A magical transformation

Last year, around this time, I shared how Shane has pretty serious hoarding tendencies, that he won't let me donate even a single item in his possession because he's fully capable of inventing new uses for them. If a homicidal psychopath showed up at our house pointing a gun and demanding to see the warranty for a 2008 Dell Laptop that weighs as much as me, do you want to know what would happen? WE WOULD LIVE is what would happen because Shane still has both the laptop and the warranty. He's going to fix it up some day.

What's funny is that he's one of the most absent-minded people on this planet and if I were to get rid of some of the things that he wasn't using anymore, he wouldn't even notice. If only I didn't have a conscience!

Yesterday, as per routine, was cleaning day here at the Shankita household. We love our Sunday mornings 'cos we sleep in, cook brunch together - a specific kind of brunch that we're sure normal human beings would never enjoy - watch something while eating, watch some more of that something after eating, play/read separately for a bit, and then start cleaning up the whole house meticulously. As you can imagine, the whole of Sunday is a blast for me but Shane doesn't really look forward to the two hours of cleaning that follows a few hours of chillin'. Which is why, yesterday when I got up excitedly to clean, he delivered a perfectly memorized speech. It included a lot of pleas for mercy, offers to curl up and watch movies with me, and promises to deep clean the next day at 6 pm sharp. I must admit that the offer to procrastinate was appealing at the time, so we decided to just fold a bit of laundry and leave it at that for the time being.

On Saturday, however, we'd gone out shopping and I successfully convinced the man to shop a bit for himself. We found a bunch of cool superhero and comic book themed t-shirts that he's a sucker for (NERD!) and I began to mentally make a list of all the old shirts and t-shirts he's been hoarding for years that I could maybe get him to donate now. These new clothes were in our folding pile and a happy Shane began trying them out then and there.

What happened next was a miracle. He was on a roll, y'all! He tried on every single item in his wardrobe yesterday and made separate piles of things he wanted to keep and discard. There were piles of clothes he would definitely wear to work, maybe wear to work, definitely sleep in and most definitely discard. It was an orgasmic organizational extravaganza at the end of which, he let me donate three big bags full of clothes.

And the best part? I didn't even plan for this. No scheming, conniving and conspiring to get him to donate all those old t-shirts that had holes in them were two sizes too small to begin with. Those t-shirts were literally from his teenage years and he could no longer fit his giant head through the neck! We even found a black shirt of his that I'd hidden because I was embarrassed for him. It had changed colour with years of washing (looked almost a faded brown/purple/grey) and had a white patch around the armpit area. It was so disgusting that no one would even want to use it as a cleaning rag. It goes without saying that that one didn't make it to the donation pile but ended up straight in the trash. What was surprising to me was that he wasn't even remotely mad when he realized I had hidden it from him, and didn't offer the slightest bit of resistance when I offered to dump it in the donation pile.

Anyway, all's well that ends well and boy oh boy did this end well! It did, however, involve getting rid of some of his clothes that I personally liked and thought were in perfect condition but I didn't say a word. I didn't interfere with his decision-making process and we now have a clean, organized and may I even dare to say, minimal wardrobe.

At the end of it all, he remarked that I had somehow gotten him to agree to have two days of cleaning instead of one, but we both knew that I played no part in this. It was all him.

And thus, we know it's true. Couples do, in fact, turn into each other with time. Some, like I've observed before, even begin to look like each other. So all we have to do now is wait for me to grow a beard.