Dear Container Store, I Almost Loved You

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MELISSA BLOCK, host:

Americans spend millions of dollars a year trying to bring a little order into cluttered lives. For some, that means a visit to one temple of organization, The Container Store. Commentator Pat Dunnigan went to the flagship store in Dallas and flirted briefly with the idea of putting her house in order.

PAT DUNNIGAN: Dear Container Store: I know you mean well with your dozen varieties of hooks and $49 cereal sorters, but this just isn't going to work. It's not you, and I apologize if I gave you the wrong idea when we first met in that gleaming Dallas showroom.

I admit, I was checking you out. There was something seductive about all that sparkling acrylic, each piece nestled into the next. And there were all those other women hanging on your every closet accessory. They were three deep at the registers, their faces flush with your shiny, stackable promises.

God, how I wanted to believe. My pulse raced at your take-charge innovations for taming closet clutter. I was ready to take you home, throw open the dark recesses of my basement and let you into places so long neglected I no longer knew what they contained. But I knew, even as I gasped at your sleekly muscular shelving unit, that we were not right for each other.

I have to be honest with myself. I could line the hallways end to end with fuchsia and melon laundry bins, but it would not increase the chances of a dirty sock ending up in one.

It is not your fault. The underside of the couch emits a strange gravitational pull. It is stronger than both of us. It doesn't take much to see that the storage problems of one suburban household don't amount to a can of served beans in this crazy world. Some day you'll understand that. We'll always have Dallas.

BLOCK: Commentator Pat Dunnigan, who records her musings on suburban culture at her blog, suburbankamakaze.com.

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