Redundancies

Now that both of mom’s houses are emptied, I find that we are surrounded with duplicates and triplicates of certain sundry household items. While I appreciate extra shaving cream and plastic wrap, some days it feels like we live in an oddly stocked gas station mini-mart. Bathroom products live in the travel trailer, three bathrooms, and an old-school travel case. When I travel by air, I rummage through all five of these places to gather what I need in order to comply with TSA regs, and keep my suitcase from becoming ridiculous. As I stumble across the extra products I brought back from the houses, I find the grumpier side of my personality expressing itself. While our home is capacious, I wish dad’s half-used shaving cream canisters (like, five of them) made me nostalgic, but they make me wonder why there were more than two (two houses), and why mom didn’t find new homes for them when he passed away, like she did for so many of his clothes. Probably for the same reason mom has six bottles of the same hand lotion in her apartment…

What makes me notice the redundant items most is when I use something up, and, with glee, deploy the last of, say, the extra shampoo to the shower. Five whole inches of shelf space reclaimed! It’s a control thing for sure.