Altogether now, I’ve got too much damn stuff!

Stuff.

Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff.

Stuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuffstuff.

I am drowning in stuff. Or, rather, it more like being buried alive. I live in a cocoon made of stuff and filled with more stuff. I can still breathe through all this stuff but it is chipping away at my sanity at an increasingly alarming rate.

Before I left my parents’ home, everything I really cared about fit nicely in a mid-sized bedroom with a standard closet. I then lived in a 500-square-foot bachelor apartment with one closet and room to freaking spare.

Then I got engaged and my fiancé came with half a decade’s worth of kitchen gear, assorted furnishings and boxes and boxes of stuff.

Then I got married. Oh, the stuff we got from that. Towels and linens and cookware, oh my. Glasses and dishes and platters galore. We moved apartments every couple years and shed hundreds of pounds of stuff along the way. It was quickly replaced by new stuff. I looked around at my life and thought, “How did I get all this stuff?”

Next came the kids.

Babies and showers and diapers and strollers. Stacks of blankets and sweaters and wee little bonnets. Mechanical swings. Special chairs for eating and playing and sitting alone. Slings and carriers and car seats, of course. All of this stuff got squirreled away for baby number two and then three and then four finally no more.

And those babies grow up, don’t you know? Before you can say, Yo Gabba Gabba, they’ll become autonomous little stuff magnets themselves. Hundreds of stuffies, dinky cars and Lego. Crayons and glue sticks and old, dried out markers. Loot bags with candy and trinkets galore. Boxes and bins, bags upon bags, buckets and baskets, all overflowing with stuff made from cheap plastic.

And breathe.

But, oh no, there is more.

There are papers and files and precious craft projects. Papers on the fridge and shoved into folders. Piled up neatly on every damn table. Messes of paper in all of our rooms next to books stacked on books and shelves with more stuff. Board books and story books, colouring books and novels. We have school books and work books, books from the library and for practicing piano.

And don’t forget the coats and the jackets, the sweaters, the rain gear. We’ve got rain boots, snow boots, mary janes and runners. We have hockey skates and baseball cleats, dancing shoes and slippers. We have them for boys and we have them for girls and we have them in every goddamn size you can think of. They’re next to the sun hats, baseball caps and umbrellas. They’re somewhere behind the scarves, mitts and warm hats. Next to the snow suits and just past the bike helmets.

Oh and there’s still movies and records and food we won’t eat. There’s heaps of old clothes too small or too worn. I’ve got puzzles and games and boxes of tinsel. There’s drawers filled with doodads and god knows what else more.

The list never stops, really, I’m telling you now. Get out while you can because I can’t see an end. Week after week, I fill up the garbage and recycling bin too. I bring car loads of crap to Goodwill and if you don’t watch out, I’ll unload some on you.