Yesterday, Kurt and I spent our afternoon sifting through the boxes we've been harbouring in our storage room. Our house came equipped with a fair sized storage area, and we've packed it full of our "really important" boxes full of things, as we have claimed for the past 2.5 years, were crucial to our very existence.

Well. Let me tell you a little something about the things we have kept in that room.

99.95% of it was crap. Useless, pointless crap.

When I moved to Ottawa in 2002, I mailed 13 boxes out ahead of me via Canada Post. This cost a couple hundred bucks but hey...it's stuff I needed. Leaving it behind was simply not an option. Obviously, I could not have lived without my tribal sarong (makes a good curtain), empty perfume boxes (as in, the boxes moved to Ottawa, but the perfume did not), or my 2001 Britney Spears calendar. (Again, I moved to Ottawa in August of 2002). Funny enough, many of those original 13 boxes remained unpacked, moved from my downtown apartment to my ghetto apartment and then to our house, and largely ignored until yesterday.

I set myself up on the couch, in front of a PVR'd movie ("You've Got Mail"...thank you, Women's Television Network), two empty garbage bags, and got to work. By the end of the day, I had filled 7 garbage bags of clothing for goodwill, three huge bins of clothing for consignment, and 4 garbage bags of garbage/recycling/shredding. It was finally time to say goodbye to lipsticks with no caps, half-empty bottles of cold medication from my first miserable Ottawa winter, Captain Morgan's swag from various unmentionable university bar nights, half-burnt tealights...I never knew I was such a hoarder. I really don't know how I will live without this stuff.

Kurt's boxes were no better. Amongst every single bank statement and Rogers offer that he has received since the mid-90's, we came across every single birthday, Christmas and thank-you card he has recieved...in his entire life (he is 33...do the math). As well as letters from bored high school girlfriends working at summer camp (I got the distinct impression that Kurt did not write back), photos of Kurt with an afro-mullet (definitely in the "keep" pile), and his smurf house. Avec smurfs. One of them has a kayak.

After 5 hours amongst our messy pasts, we finally called it a night and left the basement...somehow knowing eachother just a little bit better. Tonight we head back down for Round 2...and since I know that somewhere, Kurt has a ziploc bag full of his foot-long chopped off braided ponytail (with beads), I'm a little bit scared.