Last week we cleared a mountain of crap off this garage shelf:

Today I cleared a mountain of wine off the garage floor:

And I cleaned out the garage refrigerator. And poured out an entire forgotten 12-pack of carbonationless Sprite that expired in 2016. And scrubbed the weird yellowish liquid that perpetually weeps down the garage walls and no the drywall isn’t peeing and we aren’t aliens or witches so don’t even think any of that or I’ll put a hex on you.

Also: It’s a delicate balance to scrub the grime off the garage-door opener without repeatedly opening and closing the garage door. It’s like Jenga. Or Jengarage. Or Garenga.

Shirts I have found while excavating:

• Social Climbers team T-shirt for the BEST-NAMED *EVER* Hustle up the Hancock stair-climbing team
• (motto: We like it on top)
• AIDS Marathon team tank top that I personalized with GO JAKE GO
• (Putting GO JAKE GO on the front of your marathon shirt is like giving a handy script to 26.2 miles of people who are ready and willing to cheer you on at the tops of their lungs)
• The back of the T-shirt I wore for my first marathon
• (Putting MY FIRST MARATHON on the back of your first marathon shirt guarantees 26.2 miles of back slaps and atta-boys from every runner who passes you)
• The GO JAKE GO T-shirt I wore for many subsequent Chicago Marathons
• The GO JAKE GO T-shirt I wore for the New York Marathon
• (New Yorkers always wear black)
• (Because they’re all artists and tortured intellectuals who snap when they hear poetry)
• My Pigman Triathlon T-shirt
• (The pig head used to glow in the dark)
• My Forever Plaid T-shirt
• (That’s me on the bottom)
• (Notice it doesn’t say GO JAKE GO)
• (Because the character I played was named Smudge)
• (But that’s the only reason)

Crap we’ve found in old boxes:

A little hand loom for making hot pads and stuff with a photo of two sailors exchanging hand-loomed purses under the BIG LIE WORD “straits”

Epic pants purge! With the discerning help of my fashion-maven niece!

From the left: Give-away shorts. Give-away jeans. Keep shorts. Keep jeans.

Great-read books that rose to the tops of the piles in tonight’s brief excavation of the storage unit:

Two are bipolar. Two are totally gay. One is a fascinating historical-fiction fantasia (Let the Great World Spin—read it!). One is the pre-McSteamy actual reference book that I received for Christmas 1981 back when I had dreams of being an ER doctor. But it qualifies as a great read only if you really REALLY want it to be.

So. Many. Clothes.

When the doors are off the closet and you can see in one glance how obscenely huge your collection of clothing is, it’s very easy to start purging. Those hangers on the left mark my progress before it occurred to me to take a picture to hold myself accountable. If I get the entire left half open, perhaps I could put some shoe cubbies there.

Things I found in my storage unit today PART III

• A nephew
• A bejeweled jacquard whorehouse lampshade
• A general lack of shame

Things I found in my storage unit today PART II

• A green glass head
• A green headless dressmaking doll
• An apparent history of questionable taste

Things I found in my storage unit today PART I

• A friendly nisse
• Blue suede cake mix
• Prince Albert in a can
• Brett Somers
• Elton John

In the midst of all my heartless, unsentimental purging of once-beloved shoes and clothing

... I may or may not have just ordered some pride apparel I totally don’t need.

First-in-the-morning doctor appointment >

mole scraping > car appointment > three doughnuts while I waited to hear that the car guy couldn’t help me > referral to a different car specialist > estimate and new car appointment set for tomorrow > failed attempt at tying a bow tie in my car > fancy luncheon with lovely people > but first I had to stop in the bathroom and tie my bow tie like a civilized person > nagging headache > more desserts > work > teleconference presentation > untied bow tie because my fat neck was choking in it > still with the nagging headache > return stuff at Target > drop stuff off at Goodwill > drop of bag of expired medications at the police station > yes, that’s a thing > still have a fucking headache > cued lines for an off-book rehearsal > finally home > rakish untied-bow-tie selfie > GODDAMN FUCKING HEADACHE > bed.

When you clean out your spice cupboard and discover you’ve accidentally been running an opium den

EPIC. PURGE.

30+ years of extant pay stubs, boxes of checks from banks that no longer exist, investment statements from companies that long ago dissolved, oversize document packets from multiple refinanced mortgages, receipts from the days when they included complete credit-card numbers, tax documents older that the magic save-for-seven-years rule, rolled-over insurance policies, vested and cashed-in company stock options, long-forgotten parking tickets, repair documents for cars that no doubt now rust in junkyards, and even three neatly folded and carefully notarized wills from before I decided to leave everything I own to the Melania Trump Be Best Foundation For Whatever The Hell Be Best Is Supposed To Mean.

