In which I over-use the words stuff and things and I don't care

OK, so we have this totally rich world kind of problem: we have too much STUFF.

We are like Double Stuf Oreos if you took two of them apart and stuck them together with the extra stuff in between. Which is actually the part I avoid. I think the white stuff is gross. I like to scrape off the stuff and eat the chocolate cookie part.

So we are over over over-stuffed with stuff.

Not in a hoarders way. We don't have piles of newspapers or heaps of anything, except for my clothes on the chest at the foot of our bed. We just have many things in our storage room, things to hang on walls, things to put somewhere puttable.

Things things things. Things that are nice quality. Things that have history. Things that appeal to one of us or the other.

We have a large house. We do. It is Victorian, and as such has almost no closets. But we have a big kitchen, and ample cupboard space.

We actually have room for everything. I understand that this is an enviable position.

And yet, none of us can find anything, ever.

Because the cupboards are crammed full. And you have three adults putting things away where they think they should go. We have ridiculous redundancy, which is what happens when you are almost 40 when you get married.

We each had a full kitchen. And Nick liked his plates. And his cutlery. And I liked mine - they were my grandmother's - and while my cutlery was nothing special, I like it better than his.

And glasses! We have an insaaaaane number of drinking glasses. And all three of us like different shapes. So the ones I hate, Betty likes, and the ones I like, Nick dislikes.

This is without even touching his beer stein collection, or his plethora of etchings of buildings. Or my assortment of statues of Hindu gods and goddesses, Buddha heads, and other, if you're not into that kind of thing, "oh, how ethnic!" art.

None of the pieces either of us consider art are negotiable, however. I'm quite sure he'd get rid of the bulk of mine and I'd certainly do the same to his.

But you know, you love the person, wagon wheel, Roy Rogers, garage sale coffee table and all.

Nobody has ever accused me of being remotely tidy. But when I lived alone, my cupboards were organized, as were my closets. I could find things. I had a system.

But our crammed-full cupboards, our overwhelming amount of stuff, all of these things make all of us crazy.

And we don't know how to tackle it.