Living With Boys

Before I got married, I anticipated many things about my new stage of life. I knew it would be a transition period. I knew that taking two lives and making them one doesn’t just happen in the blink of an eye with no bumps. But no matter how much you try and anticipate, the reality of syncing up your life with a boys life, in a tiny apartment, is complicated.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I have been trying desperately for us to consolidate our stuff.  Now the apartment my husband and I live in was already my home before we got married. I.E. I had a place for everything, there was decoration, and all of the tools/appliances we needed. And when my husband moved in originally, pretty much all he brought with him was his clothing and toiletries. But then last month, I come home to find our living room filled with boxes–the remnants of his life before me which he brought over from his mothers house. And suddenly, living with a boy was chaos.

You see, I am a purger by nature. I may not be the neatest person ever, but about once a year, I get in an organizing frenzy in which I decide which of my clothes, books, random mementos,etc. need to go in order to simplify my life. However, when I went through my husband’s boxes with him, it was obvious that purging is not his nature. I understand the desire to keep cute letters and little handmade gifts from over the years. Those have a place. I have a file folder with all of the sweet cards/letters I’ve gotten over the years. What I didn’t understand was the inability to get rid of the hundreds of Pokemon cards that have been sitting untouched in a dusty box since he was in middle school. I understand that those cards constituted a part of his childhood, but in the urban environment of constant moving and limited space, my motto is use it or lose it. It is the same with the playstation 2 complete with guitar hero guitars, a dance dance revolution pad, and about 100 games. Now, I am not harshly anti video games, and if he really used the playstation on a weekly basis, I would be more than happy to find a storage place for these things. However I can calculate exactly when the last time he played video games was, and it has been at least 8 months.

I don’t mean to sound like a control freak, and I don’t want to be one of those wives who makes their husband throw out all of their possessions because they “don’t work in the space”. I want to incorporate his style, and he actually brought a few pieces of artwork with him, which are not exactly my taste, but which I will be happy to put up because I want him to feel that our home is just as much his as mine.  I just wish I could push him to recognize the possessions that he doesn’t need to hold onto anymore. He’s growing up, and I just want his stuff to reflect that fact.