House full of records, books, and holiday-themed lingerie

We have a problem in America and in my house. It's a problem that I am okay living with, at least the "my house" part of it, but a problem nonetheless. Our problem is possessions. John Lennon imagined a world with no possessions, yet must have been a dreamer, because instead of taking steps to realize this, he took steps in the opposite direction, releasing several albums to sell, many of which I own on vinyl. If my calculations are correct, over 68 cubic inches of my house are filled with objects that bear John Lennon's name.

In addition to John Lennon, I have another 3,000 or so records taking up space in my house. Now I'm not by any means hoarding these. Around 3 years ago, a former record store owner was selling a truckload for $200, and Jamie not only encouraged me, but actually talked me into buying it. I have been slowly sorting through and cataloging these albums since. Every duplicate I find goes into a "sell" box and then to a thrift store if I can't sell it. I mean, who needs 8 copies of John Denver's Greatest Hits when one is clearly enough? Every unique record I haven't listened to gets a spin of at least one side, then goes onto the keeper shelf if I like it, or follows the same procedure as the duplicates if I don't.

Our whole porch was filled with boxes of records upon delivery that night.

At this point, 925 of them sit on the shelf of keepers in alphabetical order by artist, the artists I know better having their releases ordered by year. Sometimes I look through this collection in awe at the eclecticism. The juxtaposition of records on the shelf highlights the absurdity of this collection. The 9 Symphonien of Beethoven sit next to A Night at Carnegie Hall with Harry Belafonte, while Joe Cocker and Leonard Cohen buddy buddy up with Natalie and Nat King Cole. The oddest being either Merle Haggard next to Hall and Oates or Waylon Jennings next to Jethro Tull. Yet some perfect transitions exist, for example Billy Joel turns into Elton John.

Alphabetical order can have its problems sometimes though. Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship sit next to each other, but Starship, after dropping the "Jefferson" part, sits off by itself. I would feel weird putting John Mellencamp out of order to be with John Cougar and John Cougar Mellencamp, even though they're the same man. I've considered filing under "John Mellencougar", but that's ludicrous. And what about when an artist breaks out from the band? How should I organize The Supremes, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and then Diana Ross?

Sometimes while listening, serendipity will rear its head and seem to set up different records next to each other. One time I listened to Janis Joplin's Pearl, which contains "Me and Bobby McGee" then put on Kris Kristofferson's eponymous debut, containing the original "Me and Bobby McGee", which unbeknownst to me at the time, Kristofferson wrote. Sometimes my records will get in fights with each other. Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd will go back and forth between "Southern Man" and "Sweet Home Alabama." Other times I just get mixed messages. Michael Jackson tells me not to stop until I get enough, while Journey tells me not to stop believing and Fleetwood Mac encourages me to keep thinking about tomorrow. What then is a man to do when he's had enough believing and thinking about tomorrow, stop or don't?

Our possession and organization problem is not strictly tied to records. So much of our house is filled with things we don't use. For example, I generally read books in one of two ways: 1) Out loud to the children 2) on my Kindle. Yet, here in the living room, we have hundreds of books, most of which I will never read to the kids, and many that I already have on my Kindle. Yet, we go to garage sales and thrift stores and cannot turn down a hard back copy of David Sedaris' Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, even though I've already read it on my Kindle, and we had another copy that we recently gave away. And I can't tell you how many copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer we've bought, forgetting that we already have multiple copies at home.

Garage sales and thrift stores happen to be my family's biggest detriment to organization of our belongings. They are our passion. They are our weakness. When Jamie and I were getting to know each other, I gave her a ride in my car, and she was immediately impressed when I had to move the bags that I had obtained while "Goodwill Hunting" from the passenger seat. We ran into each other regularly at the Salvation Army. And to this day, we hit up multiple shops every week to check out the new stuff and the deals.

That said, we really are pretty thrifty and frugal when it comes to the things we purchase. When we buy clothing at a thrift store (usually only when it's half off) we wear it until it starts to tatter or we become bored with it, and then we either hold a garage sale or return it to the thrift store. We try to purge at least once a year so we don't hold on to too many things that we don't use. We also hardly ever buy anything that we plan to keep indefinitely new, the only real exception to that being underwear...of which Jamie purchased for me one Christmas, kind of.

This part gets a bit personal, but I can't not share it. I opened my gift after the kids went to bed, and it was some Christmas-themed lingerie (think like "Mrs. Claus made Santa's naughty list"), which was purchased jokingly in the after-Christmas clearance sale, to which my immediate response was, "There's no way this will fit me." Obviously, it wasn't meant for me to wear; it was for Jamie to wear...for me. It turns out, she and a girl friend had gone Christmas shopping and bought similar things as gifts to their respective husbands.

After the initial wear (we'll call it that), the "Santy Panties" sat in Jamie's bottom dresser drawer for probably a couple years collecting dust. During those years, I would occasionally encourage using some of the clothing from that drawer, only to say about the Mrs. Claus get-up, "Except for this...it's not even Thanksgiving yet."

During a spring cleanup time, we were scouring our closets and drawers for things that were not needed any more, and since it was too personal an item, instead of being sold at our yard sale, the Mrs. Claus lingerie was going to go straight to the thrift store. It sat off to the side in our bedroom in a pile of other things we didn't think would sell. After the yard sale, we filled several generic white garbage bags with the leftovers and the pile of things we didn't try to sell, and I drove to the Goodwill donation center down the road.

As I arrived, the high school age girls working there, seeing that I had several bags came out with a few shopping carts and helped me load them. The two carts were full, so they took them back inside, but I had one more bag...one incredibly stuffed bag. I figured, "I'll just carry this one in." "You can put that in the empty cart there," one of the girls said as I walked into the donation center. As I was lifting the bag to put into the cart, it ripped open and dropped to the ground, propelling the item on top to jump out of the bag into the air and land on the ground by itself. Sitting perfectly there between me and the teenage girls was the Mrs. Claus lingerie. "Oops," I said, as the color on my face reddened to match the lingerie itself. I picked it up, shoved it back in the ripped bag, put the bag in the cart, spun 180 degrees on my feet, and walked out the door without another word.