A look inside our days together
A few days ago in the hectic hours of the afternoon when Leta was home from school and the phone in the office was competing with the waterfall of email in Jon's inbox, I snuck downstairs to reorganize my cosmetics drawer for a blog I was writing for HGTV. Yes, that is a link to something I have written elsewhere. Yes, this is shameless self-promotion. Yes, I have a hard time sleeping at night. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?
Anyway, I'm knee-deep in old lotion bottles, trying to figure out if I could stick a knife down inside one to get at the last few drops. Kind of like a peanut butter jar, you know? You don't want to throw it away when there is even the tiniest bit left, and next thing you know you've got your arm inside that thing scraping every last bit with your knuckles, and suddenly your husband walks in and you're lying on the floor, your entire hand in your mouth, peanut butter drool pooling on the floor around your face. And you know he's thinking, my God, I want to bang the shit out of that.
See, I have hoarding tendencies that I have to fight every single day. And here and there it creeps up on me, and in this instance it was my cosmetics drawer. Bottle after bottle of lotion and hair product that I should have thrown away but didn't because I was going to use those last few drops. I WAS, OH YES INDEED. Except, those are famous last words for hoarders. That and "but it has sentimental value."
All you hoarders are nodding and looking around to make sure no one is seeing you nodding.
And here I remember that one day my hair looked AWESOME, and if I ever threw away that specific spritz my hair would never look awesome again. Maybe that's not hoarding. Is it superstition? Paranoia? Jon calls it nutball insane. Ah, but I didn't choose to marry me! Meaning, I win.
Where was I? Right. Sitting in the middle of a mountain of empty bottles when all of a sudden I heard my niece Mariah yelling from Leta's room, "Marlo! Marlo! MARLO!" And I looked out into the hallway to see that Marlo had crawled out of Leta's room and was charging toward me. Except her crawling is still figuring itself out, so she sort of looked like a wounded soldier dragging his broken legs out of a ditch. And she was mumbling, "Maaaaama... Maaaaama..." in a hoarse voice that sounded distinctly like a wounded cat.
She was coming for me! Whether I liked it or not!
I love that this is going to be one of the memories I have of this milestone, and when I reenacted this story to Jon, as well as I could through hysterical laughing, I was like, there was my baby coming at me like a zombie emerging out of a muddy grave. She is going to kill it at parties.
You must have a dooce® Community account to leave a comment.
If you've already registered, login.
If this is your first time posting here, snag a free account.
FM Living
freckleface said:
OMG! OMG! First!
I really wish you got that on video... priceless!
EDIT: Now that my overexcitement over having first comment (something I've dreamed about since I started reading your blog months and months ago, inspired by all the "firsters" before me) has receded and I've had a chance to actually read your entire post, I laughed SO hard at the lotion hoarding part. I'm just the opposite. I LIVE for the day that x beauty product starts to show signs of running out, so I can run out and buy another different one that I've never used before. Actually only a few days ago I bought new shampoo & conditioner even though I have about a HALF LITER of my old shampoo left. I'll send it to you, k?
PS: I hope I have a zombie baby when I grow up!
04.23.10 - 11:15 AM / 1bzunder said:
Oh, I love it!
04.23.10 - 11:10 AM / 2Chai_Bella said:
I have a tendency to save items and/or use them in the exact same order as I did on a day that went really well. Like maybe it was my order of items that made the day good. So I'm probably nutball insane, too. :-)
04.23.10 - 11:11 AM / 3alto girl said:
Please tell me you videoed that. I snorted out loud here at work. And I'm still laughing.
04.23.10 - 11:11 AM / 4dtelisman said:
If you watch "Hoarders: Buried Alive" on TLC, you'll feel much better about yourself. That's what I do for a little self-esteem charge. I watch that, Intervention and Sober House with Dr. Drew, and I then feel pretty damn near perfect.
04.23.10 - 11:16 AM / 5Buffy4444 said:
Great tip for you if you want to eeek out the very last bits of the lotion from the bottles: remove the pump (toss or recycle), put a baggie over the top and secure with a rubber band, turn the bottle over and wait a day or so. Now all the lotion that was at the bottom is now at the top (and not leaking out because you've put the baggie on the end) and you can squeeze it out into another container and not waste a bit. My husband thinks I'm a freak for doing this, but I hate not being able to get every last little bit and I paid for it, so I should be able to use it. :)
04.23.10 - 11:22 AM / 6Allie said:
I have to fight the same hoarding tendencies every.single.day and you're right, it's a constant stream of "what if I need that someday and I don't have it" SLASH "My mom gave me that broken electric blanket when I moved away to college 8 years ago and I CAN'T BARE to part with it."
04.23.10 - 11:38 AM / 7Gemmyner said:
I know this feeling. Just about every birthday and Christmas I get new hair products, and a vast array of body/hand lotions. I cleaned them all out one day and if they were unopened I kept them and if they were opened, I tossed them. If I haven't used them up by now I probably never will. That said, I should donate the unopened ones too because obviously I'm not going to use those either.
Dtelisman: I can't bear to watch the hoarding shows but I have started watching Sober House and find it makes me feel pretty good about my life.
Have a great weekend.
04.23.10 - 11:41 AM / 8Coraniaid said:
Ok, so I'm a theatre geek & totally own one of those multi-tools. I use mine to cut open bottles to get out the last little bit of whatever. But, yeah, I save the bottles because I can use it 'someday'. I have to fight packratness every day.
