Remember when Americans hated to unpack? You know, dumping the suitcase on the bed, sorting dirty socks from clean socks, discovering that the bottle of mouthwash has leaked — a depressing chore indeed.

But not anymore. We're gleefully "unpacking" all over the place. "Unpack" has become our trendiest term for "sort out, analyze, deconstruct."

President Donald Trump had hardly unpacked after moving into the White House before the Washington Post was offering a podcast "unpacking how Trump is changing the presidency."

Boston Globe columnist Renee Graham returned to the physical concept of unpacking when she wrote, "You'll need an earthmover to unpack everything offensive about [Ben] Carson's comment," while her colleagues over in the sports department promised to "unpack a wild and historic Super Bowl comeback" — and the game didn't even involve the Packers!

Reviewing "Can't Just Stop," a book about compulsive behavior, Seth Mnookin wrote in The New York Times that author Sharon Begley "uses her reportorial eye for detail to unpack complicated ideas."

When it comes to "unpack," we can't just stop either. Google's Ngram viewer, which tracks the frequency of a word's appearance in print, reveals that "unpack" has been exploding like an overstuffed suitcase since the 1960s.

True, in the age of jet travel, a lot more people have literally been packing and unpacking, but the surge of "unpack" has surely been fueled by its metaphoric use.

As long as we're on the (suit)case, we can't ignore "baggage," another metaphor we've been lugging around the dreary terminals of Buzzword International Airport for at least 15 years.

We have "personal baggage," "political baggage," "financial baggage," "medical baggage," and, when we over pack for a long trip, "baggage baggage."

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently said he quit "The Celebrity Apprentice" because the show had too much "baggage." Meanwhile, a New York Times review of the TV show "Conviction" observed that the characters "have their own emotional baggage."

Perhaps no two presidential candidates ever toted more baggage than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Two headlines deftly deployed both "unpack" and "baggage" in describing the duo last autumn: "Trump Unpacks Three Decades of Clinton's Baggage"; (Bloomberg Politics); "Clinton Deftly Unpacks Trump's Prodigious Baggage" (Baltimore Sun).

Who says unpacking isn't fun?

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.