Uncontainable

Dear Container Store:

I know you mean well, with your dozen varieties of hooks and $49 cereal sorters, but this just isn't going to work.

It's not you, and I apologize if I gave you the wrong idea when we first met in that gleaming Dallas showroom.

You caught me looking. I admit I was checking you out.  There was something seductive about all that sparkling acrylic, each piece nestled suggestively into the next. The collapsible come-on of the day-glo laundry sorters took my breath away.

It was as close to obscene as a storage system could come.  

And then there were all those other women, hanging on your every closet accessory. They couldn't get enough. They were three-deep at the registers, their faces flush with your shiny, stackable promises.

God, how I wanted to believe.

I ran my fingers over your nested bins. My pulse raced at your take-charge innovations for taming closet clutter. I found myself reaching for your pantry devices. I was overcome with desire for things I had never felt before. I was ready to take you home, throw open the dark recesses of my basement, open my drawers and let you into places so long neglected, I no longer knew what they contained. 

But I knew, even as I gasped at the sight of your sleekly muscular shelving unit, that we were not right for each other.

I have to be honest with myself. The organizational deficit in my house is not that it isn't colorful enough. I could line the hallways end to end with fuschia and melon laundry bins but it would not increase the chances of a dirty sock ending up in one. 

It is not your fault. The underside of the couch emits a strange gravitational pull. It is stronger than both of us. We can't fight it.

The garbage bag under the sink, on the other hand, seems to project an outwardly directed force that prevents trash from reaching its interior, while the inside of the pantry looks as if we hired squirrels to open our cereal boxes. Do you really think your gleaming polycarbonate cannisters could make a difference here? 

We would have had a weekend together at most. And then, we'd only end up blaming each other.

It doesn't take much to see that the storage problems of one suburban household don't amount to a cannister of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.  

We'll always have Dallas.

SK

Photo (top): Here's looking at you, lid.

Photo (right): Of all the hampers in all the stores, in all the world, she had to crawl into mine.

From the Home Storage Archives: Bin There, Done That

Comments

[Ok, Where Was I?]

Brilliant, as always. I love the photo--that so sums how containers are used in real life.
Sarah

[MommyTime]

You are a brilliant writer, and this is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. Sadly, it also precisely describes the state of my house. *sigh* Why is all that organization such a tease?!

[Audubon Ron]

She does the last five minutes of Casablanca! Now I know I'm in love.

Here's looking at you, kid!

[Raz]

Oh, man, I so shouldn't be excited about the prospect of organisation that this post gives.

Mind you, I found a bottle of hairspray under the sofa. I'm not sure that's normal.