Yeah, my boyfriend will be moving 1700 miles to be with me in about three weeks.  In those three weeks, I will be in Mexico for about 2.  Thus, I have about one free week.  I'm a fairly disorganized person.  I need to find space for all his crap.  Somehow, we have to get two people's crap in here, and I don't have time to clean.  Would it be okay to ask him to ditch all his crap on the side of the road?  Or is it more lady-like to get rid of all of my crap?  What would you do? 

- Marsha
Boulder, CO

This sounds like math, Marsha, and in order to properly figure out the full extent of the equation, here's what we first need to do: figure out which numbers are involved.  1700 (miles), 3 (weeks), 2 (Mexicos), 1 (free week), and 2 (people's crap).  I think if we utilize a simple formula, we will determine that your train will crash into a Denny's around Thursday afternoon.  Perhaps this wasn't right.  Because your train could have headed west, and then it would have only been a matter of time before it plunged into the murky depths of the Pacific Ocean or a Denny's out west. 

This is a good question.  I will assume by "crap", you are literally talking about feces.  And it makes sense that you'd want to allocate plenty of room for this.  I suggest outright you build a vomitorium because, although not a perfectly named room, it would certainly remedy the situation as well as be completely feasible in your free hours of time. 

But assuming you are going against the grain and not talking about feces, but instead of material possessions, that's an even stickier pickle to trick.  While you don't want to be too demanding of someone who is traveling so far to see you (according to Google Maps, he is making the trip all the way from Calgary, Canada), you also don't want to have to make concessions on his behalf.  It is, after all, your home you must redecorate for him. 

The quickest solution is to simply mask your fireplace or wood-burning stove and make it look exactly like a walk-in closet.  Tell your trusting boyfriend to simply put away all his clothes, and then if he gets cold, have HIM throw logs into the closet and if it happens to incinerate all of his precious belongings, so be it.  He brought it on himself, the poorly circulating hoser, eh? 

Of course, this might seem harsh, and if you truly love the man, maybe a more gentle tack can be employed.  Draw up pre-prenuptuals.  Just because you're not getting married yet doesn't mean you can't already declare half of his stuff to be yours.  Of course, half your stuff will be his.  (And here's where the aforementioned math comes into play).  If each of you have half as much stuff, you will have divided the amount of things you own in half.  If you were to continue to draw up more prenuptuals, you would effectively reduce your crap exponentially.  Be careful not to draw up too many prenuptuals, though, for this will result in your prenuptuals outnumbering your actual possessions.

Prenuptual agreements sound like they're pretty long-winded, though, and you don't have time.  One final suggestion I'd have would be to move.  If you don't have the room to store his stuff, move to a bigger place.  A 1000 square foot home in Boulder, CO costs upwards of $300,000, according to some website that I just looked up.  To compare to that, for $300,000 you could move to RALEIGH, NC and get a traditional style 4-bedroom house with 3000 square feet, a two car garage, and an unhealthily plastic looking real estate agent named Judith.  So move to Raleigh.  I'm sure your Canuck-friend would prefer to live there anyway.  Many less moose in those parts.

I hope I was indefatigably helpful.  This is Fats signing off with his newest catch phrase: "Either write for advice, or go away." 

Take me back to the List o' Wisdom