Sisyphus and I

Ancient rocks by Neil Degney

My partner and I decluttered for about 15 minutes. He got increasingly annoyed as the minutes went on and very sarcastic. Kind of things he was saying:

"Where are you going to put that? There is nowhere." (that last sentence on constant repeat)

"I will sort this out - eventually." (very slow and very angry nasty voice)

"Do I have to do this RIGHT now?"

"I suppose you expect me to move those things too."

This is decluttering things that he had told me he was throwing out, but I said let me try and sell them first. I tried for six months with no interest, so I said OK now you can get rid of them. We talked about this for three weeks or so, with him saying, yes we must do that. Ok, yes they can go...

During the time they had sat, things were piled on top of them and several boxes of unknown things were below them.

Because there is no where to put something you shouldn’t try. You shouldn’t make an effort to find somewhere or get rid of the things in the middle of a pile that you know you want to get rid of because other things are resting on them (as the pile just keeps getting higher with breakables in the middle too).

We rearranged. I found a place to put the breakable light fitting that had been the middle top bit of the pile. We moved things over making room to move in the small room. He decided to store a large backpack in front of the full length mirror. I said that it couldn’t stay there. He said there was no where else. We worked out what was in the boxes (one half-empty) and he grudgingly decided he could put the things from the half-empty box somewhere else. But not today.

It’s an uphill battle. Add in the world’s most spoilt cat trying to be involved by being underfoot and scratching people’s legs because they should be paying attention to him and it could almost be funny. Or not.