Withering Glance puts off spring cleaning for just one more year

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

RN: I look at my desks — office, and home office — and I fear that my enthusiasm for that great American pastime, the accumulation of stuff, is going to hit the producers' sonar at "Hoarders."

CP: Please. I have seen the near-total non-clutter that is your domicile. You are to a "Hoarders" hoarder as Hillary Clinton is to Lindsay Lohan.

RN: I may not be covered in cat hair and sleeping between stacks of decades-old newspapers, but I definitely tend to shy away from the latter half of the phrase "spring cleaning."

CP: Well, spring so quickly becomes summer, at which point we may as well wait a year.

RN: Now you're talking.

CP: Actually, inspired by a self-pledge to attack the psychological millstone that is my basement, I recently filled an entire grocery bag with stuff and took it directly to the Dumpster. Farewell, moon boots that were attacked by some kind of foam-eating bacteria in the 1990s. You served me well.

CP: Nor should you. The minute you toss those, you will be invited to a cool-weather Habitat for Humanity build-a-thon at which a timeworn pullover would be just the thing. The kicking of yourself that will ensue.

RN: I will embrace the same attitude toward the 20-pound box of canceled checks I have archived in the back of a closet.

CP: On the other hand, I'm certain you have enough new sweaters in the car trunk to last you till global warming renders them obsolete. I wonder about tossing the very large roll of bubble wrap that I've harbored downstairs since the year clear Coke was introduced.

RN: Careful, or you're going to venture into creepy Guinness World Records territory. That Earth's-biggest-ball-of-twine thing started somewhere, right?

CP: That and my roller skates. Not blades, skates. You know, four wheels per foot.

CP: Laughing with you, never at. Before we toss out a thing, we should ponder the guy who found a 1938 comic book stuffed in a wall in Elbow Lake, Minn. It's expected to fetch more than $100,000 at auction. It would have been more money, but the back cover got torn when a family member tried to grab it from the man. I think there is more than one lesson here.

RN: Yes. Familial peace and household chores just don't mix.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com