"I can't believe we're doing this again," I said with a bit of frustration.
Marcie, bless her heart, was being firm. She was also trying to be sympathetic towards my plight.
"Leo, you have too many clothes."
I looked at her before looking at our closet. There hung four suits. Two were from before Marcie and two were because of Marcie. There were seven dress shirts. Except for the one black one, they were all white.
"You only have shareholder's meetings twice a month, Leo," Marcie started. "You also only wear a suit maybe a few times a month for sales calls when Matt brings you along. Do you really need six white dress shirts?"
I conceded with her idea. We looked at the dress shirts with a critical eye to ensure we could pull out the ones that were a bit more worn out than the others. Contrary to some beliefs about my OCD, I do not rotate clothing that well anymore. We picked out four of them and put them in a box for the donation center at the local non-profit. It was then we started to tackle the mountain I dreaded.
"Leo, why did we get so many tropical shirts?" Marcie asked.
I really tried not to laugh. I felt like I would have busted my appendix if I didn't have it removed already. Every time we went on vacation to an island destination, I always bought a tropical shirt...or three. It was only because Marcie always said I never had color in my wardrobe when we went on vacation. Beyond a few colored polos I used to have, she was right. Looking in the closet, I saw that I was up to nine of them.
"You never even wear them at home, baby," she said putting a little sweetness in her voice.
Five found their way into the donation box. The closet was starting to look emptier as we kept pondering. It was then we went into my dresser. She held up three packages of the boxer briefs I bought.
"Leo?" she asked.
To be fair, I went through all my underwear when I first moved into Marcie's place. I switched from the briefs I used to wear to the boxer briefs that Marcie loved me wearing. As per my tendency, I always had a few packages of extras. I had always been a hoarder in the sense that I kept extra packages of T-shirts and underwear so there was never an emergency if the washer broke down or something.
This clashed with Marcie's way of thinking based on the way her and her late husband were. Mitch, her late husband, made it his life's work to ensure his wife had a place to live after he passed. Marcie and he would work off a fixed budget, so there was never a reason for stocking for certain things. This was her way she was before I came into the picture. There were times since we started being a couple that she would bristle at the thought of spending too much money on things or splurging.
