Cleaning out the garage brings out differences

By Staff
Leada Gore, Editor
In every household, one person is a saver and the other is a tosser. In our household, Greg's the saver and I'm the tosser. That is, he's saves everything and I throw everything away.
This ying/yang normally works quite well until we do something that brings these differences to a head. That's what happened recently when we decided (OK, I decided) we needed to clean out our garage. I was hoping I could do the project on my own, since I knew my idea of organization and Greg's differ greatly.
He did volunteer to help, however, and the problems arose immediately.
"What is this?" I asked, producing a long Styrofoam box with a small lens inside.
"It goes with my rifle scope," Greg said. "Where's the box that was in?"
"The shipping box?" I asked. "I threw that away."
I could tell he wasn't happy. I didn't question why I was wrong to throw away the shipping box for another box, but I thought it better to let that one go.
With Greg looking over my shoulder, I proceeded to look through a box of old papers. Inside were receipts, scraps of paper and an old, faded warranty to something that I tossed before he could question me.
The toss-out pile was growing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Greg wonder over to the stack and sort through it.
"I might need this," he said, pulling a small scrap of wood out of the stack. "You never know when you're going to need a piece of wood."
"If you do," I said, taking it out of his hand and putting it back into the stack, "we'll go get a new one."
Sensing he was going to lose this battle, Greg went over to his tool area, I guess to make sure I hadn't thrown out any of the 20 tubes of caulk he has accumulated.
While he was distracted, I managed to go through an old box. I don't know how long it had been sitting there, though I guess you could do some sort of tree-ring analysis on the dust coating it. Inside were old videotapes and CDs. Some were so old the cases were faded and the exact title of the movie or CD wasn't readable. Still, I knew better than to ask if these were things we needed to keep. Greg saw what I was looking through.
"Don't throw those away," he said. "I want to keep all of those."
I, too, know when I'm fighting a losing battle. I left the box where it was but, as Greg turned around, I did manage to take one CD from the box and add it to the trash pile.
So, if you want a copy of Michael Jackson's "Bad" CD, circa 1987, you're welcome to come and get it out of my trash can. But do me a favor and don't tell Greg. He'd probably decide he wanted to keep that, too.