I know lots of it is perfectly safe to be dumped in our recycle bin, but I decided I’d feel safer if all of it were destroyed, so every piece of paper and possibly compromising detail of my life is now locked in a secure container and headed off to be brutally shredded—all for the low, low price of $1 per pound.

I won’t even tell you that it weighed in at a whopping 77 pounds and force you to do the math in your head. But I’m definitely keeping the receipt for the next 30 years.

Treasures I uncovered today in my storage unit, part two:

• My collection of tourist-trap figurines from my world travels that I figured I’d never find again among the bajillion unopened boxes I have yet to spelunk BUT I DID
• The glazed ceramic Eiffel Tower ring stand/change dish I have no business owning because I don’t wear rings or carry change but it’s charming and Francophiley and I love it so shut up
• A red Chicago Marathon cowbell that all the spectators jangled along the race route to keep us fired up or at least running in fear from all the crazy people jangling cowbells at us
• National Treasure, the American Da Vinci Code and my gateway drug to swooning over all things Justin Bartha
• MY HELLA COOL A CHORUS LINE BOOK
• Three stray unmatched socks I thought might possibly pair up with the pile of lonely, forlorn unmatched socks I’ve been holding onto for years just in case their prodigal other halves eventually showed up ... AND TWO OF THEM DID!

Treasures I uncovered today in my storage unit:

• Gershwin “Preludes”: A Festival of Sharps, Accidentals and Hand-Breaking Intervals
• Hy-Vee Hy Value Card from the dawn of the Dark Ages when barcodes and loyalty programs were first invented and scannable plastic key fobs were REVOLUTIONARY UTILITARIAN ACCESSORIES
• 2€ coin from my last whirlwind tour of London, Paris and Barcelona—the European economy and the very status of the UK in the EU have been in precipitous flux since I so carelessly brought it home a decade-plus ago and removed it from European circulation
• Hand-made What Would Fred Do keychain given to me as an opening-night gift by a long-ago Ginger in a long-ago Follies where we’d together looked for Astaire-piration as we choreographed our featured white-tie-and-marabou-trim number
• Adventureland pay stub from my living-the-dream summer of 1986 where I sang and danced up to 13 shows a day, 6 days a week for two-digit wages that even then were probably criminal
• Debussy’s “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum”: A Festival of Flats, Accidentals and Knuckle-Breaking Tempos
• Blockbuster card that’s laminated in plastic so thick it’ll outlast, global warming, thermonuclear annihilation, cockroaches and the trump family’s concurrent prison terms

We are going through TONS of clothes in an epic March to the Purge

which is supposed to be a Civil War reference but it’s not a very good one so if you don’t get it I’ll totally take the blame for making a not-very-accessible allusion but anyway Bitch Kitty has found one of our giveaway piles and decided to send everything remotely dark to Goodwill with a complimentary layer of white fur.

Goodbye for now, obscene amounts of Christmas crap!

I’ve finally gotten you culled and organized enough to pack you away with a passable amount of OCD compliance. I feel a nagging compulsion to buy all matching bins next year so you look less overwhelming when you’re put away again. But as an imagined need, that would be even more obscene. So I won’t even bring it up.

I’ve spent my evening epic-purging my clothes and shoes, and then—obvs—rainbow-organizing my First-World-obscene shoe collection ... all while rocking out to the Full Monty cast recording on repeat. As one does.

A brief docent-led tour:

Above: as top-down rainbowy as I could organize my running/athletic shoes, with rows of white and black on the bottom. All topped off with a size-large Jake the Drake Beanie Baby, which I bought as an investment in place of opening any IRAs or 401(k)s.

*taps head to show how good he is with money*

Also above: as top-town casual-to-formal as I could organize my Converse-genre sneaks, with my forlorn dress shoes on the bottom wishing in vain that I’ll someday have a reason to dress above my demimonde station. A disorganized basket of flip-flops sits to the left, along with an ugly antique ladder I’ve cleverly repurposed as a belt holder. My gym towels perch on top. Because I had no idea where else to put them.

This is my consumerist shame.

Sometimes you need to purge 150+ shirts from your bloated collection to stumble on some long-forgotten favorites

And then write referential poetry about them:

I purged my shirts, said Hoarder Jake,
Clear-cutting outfits in my wake.
A striped one here, a solid there,
Pink ones that match my underwear.

Deforestation of my shirts
Hits the clutter where it hurts,
But makes a clever metaphor
For Dr. Seuss’s Lorax lore.

I am the Onceler of my clothes,
And in eliminating those
That fill my boxes, shelves and drawers
I find the ones I want to wores.

How many super-redundant superhero shirts (including one that says CAPTAIN AWESOME but sadly no longer fits) does one super-hoardy man-boy need?