The Art Of Throwing Stuff Away: A Nevin Barich Blog Experience

My wife Ramona and I are scheduled to move into our new home next Saturday, which means packing up our belongings are well underway. Like most men, I'm bad at packing. I really am. I don't know how to separate things, and boxes utterly confuse me. Where does one buy boxes? How the hell do you put these things together? What size should I buy?

Plus, there's tape involved. And that's never pretty.

However, like most men, I'm an expert at throwing stuff away.

Throwing stuff away: No one does this better than men. Let me ask you: Have you ever met a trashwoman? No. Why? All trash collectors are men. It's in our DNA. So when it comes to tossing stuff out of here, my skills are top notch.

Ramona is out of town this weekend for work, which is good because when it comes to throwing stuff away, she has to analyze every single piece of "potential throw away" material. This takes forever. But since she's gone, I'm free to handle the throw-away trash task in a 10th of the time using the following "throwing trash away" rules of men:

1) If it's dusty, throw it away.

If there's dust on it, that means it's been there a long time. Which means it's unimportant. Which means it's got to go.

2) If it's not yours, throw it away.

Ladies: If your man goes on a "trash tossing" spree and you don't want your stuff in the dumpster, do yourself a favor: Hide it from sight. If it's on the ground, it's fair game.

You may be asking yourself:

"Why can't he just ask me if I should throw it away?"

Because a) That takes too long, and b) we're afraid you'll say no, and that will interrupt our momentum.

3) Don't get attached to anything.

Men are really good at detaching themselves from their feelings. So it's really easy for us to toss things without getting too sentimental. Our thinking is: It will leave us more room for all-new crap that we'll eventually toss.

And that makes us happy.

And 4) Don't waste time giving the stuff away to charity.

Here's a fact that men embrace and women don't want to admit:

Giving stuff away is a pain in the ass.

That's right, I said it. And you know what? You're thinking it.

If you're doing a whole "throwing stuff away" spree, you don't want to lug all that crap down to Goodwill. You know how long it would take to load the car? Know how many trips it would take to get everything down there? And that's not even taking into account the fact that you have to take the stuff to the car in the first place!!

I'm just saying what you're thinking, folks.

Now, some folks will say:

"Nev, some charities will pick the stuff up."

But then I got all these bags all around the house. And that's clutter.

Plus, it takes too long.

Screws up my momentum.

Anyways, for those of you calling me a selfish, heartless bastard right about now, consider this:

When I was throwing stuff away today, I came across a pile of Ramona's clothes.

Most husbands would throw the clothes away.

But I threw it all in a storage bin, so Ramona can go through it later.

I'm one of the good ones, folks.

I'm considered enlightened.

Scary, huh?

:-)

And now for this week's:

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE

Bristol Palin, the 19-year-old daughter of former Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential Candidate (and MILF) Sarah Palin, is hitting the speakers' circuit and will command between $15,000 and $30,000 per appearance.

The younger Palin, who got pregnant at 17 and later had a kid, will be speaking about the challenges of being a teen mother. OK, that's fine (not "$30,000 fine" but at least it's a topic she can speak to) but other topics include: Abstinence (Uh, yeah it's a little late, sweetie) and her outlook on life.

I mean...c'mon.

I can speak well about wearing holes with socks in them.

That's gotta be worth $4,000 a pop, doesn't it?