A Conversation I DID NOT HEAR

Me: We really need to do some serious decluttering. Once the girls are back in school, I'm going to start getting rid of stuff. We need more organized storage and we need to make better use of the basement.

DH: Yeah, the basement is pretty ridiculous, isn't it?

Me: It's crazy down there. Things get tossed down there, never to be seen again. It needs a better structure.

DH: We have lots of shelves and stuff down there but we aren't making good use of them.

My antenna starts going up and I go into a defensive posture

Me: Uh huh....

DH: Like how you have five shelves of yarn in the basement. A lot of it has been there for five years. The stuff you haven't used, you should throw away.

Me: What?

DH: Throw it in the garbage. Take a garbage bag down there and get rid of it. If you haven't used it by now, you aren't going to.

Me: Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen.

I figure that was a better response than "La, la, la...I can't hear you" or running wild-eyed and flailing into the basement to make a nest out of the precious, precious stash and sit there, for eternity, scowling. It probably wasn't as good a response as explaining to the engineer husband that wool is a natural insulator and the fact that we have THAT MUCH in the basement probably means we are cutting our home heating bills by a third. No! No! We are cutting it IN HALF! I should look up the R-value of wool.