil?” I scooped up a pile in my hands and showed her. “You have more than all the kids put together.”

“The kids don't travel like I do,” Lil shot back and went to the closet to sift through the shirts hanging there. “You don't know what it's like out in the trenches, Katie. Clean socks can save lives.”

“You're in sports photography, Lil. Not war photography,” I deadpanned, opening my arms to let the socks fall back onto the bed. “Most of these don't even have mates. You know that, right?” 

Lil twisted at the torso to look at me and shrug, before turning her attention back to the closet again. That blase little action made me want to scream at her, but I bit my tongue and kept my cool. Adding it to the list, though. I assured myself. 

The final straw for me was while I was making dinner that night. I reached for a bottle of soy sauce in the door of the fridge when my eyes zeroed in on a mess of packets and small containers of various sauces. My eyes swung to Lil, sitting at the table, entertaining the kids with some story. I glanced back to the collection that I'm sure Lil gathered from all the fast food she ate. 

It took all the willpower I had, but I didn't say anything to her about that one. I already knew what had to be done, there was no point in drawing any more attention to the inevitable. We'll do it this weekend, I assured myself and shut the door of the fridge slowly I'll get the kids to help.

My wife's hoarding tendencies would never completely disappear, I suppose, but they did seem to lessen over the years at least. Still, though Lil had calmed down some on this -- and even though she only lived here three weeks out of most months -- the junk seemed to pile up. It was like she snuck out while I was asleep to gather all her useless shinies; like a racoon. 

And that’s why we purge, I told myself with a satisfied smile and sat at the table with the rest of my family, a plan of attack already forming in my head.