When Enough is Too Much

And knowing when to stop collecting things.

I have been spending this beautiful spring day trying to clean out my drawers. No, no, not my underwear. Heavens, no. I’m not that old yet! I mean the drawers in chests that hold my clothes. And it is one onerous and frustrating job.

I won’t finish today. It may never be finished — until my kids haul all this mess out into a dumpster after I’m dead and gone.

What woman needs 22 pairs of pajamas? And some bottoms and tops that have no matching tops or bottoms. Why do I have so many pajamas? Granted, the weather here can be cold as ice one day and warm and pleasant — or hot as blazes — the next.

Even so, I did not plan to have 22 pairs of pajamas. I think that’s excessive. I remember when I might have had one set of pajamas, and my husband, in his younger days, did not let me wear them most nights, so I just slept naked as a new baby. It felt great.

Now, bare skin, his or mine, sort of disgusts me on my pristine sheets, and I don’t want any skid marks on them, and that’s for sure. Skin cells and hair falls off clean people and collects in the sheets. Keep your jammies on. Ugh.

I tried to sleep without my pajama bottoms the other night before we left Florida, and it felt awful. Nothing to hug me as my big ole pajama bottoms do. I felt vulnerable and cold and got up to put my bottoms on. Hubs (now) always sleeps in pajamas in winter or summer, too, but he doesn’t have 22…