Accumulations

I just figured out what’s wrong with our house. It’s not a motel.  I owe this revelation to a gentleman named Wayne (The Train) Hancock. Mr. Hancock, in a bar in Austin, Texas, whacking away at a guitar and backed by a merry band of music assassins, many of them wearing dark glasses to cut the unbearable glare of an Austin night, blared out his love for motel rooms.

Up till then I had squandered many a Sunday afternoon surveying the crammed corners, bristling bookshelves, densely-packed drawers and toppling towers of outdated periodicals that make up most of my household furnishings. Now at last “The Train” has identified my problem: too much settling in.

So here’s to tourist courts, hotels large and small, resorts, bed and breakfasts, guesthouses -- upscale, economy, mainstream, off the beaten path and downright weird. They all have one thing in common:  they’re designed for temporary occupancy. Hang up your clothes, lay out your toilet articles on the vanity top – if there is one – and empty your suitcase into the drawers. Okay, you’re done. There’s no more room.  

There’s no more room at my house, either. But that’s because of our one-way door. Stuff comes in, but nothing goes out. I bought an electronic reader so I could store thousands of books in a gadget the size of a large Mother’s Day card. I had visions of being able to use the built-in bookshelves in the living room to display some decorative items between the books, the way they show in model homes. But somehow, in the two and a half years I’ve been collecting virtual books and word puzzles on my e-reader, we’ve added so many printed books that they gave the bookshelves indigestion, and the overflow is collecting on the hearth and under the bedside tables.

I took a job a few years ago that lets me work at home. It was a little like inheriting a famous diamond. It was profitable – well, not that profitable – but it came with a curse: more stuff.

It took me three years, but early last spring I finally transferred the files, manually, from the computer tower to a laptop, and I no longer use the three dot matrix printers or any of the boxes of software that came with it. But the printers, the data transfer gizmo, and the two old computer towers have hunkered down like a bunch of old cats crouching on top of the two-drawer file cabinets. I’d take them to an electronics adoption center if I could get to them, but they’re more or less stuck behind a shoebox full of tapes and CD’s, a file box full of blank 4 x 6 cards, a cardboard crate of continuous feed computer paper, a bottle of air freshener, four overflowing inboxes, a DVD of World War II battles in France, a homemade plywood magazine file (empty), and a plastic container of five-inch floppy disks.

Help! Does anyone know the way to the nearest motel?