04.23.10 - 11:42 AM / 9fidothefatcat said:
I always keep hair products, lotions, make-up, perfumes, etc. that only have a few drops left. I want to make those last drops count. I convince myself that I am saving those last few drops for a special occasion when I need to use that perfect product one last time.
04.23.10 - 11:51 AM / 10KarenInToronto said:
First-time commenter, long-time reader...
Just had to reply because I always face this huge dilemma with leftover products... even if I don't want them, I can't just throw them out because of course the bottles are undoubtedly recyclable... but if I want to toss them in the recycling bin, then I have to clean them out (to be a good citizen). Of course lotions and shampoos etc. are nearly impossible to clean out (especially shampoo - I had bubbles coming back out of that extra hole in the sink forever!). A bathroom mini-reno will lead you to do crazy things, so one day, my husband and I just went through everything, cleaned out the containers, and then recycled them (except for the ones I thought "might be useful one day)...
Sigh...
04.23.10 - 12:03 PM / 11Jess F said:
Now if only you can teach Marlo to say "braaaiinnns."
04.23.10 - 12:05 PM / 12Greta Koenigin said:
I love when hoarding stories go zombie. You are good. And thank you for the visual of hoarders at their laptops looking to see if anyone is looking. I'm at Sbux now and this is particularly funny. I had to stuff a LOL like it was a sneeze. I hope I didn't pop a blood vessel in my eye, because the school auction is tomorrow.
04.23.10 - 12:08 PM / 13abvint said:
*still nodding* ...... so, that makes me a hoarder AND someone with a head twitch....TOTALLY date-able ... ;-)
04.23.10 - 12:13 PM / 14harugirlie said:
We just remodeled both our bathrooms and found out that we are hoarders, so much hotel shampoo, bath gel, shower caps! Neither one of us even uses a shower cap! Anyways, we ended up taking all our bathroom junk to a local church.
04.23.10 - 12:14 PM / 15Laura Jones said:
Maybe she had dry knees and wanted those last drops of lotion.
And the advantage to being a hoarder is that when your kid says I need a 3 headed dog by 8 o'clock in the morning you go find 3 pink kittens, chop the heads off two and sew them to the big pink one then use the leftover black spray paint from another project and voila, Cerberus. For pictures: http://richmondwriter.blogspot.com/2010/03/3-heade...
04.23.10 - 12:43 PM / 16William said:
The problem with Zombie babies is that someone needs to chop up the brains before the zombie baby can eat them. otherwise they may choke.
04.23.10 - 12:43 PM / 17suburbanmummyuk said:
Hilarious.
I am a chucker, my husband the hoarder...Nataliya where have you put this. Ermmmmm
04.23.10 - 12:48 PM / 18mstinak said:
At least you don't hoard perishable food in your drawers with your nearly empty lotion bottles. That's when things get disgusting.
Not that I would know or anything.
04.23.10 - 01:07 PM / 19juliensharp said:
Wish that was on video.
04.23.10 - 02:01 PM / 20Anxious Annie said:
I find that if I cut the plastic bottles in half (not an easy feat, risking ruining the scissors and losing a digit) I can use all the lotion, cream, serum, whatever. It's worth the risk.
On another note, has Jon read about the 2 iPad LIFETIME limit? Careful, he might hyperventilate on that news.
04.23.10 - 02:11 PM / 21Anxious Annie said:
By the way, food banks often take unopened toiletries from hotels to redistribute. So if you tend to grab those but never use them, donate them.
04.23.10 - 02:13 PM / 22The Christine said:
Oh lordy. Thanks for that magnificent second paragraph, needed that today.
04.23.10 - 03:03 PM / 23MsKathleen said:
I just opened my overstuffed cosmetic drawer and I swear it yelled, "Clean me!" -- How embarrassing!
04.23.10 - 03:06 PM / 24mamadouce said:
fellow hoarder here! though I mostly have it under control since I DO NOT WANT TO TURN INTO MY MOTHER!
But the lotion thing I can't really relate to since I never seem to get to the bottom of any single bottle, I just keep acquiring new ones. They don't have expiration dates, right? RIGHT?
But hair products are another matter. I have hard time throwing away a bottle of conditioner if there is even the slimmest possibility of some left in the bottle. At least with that I can mix it with water and get some use.
Are we the sanest crazy people ever or what?
04.23.10 - 03:32 PM / 25RCBJMBADB said:
Hey Heather, I'm a longtime reader here (almost since the beginning)! Haven't commented since the community I suppose. Anyway, What you do is cut the top off all the lotion tubes, so there is only the bottom inch or so left, and vwalla, all the last drops are usable! You will kick yourself for throwing them away!
04.23.10 - 03:53 PM / 26Figtron said:
Dude.
Aren't kids the greatest thing ever?
I recently cleaned out my cosmetic CABINET. Yes, it took me all day.
Well done!
04.23.10 - 03:59 PM / 27brookland said:
My roommate hoards like crazy. I don't -- the clutter drives me nuts. I do the opposite -- I won't buy a new bottle until I can't squeeze out anything more... and then I usually end up with dirty hair for a day or so.
04.23.10 - 04:03 PM / 28Janice said:
Are you sure she wasn't hurrying to make sure you weren't going to throw away her favorite hair products? Her hair is always 'just so' in her photos...
04.23.10 - 05:19 PM / 29the niffer said:
Oh I love her.
04.23.10 - 07:53 PM / 31