The Top 10 things I observed while cleaning my closet

As an out-of-work newspaper guy, I fill my time:

1. Working out at the Muscatine Community Y.

2. Bicycling.

3. Applying for jobs and networking.

4. Blogging and spending too much time using Facebook and Twitter.

5. Knocking off overdue projects — the subject for today.

Saturday, some friends — Ratt, Matthews and Eggie — helped me put a new clothes dryer in the basement. That enabled me to spend part of Monday catching up on laundry and cleaning my closet. Out with the winter clothes; in with the spring and summer clothes.

Here, then, since I’ve noticed they are so popular in the world of WordPress, are my Top 10 observations from cleaning my closet:

1. Golf shirts multiply faster than rabbits. How else can someone who doesn’t golf explain having so many of these shirts? I could wear one every day for three weeks before I run out.

2. T-shirts pile up even faster than golf shirts.

3. Nothing makes a fat guy happier than taking a shirt that has never fit in the two or three years it has occupied the back of the closet, pulling it on and realizing it now fits.

4. The same goes for suits and sport coats — all of which fit a lot better. (Now I just need to a get a job to which I could wear them.)

5. Three words: Too many sweatshirts.

6.  Closets in 141-year-old houses are just too small.

7. I could greatly reduce how much space my clothes take up by simply getting rid of all of my sweater vests. And I just as well quit wearing them anyway. Rick Santorum has sort of ruined it for the rest of us.

8.  Andy Sipowicz, the character played by actor Dennis Franz on the ABC-TV show, “NYPD Blue,” during its 12-year run that ended in 2005, usually wore sports coats and ties with short-sleeve shirts. Even I know this is a fashion faux pas, but that hasn’t stopped me from owning even more of said shirts than Sipowicz did.

9. I finally have enough pairs of bike shorts to have a clean pair for every day of this year’s RAGBRAI. This makes me very happy.

10. Ditto when it comes to bike jerseys.

Anyway Monday’s project is done. Not sure what today will bring, but I’ll think of something.

Reading this list has made me aware of one thing: Looking in my closet illustrates how much crap made in other countries many of us have bought and don’t really need. My plans for today may very well include a trip to Goodwill to get rid of some of this stuff.

Today’s quote: If your parents never had children, chances are… neither will you. — Dick Cavett, American entertainer (1936-)