The Cleanse: Week 11 - All the Flowers Have Died...

"...there is no morning dew. The crickets know no love songs, and I feel so blue."

For some reason when I was trying to think of a title for this post I kept going back to my memory of this clip from The Cosby Show. Thanks to the magic of the internet, here it is. It's weird the things that get stuck in your head, huh?

Most people have a junk drawer, or a junk cabinet, or a junk closet depending on your "hoarder level". I think at our house we have all three; but for this week's effort I decided to just tackle the catch-all cupboard right inside our front door.

They call it junk for a reason. I probably gave or threw away 50% of what was inside this cupboard and some of the things were unidentifiable. I'm sure I thought they were important at some point.

Taking up a huge portion of space hidden behind those unsuspecting doors were glass vases; remnants of random romantic efforts over the years. I quipped to Breck that if I wasn't so generous then we wouldn't have such a large collection of these vases gathering dust on the top shelf. She did a quick calculation and reminded me that there are at least 3 occasions per year that might warrant flower-giving; birthday, anniversary, mothers day (and that's not even including the countless "I'm-sorry-I'm-an-idiot" flower-giving occasions) and we've been married for 10 years. There were not 30 vases there.

I'm sure I've already given some away in the past.

The Cleanse: Week 10 - In Defense of Clutter

For those who are counting you may have noticed that I missed a week of The Cleanse.

In honor of this article titled In Defense of Clutter I decided to take a week off and embrace my life in a household with 2 small children that is far from magazine-photoshoot-ready.

We're not a candidate for being on the Hoarders show anytime soon, so I guess we'll survive without purging any excess "junk" this week.

Never fear, my mission to reduce the clutter will resume shortly.

The Cleanse: Week 9 - Contact Lens Wearers Unite! - or - Bald Men Unite!

Whether you like to admit it or not, each individual person from a married couple has some better genetic traits than others that they will get passed along to their children. For example, Breck has great eyes, teeth, and hair that we hope our girls will inherit; and I have...uh...

Oh crap!

Anyway, my eyesight without glasses is pretty terrible. Lucky for me some of the most successful architects wear/wore glasses. But just in case, I also wear contact lenses. For all you contact lens wearers (or former wearers for those lucky laser surgery folks) you probably know that almost every time you buy new lens cleaning solution or when you go to the eye doctor you also get a new contact lens case. Why do they do this? I'm not sure.

I've been wearing contact lenses for about 17 years; as you can imagine, more than a few lens cases have piled up in my bathroom drawers.

I can maybe make the argument for keeping 2 cases, but in the spirit of The Cleanse I decided to purge all but one.

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Speaking of getting free stuff at the doctor. Even though my dentist knows I use an electric toothbrush he still gives me a new manual brush and mini tube of toothpaste after every visit. Again, a huge pile of these freebies has accumulated in my bottom drawer.

Out they go.

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Not only have I never been to a professional salon for a haircut in my entire life (no offense Aunt Gaye...and thanks for all those free haircuts when I was growing up), but I've also had the same "haircut" for the past 10 years.

It's pretty easy to do myself, and doesn't require many tools. Unfortunately when you buy a set of electric hair clippers they usually come with about 57 extra attachments along with scissors, a comb, and a free coupon to Great Clips for when you screw things up at home.

I don't need all those extras cluttering up my drawer.

The female that I share the bathroom vanity with requires a lot more maintenance tools for her daily routine and didn't participate in this purge of bathroom clutter, so our vanity is now a bit lopsided. I hope it doesn't tip over.

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Does anyone else read the words UNITE in the title of this post as UNTIE? Nope, just me? I guess dyslexia is another trait of mine that I hope my daughters don't acquire.