Stuff and Nonsense

I hate housework. That said, I love a clean house; therefore, I regularly engage in that onerous activity. All cleaning chores from the benign and practically effortless act of dusting to the disgusting and arduous task of bathroom scrubbing are equally repugnant to me. I'm not sure, but probably the transitory results are why I shun housework. Mop a floor, and one spill later, it's ready to be mopped again.
When my children were small, I would attempt to clean the whole house in one fell swoop once a week. By the time I finished the last chore, the first room I had cleaned would be strewn with toys and food and all manner of childhood detritus. I naively thought that when my children grew up my house while certainly lonelier would be cleaner. However, I have discovered an inverse relationship between childhood clutter and adult junk. As my children's clutter decreased, my and my husband's junk increased. You see, we have become afflicted with that most dreaded of all household maladies, hoarding. Yes, we have become hoarders.
Drawers, cabinets, closets, and the attic all bulge with stuff. And since all built-in storage in our house is full to overflowing, we have resorted to boxes and plastic storage bins. Soon we may have to rent space to accommodate our obsession.
In my saner and more inspired moments, I know there are practical solutions: garage sales, charities, and even a trash dumpster in the alley. In fact, we have set aside about 50 books for the library book sale, pulled from the kitchen cupboard at least 20 florist vases for the local thrift shop, and even vowed to trash the gift bags from Christmas 1985. It's follow-through that we lack. After we haul out a few loads of superfluous possessions, our interest flags, and we start filling in the empty spaces again.
I guess I could philosophically justify our actions by saying our acquisition of things is a metaphor for the longing we feel for the days when our children and their activities filled our house. On the other hand, we probably are just lazy and a tad compulsive.