Spring Cleaning

Amy Krasner admits she is an undiagnosed hoarder. The former practicing attorney and owner of Avalon Legal Search laughs: “I don’t mind. I have a lot of extra. Extra toilet paper, extra presents. My personality is extra and I have extra.”

So when Doug Robb proposed last November, it didn’t take long for Amy – and her 8-year-old daughter Charlotte (8 and a half if you ask her) – to start worrying about how they would make room for someone else. 

Doug, a gift, estate, and charitable tax expert at a global accounting firm who has two college-aged children, had been living on his own in a high-rise for several years. “We knew his lease was up in March,” Amy says, “so we worked backward.”

That meant a December start date, on the heels of Doug’s New York proposal the weekend Amy ran the New York Marathon.

CREATING A FAMILY Doug Robb proposed to Amy Krasner, Charlotte's mom, on a New York cruise the day before Amy ran the marathon there.

“I first cleaned out my closet,” Amy says. “Then I emptied out Doug’s closet.” What was in it before the clean-out? “Extra,” she says. “My triathalon gear from my prior life as a weekend warrior. Bicycle stuff, running stuff, wetsuits, stuff for the pool. I had it all. I like gear.”

With the gear gone, Amy started on the garage. “I had a lot of complaints about my garage from family members traipsing through all my holiday everything,” Amy says. “I like to celebrate everything for my special girl. I would buy anything on Pottery Barn or Amazon. Horrible.” So she hired an organizer to help her with the psychology of editing the hoard.

“She makes you tell your things goodbye,” Amy says. “And I had no choice, right? It’s still a lot of stuff, I can’t lie. But it’s better. The garage is mostly finished. Although my mom would say it’s not.”

All the preliminary clearing-out made room for Doug’s extensive sports card collection, which he has been working on since he was 5. “I have put it together over years and years and years. Once I get a set completed it’s like a trophy.”

Doug owns an extensive collection of sports cards. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

With around 150 binders full of cards, plus sports jerseys on a clothing rack, a few hundred old Sports Illustrated copies, a signed Masters flag, and a few baseballs, fitting it all in took thought. “He’s not really great at displaying all of it,” Amy says, “he just wants it around. Kind of like my piles. I like to have them around.”

They converted the third floor to a “man cave” to house Doug’s collections, which Amy understands are significant to him. “What I realized is that I have memories connected to my stuff, like he does. That’s the thing. That’s what was hard. It was going through the stuff to make room for new memories and new life experiences. Getting rid of the me and making we.”

Once she had weeded out the important from the extra, Amy says that her fear shifted. “Then it was the idea of having someone around all the time! And figuring out how to give everyone what they need. But it’s going well.” 

Charlotte was fearful of the shift, too. But today she gives their “we” the thumbs-up. 

“Every day is different,” Amy says. Charlotte is busy with a year-round swim program, piano lessons, and being, according to Amy, “a master manipulator of her grandparents Susu and Pots and her Tia,” aka Susan and Marvin Krasner and Aunt Carrie Krasner. “She’s still on the fence,” Amy says of Charlotte’s willingness to share her mom. “It’s a work in progress. But we’re getting used to each other.” They’re also getting used to their new golden retriever puppy Blue, who has given everyone a bit of a runaround.

Puppy Blue has added another level of chaos to family life. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

“We just have such a good time together, because they’re both super fun,” Doug says of Amy and Charlotte. “Almost every night the three of us sit together and have family dinner, which is a small thing but I really enjoy it. And with the two of them, you’re never sitting around twiddling your thumbs.”

Amy and Doug plan to be married this year, once they tie up the loose ends of merging two very full worlds. “Maybe this fall?” Amy wonders. “All I can promise is we will not get married on an A&M football weekend,” nodding to her fiancé’s alma mater.

“Doug’s very routine, and we’re the opposite. I’m up for adventure, and he goes along for the ride. But he likes to calendar it.” Then she adds, “He loves the chaos. He really does.”

And Amy says she loves having a partner. “It’s just fun,” she says. “He has to ignore my weirdness and I have to ignore how he gets bothered when there’s traffic and he’s going to be late. 

“He doesn’t do well with traffic.”