About a year ago, my German wife was in the middle of her teacher training (Referendariat) here in Hannover, Germany. It was a busy time for her, involving lots of classroom observations, seminars, lesson plans, tests and essays. (Her future career as a Gymnasium teacher depended entirely upon her performance during this period.) Needless to say, it was also a stressful time. The days were long, the nights were short, and patience was a commodity in high demand.
One day, as my wife came home from school, I greeted her with a smooch and helped take her hoodie off. As I carried the hoodie toward the closet, I noticed she was following me. Like, she was right on my ass, and I realized she did not trust me to hang up her clothing properly. She has good reason for this though: I am a terrible folder of clothes, I hangs things in random places and my attitude toward laundry in general lies somewhere between “good enough” and “fuck it, it’s just gonna get wrinkled anyway.”
Given my spectacular failures as a dry cleaner, I wasn’t at all irritated as I opened the closet door — even though my wife was hovering over me like an anxious mother whose son is about to stick his finger in hot coffee. I understood it, and I was cool with it. I was downright surprised, however, by the sheer volume of clothing in my wife’s possession. Her “side” of the closet — which comprises 90% of the whole — was so packed I could not hang the hoodie inside. Seriously, I was unable to separate the other items widely enough to fit even one more thing.
Now, I am the sort of man who follows the doctrine that one should own only so many articles of clothing as one’s closet can hold, so it was with no small amount of amazement that I remarked:
“Woah. You have way too many pieces of clothing. You gotta get rid of some of those.”
To which my wife replied with a heavy sigh:
“I know… I need a bigger closet.”
Oh God, My Wife Is German. 
Haw! If you checked out *MY* closet(s), you would consider yourself a lucky, lucky man that she only talks in terms of a bigger “closet.” Singular.
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Be happy she isn’t a shoe-freak! ☺
Joke aside…though in clothes more our father’s child “I don’t care” there are good reasons to honour them, not only to look better.
Our mother is a clothes- AND shoe-hamster!
And she takes very good care of them.
Fashions change fast and after a time everything comes back.
Just recently our mother gave many of her really pretty dresses to my younger sister, who has about the same size. Now our sister looks as if she spent big money in a designer boutique.
These dresses are several decades old!
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