Too much (and not enough) stuff

There’s a lot of heavy concerns going on in the world right now, so to distract you from all that, here is a lighthearted peek into the minutiae of my life. Specifically, the many, many, too many items of minutiae in my life. I’m not a hoarder, really. Nor did I stockpile during the pandemic. But I still have far too many duplicates of things. See, it goes like this:

Imagine I have a bottle of shampoo in both houses, one in Tucson, and one in Albuquerque. Ok, that’s fine so far. Now imagine that I’m in Tucson, and I notice that my shampoo bottle is getting close to empty. Not wanting to be caught entirely without shampoo, I buy a second bottle. All good so far.

Then we go to Albuquerque. While in Albuquerque I notice that my bottle of shampoo there is also getting low. So I buy a second bottle. Now I’ve got 4 bottles of shampoo, but two of them are nearly empty. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount. Not yet.

Then once I’m back in Tucson, I notice that my shampoo bottle (the original one) has, at most, one more day’s left. I realize I need to buy a new bottle. My brain chimes in and reminds me that I’ve already bought a new bottle. Yeah, I argue, but that was in Albuquerque. My stuff in Tucson keeps getting boxed up as the house is being remodeled, so it’s actually impossible to tell. There could be a bottle of shampoo in a box in the garage somewhere. Who knows? So I buy a bottle of shampoo.

Now there’s 5 bottles. Actually, soon we’re back down to 4 because I really did finally use up the nearly-empty first bottle in Tucson. Whew.

Next trip, John goes to Albuquerque without me. Every trip we bring more stuff to Tucson. I’ve been wanting my fine collection of shoe polishes, which I haven’t used since the pandemic started, so I ask him to please bring the bin of supplies from under the master bathroom sink, which contains my shoe polish.

When John gets back to Tucson, I unpack my bin of supplies that he brought (Yay, shoe polish, finally), and I discover an extra bottle of shampoo. At this point it dawns on me that I probably need to stop buying shampoo.

Then I head back to Albuquerque with John. While in Albuquerque, I run out of shampoo. I remember that I told myself to quit buying shampoo, but since my spare bottle accidentally went to Tucson with the shoe polish, I now have no shampoo in Albuquerque. So I reluctantly buy a bottle. There are now at least 3 full bottles of shampoo in Tucson and one full bottle in Albuquerque. Or maybe there’s 4 in Tucson, who knows at this point.

Then imagine that I go on a short trip involving a brief hotel stay. It’s a nice hotel but on the first morning I discover that I hate the hotel shampoo. I’d like to buy a bottle of what I prefer and just bring the remainder home with me. But never mind, I’ll just use the stinky hotel shampoo. Because I’m not buying any more shampoo ever again!

And that’s just shampoo. Don’t even get me started on coffee!

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Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism