decorative storage

You can't change a man. This is a universal fact that too few women choose to embrace, which only leads to disappointment. As someone who was raised by a single dad, I understand this truth all too well. My husband is like my dad in an almost scary way, including their proclivity for accumulating junk.

Nathan and I have been married for just over two years but I have already discovered what will probably be the secret to a long, happy marriage and it can be summed up into two words: decorative storage.

Women must give up the notion that their husbands (at least the messy husbands-- I am told there are some neat ones out there but I think that could also be an urban legend) will stop piling up their stuff in weird and inconvenient places. Nathan used to come home and empty his pockets onto this corner of our kitchen counter top. I am already generally annoyed at how little counter space we have and I hated seeing all of his little pocket things sitting around but instead of trying to get him to change his habit I just bought this little bin with a cute pattern and put it on the shelf just a few inches above his corner of counter space. I told him that I was not expecting him to change what he was doing or where he was putting his things, my only request was that he would put them in something instead of on something. Problem solved. Essentially the same thing happened when I noticed his pattern of throwing his dirty clothes into a pile next to our bed at night. Twenty dollars and a wicker basket later and we have marital bliss.

The last time I posted I wrote about our horribly messy house. Our first problem is that we don't actually have any bedrooms or a garage so pretty much all of our stuff is in weird and inconvenient places. The second problem is that we have to work with my husband's habit of accumulating junk and spreading it out as far as the eye can see.

We have this space outside that is visible pretty much just out of the corner of your eye when you are looking at our front door, which is where we keep our oil tank and barrels that we use for our business in addition to random building supplies and other junk. We can't really do anything about the tank at this point in time because that is our business and we save a lot of money by keeping it on our home property. And, like I said before, you can't change a man so the other junk is not likely to go anywhere anytime soon. I have been asking for a solution for a long time because I hate that the sight of it welcomes every person who comes over to our house but it wasn't until Bob the appraiser came over that Nathan realized that it affected not only me but the value of our property as well.

So within a matter of about two days after we decided to bust a move and get our house into working order, I finally got a fence: decorative storage for the out-of-doors.

I absolutely love driving up to our house now because when I see that fence I can say to myself, I don't know what is behind that wall and I don't care. Whatever is inside is for him, but the fence is for me.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. The great Oz has spoken.

-The Wizard of Oz, 1939