The Battle Of Broken Stool

I'M having a battle with the dearly beloved. We are at war. We glare at each other over the cornflakes in the morning, trying to remain civil for the sake of the cat, and talk in clipped tones about who gets what.
We’re not talking big things like the house, the furniture or the car. We’re talking rubbish.
Yes, I’ve hired a skip (think that’s a dumpster in American) and it stands outside my house it all its rusting, yellow-paint-peeling glory - and I love it. The dearly beloved likes it too but in a much more restrained fashion. My tendency is to throw anything and everything into it in an effort to declutter and minimalise.
The dearly beloved wants to assess every item. If there’s the teeniest chance that we might need it in 2037 if an asteroid hits our house then he’s hanging on to it. Then it’ll be, “Bet you’re glad I never let you throw away that leaking dustbin in 2007; see how handy it is for picking up rubble.”
If there’s ever a rubber band shortage, we’re prepared.
I came home the other evening to find him leaning into the skip, his arse in the air, as he foraged around. In the end he emerged triumphant, brandishing an old tattered book, its cover warped and its pages stuck together with damp.
“You’ve thrown away my Boys’ Own Book Of Industrial Gas Mantles,” he says accusingly. I sigh.
Then we have an argument over a broken lawnmower which I ask him to help me load into the skip. One of the reasons for getting the skip was to clear out the garden shed. It’s so full of things that you can’t get into it without gashing open your leg on some lethal garden tool. We have two lawnmowers. My little electric mower works like a dream but the other is a huge, old-fashioned petrol mower – and it’s broken. BROKEN. Even when it was working (in about 1982) it was too big and heavy for me to use.
“I could easily mend that,” he says.
“You haven’t bothered in 25 years, why would you want to now?” I ask. He looks at my face, at my narrowed eyes and pursed lips, as he weighs up whether it’s worth fighting over. There’s a flicker in his eyes and I can see that he’s thinking that if he mends it, he might be expected to use it. In the end he grudgingly concedes. One minor skirmish won.
But I lost the Battle Of Broken Stool. It was one of a set of four pine kitchen stools, its three mates having been consigned to that great Skip In The Sky years ago. We hated them when they were new. We were poor at the time and they were incredibly cheap. And that’s how they always looked. Cheap.
“I could definitely mend that!” he says. I sigh again. All relationships are based on compromise so I allow him this minor victory. However, I make sure I have written into the peace treaty that he takes it away to his business workshop to mend – that way I’m pretty sure I will never clap eyes on it again.
And so it goes on. I’ve taken to encouraging him to go the pub (not a difficult task) and as soon as he’s out the door, I’m up those attic steps or out in the shed, loading up bin bags with half empty paint tins, fossilised paintbrushes, mouse-eared books and broken plant pots.
I’ve thrown out some old curtains so when I’ve finished my foray, I artfully arrange them over the top of the skip to hide what’s underneath.
It doesn’t stop him lifting them off and inspecting what lies beneath, of course. But I have a plan. The next time he hoicks some mouldering decrepit item out of the skip, I’m throwing him in it, artfully disguised by sticking tubes up his nose and a long nozzle up his rear end. That way, anyone glancing in will think he’s an old vacuum cleaner.