My husband puffs up like one of those killer fish the Japanese eat when I try to turn his disco-era duds into future Halloween costumes. After all, he was planning to hoard them until good taste passes from fashion and tacky is reborn.

 "But I've hardly worn these pants!" he wails while clutching a pair of grape-hued, polyester, double-knit bell bottoms he wrested from me.

 Good. I hate to think the father of my children spent any portion of his life dressed as one the Fruit of the Loom guys. But it's not just the disco-era clothes that infuse him with warm fuzzies. He wants to keep every battered, beaten, shredded old dustrag that's touched his body.

 "When are you planning to wear this?" I asked the last time I cleaned out his closet. I held up a bathing suit the size of a credit card with yellow happy faces dribbled down the front. My husband grabbed it like he was snatching a blonde from King Kong.

 "I need this," he said.

 "For what? That bathing suit wouldn't fit a Chihuahua, much less a man who demands double extra butter on his movie popcorn," I countered, confiscating it with the practiced hand of one accustomed to prying remote controls from small, jelly-encrusted palms.

 "You never let me keep anything good," he pouted and stomped out to wreak havoc on other perfectly innocent clothes.

 For not only doesn't he throw stuff away, he adds to his empire with alarming regularity. His philosophy's quite simple: wear your best clothes whenever tackling jobs requiring chemicals or paint. And he practices what he preaches.

 Right this moment he's the owner of an assortment of paint-encrusted golf shirts, casual shoes with toes sliced by close encounters of the electrical saw kind and assorted bleach-discolored slacks. The day just isn't a success unless some perfectly useful piece of clothing morphs into scraps.

 The amazing part is he only messes up the good stuff. Let him slap on a pair of jeans with a hole in the seat and a zipper that won't stay up and they'll remain pristine. But the minute he dons a new, white, all-cotton shirt he'll find it necessary to demonstrate the mechanics of sliding into home plate. And no matter how nasty that shirt gets, like Barry White, he never can say good-bye.

 "I wear that shirt all the time," he'll lament as I try to spirit it into the rag bin.

 "Is that why people keep throwing quarters at you and asking when the monkey gets back?"

 "Don't get testy. I love that shirt. I wore it in college."

 "Then you must have been a pretty slow learner because I bought it three months ago. The white shirt you had in college is still in your closet. I've been trying to toss that one for over 15 years."

 There's simply no way to persuade him to part willingly with any portion of his wardrobe. No matter how old, how outdated, how useless an item is, he'll swear before a stadium crammed with ministers he can't live without it.

 A psychedelic print silk shirt with a collar the size of a snow shovel? He's waiting for just the right occasion. A pair of toeless sneakers? Those are his "painting" shoes. A tie that could double as a tablecloth? Hey, they're coming back in style -- just look at platform shoes!

 As for that leisure suit, don't even think about sneaking it out of the house. In his world, people are the only things that "come out of the closet." And he still can't figure out why they'd ever want to with all the neat stuff that's still in there.