As her friends waited impatiently for her to get dressed, Mercy Boyo dashed from her room to another and on each trip she added a piece of clothing until she finally got fully dressed. The general question as this drama took place was ‘Why are your things not all in the same place so that dressing doesn’t take forever?’
“Because she buys too much and hardly ever gives the old stuff away and therefore needs extra storage space,” was her husband’s spontaneous response to the question causing a ricochet of laughter across the house. Abiodun Boyo said, “My wife and I have a wall-to-wall wardrobe unit with six compartments. I use only two and she, the rest,” said the thirty three year-old public servant. “Only her stay-at-home cloths and some of her shoes are in it. Her more serious cloths and shoes for work and outing are in the wardrobe of the guest room. The wardrobe there is the same size as the one in our bedroom but my wife is doing a good job of filling it up very fast.”
He said, “I once made the mistake of giving away some of her things I thought she hadn’t used in the last one year and had no need for. That one action has taught me a lesson to last me this lifetime and the next.”
In many homes it is common sight to see wives, mothers or sisters moving between rooms as they dress up; picking an item in this and another item in the other until they are fully dressed. There seems to be a justifiable reason for this even though some men like Mr. Joe Usi think it’s a waste.
The building contractor said his wife went haywire with acquiring cloths when she got pregnant. “She was not such a crazy shopper until she got pregnant.”
A first time father-to-be, he said, “I don’t know where she got the idea that there was a maternity version of her regular clothing. Initially, I thought she was actually buying maternity outfits but I later found out that she was not buying them but simply replicating her regular dresses in bigger sizes. She is normally a size twelve her ‘maternity dresses’ are size fourteen or sixteen depending on the fit.
“When I asked her what she’ll do with them after she gives birth; she said for the ones she really likes, she will have them reduced to her after birth size. The others she will give away. I dared not say out loud, ‘what a waste of resources’. I thought she could just have made nice maxi gowns and other funky outfits which are also in vogue and can be worn anytime regardless of body conditions. But at a time like this I know better than to air my views,” he said laughing.
“Now, I have literarily had to beg her to please not fill up the entire place so that when we our baby is born there’ll be space to put her things away tidily,” Usi concluded.
“The men can say what they like. If we don’t dress well, they complain. When we take the necessary steps to ensuring that we look good that is another problem because they can’t leave with the bye products of these steps, Mrs. Rebecca Boyo playfully lashed back at her husband.
The mother of one said, “It’s not that all my cloths can’t fit into our bedroom wardrobe but when my husband starts rummaging through it for one piece of clothing or the other, oh boy, it’s like a tornado went through the place. That’s the reason I leave only my stay at home cloths there.” The front desk officer added that, “I can’t let him mishandle and disrespect my cloths like that. They are my identity.”
The reverse is the case for Mrs. Eugenia Ediale who may have been a shopaholic too but for the fact that her wings were clipped from day one. “I have never been ‘allowed’ to use the wardrobe in our room. When we first got married seven years ago, asking my husband to make room for me in the bedroom wardrobe was like encroaching in unwanted territories. So I ended up using the guest room closet. I think having little space is what discouraged me from having too much clothing items.”
The thirty nine year old insurance agent said, “Now that we have our own house he incorporated a room into the building big enough for me to have wardrobe and store my books but not enough to relax in. he has mischievously told me he prefers for me to have all the space I want for my cloths but not enough space to relax outside our bedroom. This, he said, is the reason he made it as reasonably narrow as possible whilst meeting the necessary needs.”
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