The poorer the family, the more the items in the house seem to take root, accumulating more and more, until there is almost no space left to step.
Every room's walls are nailed with tightly packed small shelves, jumbled in all directions, filled with repetitive items—two similar mugs, three pairs of identical reading glasses, and even five or six different types of clothespins, no one can explain why so many were bought in the first place.
The kitchen is even more of a disaster zone. When the cabinet door opens, plastic bags are nested inside plastic bags, large bags inside small ones, hanging like a string of transparent lanterns, reaching from the cabinet door all the way to the floor; there are about twenty rags accumulated, some shedding, some faded, and some with frayed edges, piled next to the sink like a small grave. On the seldom-used shelves, various bowls and pots are awkwardly piled: an enameled basin with a chip, a glass bowl missing a handle, a stainless steel spoon that's been used for ten years, and even three plastic knives for cutting cake, all kept 'just in case they are needed.'
Opening a drawer can be startling, with manuals saved from the mobile phone charger to the microwave from ten years ago, expired cold medicine from three years ago, and electricity bills from five years ago crammed together, pressed underneath are the certificates from when the child was in elementary school, the paper has turned yellow and brittle. Old batteries are stuffed in the wall cracks, broken shoeboxes are stuffed under the bed, and even the gaps on top of the wardrobe are filled with crumpled shopping bags, as if afraid to waste even a little bit of space.
The freezer section of the refrigerator is even more of a 'time capsule', with frozen meat that is hard as a rock, the date on the packaging long faded, and no one dares to confirm whether it’s last year’s or the year before; tucked away in the corner is half a bag of dumplings frozen for five years, the plastic wrap is stuck to the drawer, yet they always say, 'maybe one day I'll want to eat it.'
The wardrobe is stuffed so full that the door won't close, with old cotton-padded jackets, pilled sweaters, and shrunken jeans piled high. Clearly, they haven't been worn in years, yet four storage boxes were bought to keep stuffing them in, and the dust on the boxes could be written on. In the nightstand drawer, charging cables are tangled into a mess, old mobile phones are piled like bricks, and there are a few leaking batteries, three sets of unused keys, and even a lonely lens that nobody can remember which pair of glasses it fell from.
In the corner of the bathroom, shampoo samples and disposable toothbrushes brought back from hotels are piled up to half a basket, the labels have all turned yellow, yet there’s always the thought of 'they might be useful when staying at hotels', resulting in them accumulating more and more, leaving no space even for the foot basin. The whole house feels like a stuffed drawer, gasping for air, yet always acquiring new 'might be useful' items.
