About five months into our marriage, my husband and I had had enough.
No, not of each other, thankfully. His little idiosyncrasies — like making sure the kitchen pots are hung the right way on the hooks — plus my own nuances — like helplessly striving to get all the streaks off the bathroom mirror — aren’t enough to put either of us over the edge … yet.
But the profusion of boxes filled with some useful items but mostly useless literature were enough to push us to a cliffhanging situation recently.
A few weeks ago, we underwent fall cleaning — a belated version of the spring cleaning that never took place. The daunting task consisted of digging through papers upon papers — mostly my husband’s old bills and receipts and some seemingly ancient books and assignments from college.
Boy was that an adventure. Talk about dealing with scraps — both the physical scraps of old documents and the emotional scraps of a husband, wife and mother-in-law (his mom) trying to come up with the best way to clear out a cramped apartment on little food and a less-than-desired portion of sleep.
On top of that, we had to move furniture around and adjust our flat-screen television without disrupting the cable connection — the climax of the day. That’s when we realized we didn’t know where those finicky orange and green cords went and how in the world our TV’s new location would work without stretching one of those cords beyond its capacity. But we did it. And we’re all still alive to tell the story.
Our apartment has suddenly come to life as well — even if the two trees we purchased to “spruce” up the place, no pun intended, are admittedly artificial. Hey, we moved heaven and earth to get our apartment looking like it’s now a step up from a college dorm.
It was this kind of situation that led us to regret not hiring a home organization services company earlier. Angie’s List really would have come in handy that day.
But alas, the day is over. And now that the mammoth mess is out of the way and our living room no longer looks like the maze from “Labyrinth,” my husband’s back to hanging pots and pans and I’m back to cleaning those stubborn mirrors.
My husband and I hosted a dinner for some family friends last night. It was the first time they’ve been to our home, so I wanted everything to be perfect. I got home a little late, so I had to run around the house to make quick adjustments and final swipes with the dusting rag. No candlestick could be out of place, no 
