My Favorite Domer was home for Mid-Term Break (what other schools refer to as “Spring Break”) two weeks ago, and I noticed something I’d never noticed before.
He’s a stacker.
By “stacker,” I mean he stacks things — coins, papers, CDs, books, whatever — in little piles all over the rooms he frequents most.
Now obviously this tendency to stack didn’t start overnight. He’s been doing it for many of his nineteen years.
I just never realized it before we got new carpeting.
Whoa, new carpeting?
Yeah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back to the stacking.
As a child, MFD stacked Pokemon trading cards, Nintendo game books, Lego boxes, board games.
He even stacked an unseemly number of plush Puffkins in a colored rollaway bin.
He grew, and so did his stacks — certificates from whatever activity he was involved with, textbooks, video games, guitar books.
He’s a hoarder, too, but that’s another story.
You’d think I’d have noticed all those stacks, but I didn’t.
They appeared so gradually that I didn’t realize they were there. Kind of like the story about the frog who doesn’t notice his water is getting hot if you add it a little bit at a time, but he WILL notice if you just dump him into a bucket of hot water!
So, back to the carpet.
We finally decided to yank out the old carpet that was in the house when it was built and replace it with a new version.
It was way time to upgrade.
The old carpet had lasted 40 years — yeah, even the flooring guys had a tough time believing that! — but it had one major problem.
It was 100 percent cotton, meaning that, if you sat down on it, you stood up looking like you’d rolled in fur!
Everybody blamed my Sheltie; turns out, it wasn’t his fault at all.
Take that, all you blamers!
The new carpet, besides being a different color, is a new material. You can sit — heck, you can roll from one room to another! — without fear of fur.
The vacuum cleaner loves it, and so do we.
But something happens when you’re forced to clean your living spaces all at once. You notice things you never noticed before.
Things like stacks.
Musings by an ND Domer's Mom 
When I read your post, I thought of the quote “the years fly by ,it’s the days that drag” and I remembered the days I would take my son (now 33) shopping for a new matchbox car. He would ponder endlessly before he made a decision on which one he wanted. He is still like that when he goes shopping! And yes, it is amazing what can be discovered when you do a little cleaning. I used to tell my daughter that if she cleaned her room it would be like going on a shopping spree as she no doubt would find some lost article of clothing that she had forgotten about..thanks for the trip down “memory lane”!
Yes, I found ALL kinds of things I’d forgotten we had! Nothing of much value, of course, but it made for an interesting “Easter Egg hunt”! And you’re so right — leopards don’t change their spots, and neither do our kids. Mine has been a “neat-nick” all his life — takes after his parents, I guess!