My wife generally avoids television.

She prefers to read books and magazines, consuming information in a less visual way and avoiding the heaping platefuls of horseshit served up by mass media.  Except she loves shows about hoarders. 

Fascinated by the psychological goop that creates the need to collect crap in amounts that become unsanitary and, in cases on Lifetime, life threatening, she responds by purging stuff routinely.

"We have three sets of dishes, can we get rid of two sets? We don't need them, right?" 

She's right, of course.  That set of dishes I've had since college can probably be shuffled off.  Likewise, the shoes I no longer wear, the t-shirts of random goofiness I thought were a hoot back in the day but sit at the bottom of a crate in our closet, and the antique coffee grinder I thought was so cool but have  never used once.

There are other things that we, as Americans, need to haul out to the dump.  Societally speaking, we could all use a solid pruning of our mental sheds.

• That box of old ideas of racial animus?  Time to get rid of that shit.
• That t-shirt with the "You're so GAY!" written in faded iron on letters?  Toss it.
• That crusty, moldy idea that you need a girlfriend/boyfriend/partner to validate your time on the planet?  Dump it.
• That stained chair we sit in and declare how unfair life is?  Too crappy to even re-upholster.  Take it out in the alley and hope someone snatches it away.
• Petty wars with trolls and assholes on the internet? They kind of smell like chickenshit and entitlement.  Trash 'em.
• That Trader Joe's paper bag filled with excuses for why you work in a job you hate or aren't doing things you enjoy?  Christ, that bag is so full the handles can't sustain the strain of picking it up.
• That filmy scum of Free Market, Supply-Side Economic Theories that screams "Give the rich more money and it will fuel the rest of us!"  Scrub that away with bleach.
• Those shoes you wear when you are feeling sorry for yourself?  Surely someone with a much harder life than yours could use them.

I've seen some of those hoarder shows and a lot of us aren't that different from the woman so filled with OCD and germophobia that she can't allow someone to throw out a piece of urine-soaked newsprint because she hasn't read it yet.

Time to clean things out.