We're Going To Need A Bigger Trash Bag

So the closet in the guest bathroom is finally cleaned out. Took me two separate days to do it, but it's done. Sorry, no before and after pics (Lindsey, you always do such a great job with that), but there's nothing that pretty to see. Just evidence that I rightly come by my genetic heritage. Which is to say that if it might be remotely useful to me or someone else, I CAN'T THROW IT THE HELL AWAY.

A snapshot of the gleanings: three square plastic bar soap containers. Each with the dessicated remains of slivers/scraps of bar soap inside. What year was the last time anyone in this house used bar soap? Blood specimen collection tubes that expired in 1992. Enough phlebotomy supplies to start my own drawing station. Contact lens deproteinizer, all expired in the last decade. A Ronald McDonald toothbrush. About 7000 hotel shampoo and conditioner samples.

And even after you decide to throw something away, that brings up a whole new decision tree. Can it be donated? Can it be recycled? Is it even recent enough to have the triangle symbol and number on it? What's the most responsible way to dispose of this? Am I being green enough? Am I contaminating our water table? Am I pushing the environment ever farther toward utter ruin?

It's like cancer. It starts with one saved thing, and then grows like a hidden tumor from there. Sometimes it spills out into the entire house, and can't be hidden any more. It's my prayer that this never happens to our home.

Sometime in the middle of rejecting the idea of combining all these shampoo/shower gel remnants into one vile house blend, rinsing the gooey/crusty remains of God-knows-what shampoo/soap out of rediscovered plastic travel containers (I can quit using kitchen Rubbermaid containers now) and making an unholy mess in the sink, I went out to the kitchen and combined a shot each of whiskey and Kahlua into a glass. Then I went back in there and finished the job while sipping liquid courage. I reeked from sampling old perfume samples and checking if a small can of Nivea deodorant still worked. The splattery end result of combining white hand lotions into one large bottle had me looking like a certain kind of star in a certain kind of film.

I refolded and sorted all the towels and wash cloths. I even grouped like colors together. It looks nice. It's done.