The Queen of Stash: One person's junk drawer is another person's obstacle

The other evening I found myself in dangerous territory. According to my wife's very specific boundaries, I was in a place I was not allowed to be. No, it wasn't the strip club again-I was in my wife's kitchen. She was away at the store and I wanted to scoop some ice cream for the kids. Naturally, the ice cream and the bowls were in the kitchen, so I had to cross enemy lines. I was doing it for the kids, so it seemed justified to me.

In the kitchen, I struggled to find our ice cream scooper. I couldn't use just any old spoon because the last time I did that I bent a "non-ice-cream-scooping" spoon, which is one of the many reasons I was banished from the kitchen in the first place. While I was looking for our "official" ice cream spoon, I opened a few drawers. One of the drawers I opened exploded. The drawer was packed with hundreds of random papers that flew all over the place as soon as the drawer was opened and the pressure was released.

Initially, I thought it was a booby trap, like ink dye in a bank bag. I would never be able to clean up the papers in time. I knew my wife would be home soon and I would be caught red handed in the kitchen. The papers, which were strewn everywhere, consisted of expired coupons and school-lunch menus, which were vintage 2003. I couldn't figure out why she kept these random papers. Is it important to know what day of the week two years ago our kids ate Sloppy Joes?

I was starting to think the drawer wasn't a trap at all, but more of a crutch. I suddenly realized my wife was a stasher. Somehow, she found a way to compress a square yard of paper into a four-inch-deep drawer. A lot more carefully, I opened another drawer. Curiously, I found more and more papers stashed away, including an envelope with my ATM card, which she swore to me never came in the mail. I spent two hours on the phone with the bank calling them liars and claiming they never sent me my new card.

My wife was hiding the fact that she was incredibly unorganized. Sure, the kitchen table was cleared off, but every single cabinet, drawer, and crevice in her kitchen was stuffed with-pardon my French-crap. Was that what she was buying while she was at the store? More random paper to stash?

I started to investigate further. What else was she stashing and where? I looked through every drawer in the kitchen. They were all filled to the brim with unsharpened pencils, playing-card decks with only 51 cards, random-sized dead batteries, pennies, cheap broken jewelry, and Christmas cards with pictures of our friends' families from six years back. Most of those friends aren't even still married. I know that everybody has a junk drawer, but my wife had an entire room filled with them.

The only reason it bothered me that my wife stashed stuff is that she has spent the better part of our marriage claiming that I am a packrat. She says this because my garage is filled with car parts that I absolutely refuse to throw away. The difference between her junk drawers with broken hair clips and rubber bands, and my garage with car parts is someday her car will break down. I will be able to use a part I did not throw away to fix her car, making her life good again. What could she have in her junk drawers that is going to make my life good? The backing to a lost earring? I don't think so.

I considered bringing the outside garbage can directly into the kitchen and doing some much-needed spring cleaning, but then I remembered I wasn't even supposed to be in the kitchen, let alone be touching her stuff. What would my wife do if she didn't have the grand-opening flyer to a restaurant that opened in 1999? It was becoming clear to me why I wasn't allowed in the kitchen. It had nothing to do with bent spoons, or my uncanny ability to confuse the refrigerator with the freezer when I put away the ice cream. (I'll admit I have ruined a few quarts of ice cream.) It had nothing to do with my kitchen ignorance. She just didn't want me to find out about her dirty little secret. Her secret stash. I did my best to cram the papers back into the drawers and then used all of my weight to get the drawers to shut before she came home.

When my wife came into the house, I was innocently sitting in the living room, where I am allowed. I was going to confront her with the evidence of her chronic stashing, but then I thought better of it. Instead, I decided to let her have her junk drawers. So she likes to keep year-old losing lottery tickets in her kitchen. In the garage, I still have a transmission from a car we don't even own anymore. I think we'll call it even and live happily ever after with all of our junk. m

For his wife's birthday, Rob is thinking of getting her a paper shredder. Copyright 2005.