Couple feels movedto sort, toss belongings

Taking stock during a move

Date published: 11/9/2007

By Edie Gross

I'M NOT ENTIRELY certain what a parfait is, but I'm guessing it's something fancy.

I know this because the "t" at the end is silent and that's usually reserved for fancy things, like ballet, valet and all-u-can-eat buffet.

Also, it's in italics, and that's a dead giveaway.

Anyway, since I'm not entirely sure what they are, I'm reasonably certain I've never served any parfaits (parfaiteaux?)

So how I ended up with a dozen parfait spoons in my silverware collection is beyond me. (It's such a fancy delicacy, it requires its own utensil!).

They were among the random assortment discovered during my recent move.

Nothing forces you to take stock of what you own like trying to shove your entire existence into a few cardboard banana boxes--60 or so, to be exact.

Like a lot of single people, I was under the mistaken impression that since I lived in a one-bedroom apartment and had no disposable income, I simply didn't own very much.

As it turns out (with apologies to the three guys from Hilldrup who did most of the heavy-lifting), my holdings were quite vast.

Unimpressive, but vast. What I lacked in quality I more than made up for in quantity.

Since my fiance and I were combining households, both of us had to pare down our inventory. That meant my parfait spoons had to go, as did his antique collection of threadbare dish towels.

Among other items culled from our collective collection:

An Alaskan Ulu, the "Ancient Knife of the Arctic," according to the box it came in. As it turns out, the literal translation of Ulu is "blade sharp enough to amputate a limb while you're innocently mincing garlic." After stanching the bleeding, we opted to give this away.

Instructions for approximately 47 different electronic items--at least 18 of which neither of us owns anymore--including four in Spanish and one in what appears to be Finnish.

Plastic grocery bags, 632 at last count. You can't just throw them out because the dolphins get caught in them.

Sixty-three pounds of flour. The only explanation for this, clearly, is impulse-buying gone haywire. Neither of us bakes very much, but when grocers stack stuff like Chiclets, Archie comics and all-purpose flour so close to the register, you really can't help yourself.

An inflatable, green dinosaur. I have no explanation for this.

Carbon copies from 16 years of checkbooks, in case the IRS ever demands to know what I paid for that inflatable, green dinosaur.

Three-and-a-half years worth of unread New Yorker magazines. I'm a little behind. It doesn't make me less chic.

A German beer stein that once played some very sophisticated German tune but now, after too many beers, just chirps unintelligibly.

Wrapping paper remnants. Lots of them. Most people would just throw these little squares away. But you never know when you'll have to wrap something tiny, like a pack of bubble gum or some paper clips or a shoe horn.

A fluted Bundt pan. I'm not entirely sure what this is, but I'm guessing it's something fancy. I know this because the "d" appears to be silent, and that's usually reserved for fancy things.

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Date published: 11/9/2007