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HANGER MANAGEMENT
I’m gathering trash from around the house, attempting to be a good guy by removing all detritus before Trash Day arrives tomorrow. You know, Trash Day—the day the earth-rumbling truck swooshes by and efficient city workers expertly pick up all our leavings and disappear into the sunrise, with only upturned garbage containers remaining as evidence of their existence.
As I go from room to room, I am amazed at all the un-reusable stuff we toss. But when I arrive at Liz’s dressing room I am confronted with a white plastic pail, from which protrudes a mangled mass of clothes hangers ready for expulsion.
This is the day after one of Liz’s annual Spring Rearranging Days, times when she goes through her vast accumulation of clothing and accessories and becomes the Lone Rearranger, dedicated to purging the undesirables and organizing the keepables.
Today it’s the orphaned coat hangers. Tomorrow it will be the newly-assessed shoes—I’ll glance into the same room and see an orgy of intertwined footware of every description piled and ready for triage. It’s an awesome sight.
But for right this minute, it’s the coat hangers, which are impossible to pack into trash bags, since their hooks tear into the plastic, their shoulders bulge out and break the sides. And they desperately cling to one another in powerful protest. It’s a wrestling and muttering match you really don’t want to be around to see and hear.
I put this kind of thing off for days, but eventually the hangers will have to go, lest Liz proclaims that it is them or me.
I become the Great Peacemaker, my sworn fidelity to the Lone Rearranger unshakable.
As I dispose of the wired critters, I hide a couple for their utilitarian purposes—as tools to use in unlocking car doors, unclogging sinks, retrieving stuff from under the sofa, reaching high for things…and so on.
They are safely hidden till Liz finds them next Spring and resumes the expulsion ritual.
But for now, during this one moment of satisfaction, I am the Great Peacemaker, the resident expert on both Domestic Harmony and Hanger Management
© Jim Reed 2014 A.D.