Are you a packrat?

[*K10*]

how much do you keep? I have SO many boxes that I just recently retrieved from my mother's house to start keeping with me now and I'm just AMAZED at how much crap I have and I'm having a hard time deciding what to throw away and what to keep on keeping!?!?! :confused:

examples... OLD diaries... from the time I was 9 or so I have about 13 diaries; old books that I enjoyed as a child and am saving because... I think I'll read them again as an adult or give them to the children I don't have!?; decorations I used to decorate my room as a child and have sentimental meaning but will probably live out my life in that box... etc. etc. etc. How many boxes of CRAP do I need to keep!? LOL

[aj030201]

I'm not, but my grandpa sure is. He still has his hip in a glass from his replacement surgery 10 YEARS AGO...... disgusting. On a side note hes getting his knees replaced in a month..... can't wait to see that :eek:

[steph78]

This describes me exactly! I am such a packrat. My apartment is relatively neat and clean but I have a lot of storage space that's just filled up with stuff I've had forever but never look at. Lately I've been annoyed with how much STUFF I have so a couple of times I've just gone on a RAMPAGE with three boxes - one for trash, one for goodwill, and one for keep (hello, I've watched Clean Sweep too many times). It actually works, though. I'll do it like one drawer/storage box at a time to keep it from overwhelming me. I'm totally one to hang on to stuff for sentimental reasons, but lately since I've been getting rid of all this stuff I've never missed one thing that I've given away/thrown away.

[Winter Storm]

I keep a lot of old stuff (including diairies from '87) but because of my neat freak nature, everything is strategically packed away somewhere.

[Empressallie]

I LOVE throwing stuff away, but i always afraid I'll throw out something i wish i hadnt later on. I def have like 4 boxes of crap in my parents basement (which my Mom tries to make me go through everytime i go home for a visit). I moved out 4 years ago and havent needed anything in those boxes, so I'm tempted to throw them out without looking at whats inside :eek:

[shimmer728]

I keep a lot of old stuff (including diairies from '87) but because of my neat freak nature, everything is strategically packed away somewhere.

That's exactly how I am.

[coll214]

I definitely qualify. When my mother moved recently, I found just how much crap i still had. Do I really still need all of my old report cards? Hell, I just threw away my HS notes when I moved last year. And can't seem to get rid of a big box of old books which my neat natzi sister is constantly nagging me to get rid of. I know I should go through everything, a la Clean Sweep, but...

[wordsmith]

I'm not, but my grandpa sure is. He still has his hip in a glass from his replacement surgery 10 YEARS AGO...... disgusting. On a side note hes getting his knees replaced in a month..... can't wait to see that :eek:


My grandma had her kidney stones in a jar. They don't even GIVE you that shit anymore, it goes out with the rest of the biohazardous material.

I save lots of things out of sentimentality. I have every journal I've ever kept since I started at age 11. Stuff like that doesn't take up much space.

[tina1979]

I am a packrat, but I try to keep it to a minimum. My sister also helps me out. Whenever I move she comes to my house while I am at work to unpack my boxes and she just starts throwing shit away. 99% of the time I never miss it.

[*K10*]

OMG and you're okay with your SISTER deciding which of your keepsakes to keep or throw away?!?!? Do you consider yourself "sentimental"? Cause I am so I save like every little thing that reminds me of a place, time, event. LOL

My stuff is all really organized so much so I have lists of which box to find certain things... I just feel like I have TOO many boxes! LOL I guess I need to keep in mind I'm 29 and do tend to have more STUFF as the years go by... *sigh* LOL

[muchojackdaniel]

I have so many boxes full of papers and boxes that I need to throw away, but they are over my room. Most of the stuff I will never need again. For awhile I was keeping it close, because I was pretty undecided on what direction I was taking. Now I just need to find the energy to sort through things again! ugh....I have collected soooo much

[Cole]

I try to hang on to as little as possible.

Though I do have diaries going back to '93, and a few boxes of books etc from college I need to reduce.

But I moved in one and a half minivan loads last week. :)

[lilyflower]

My grandma had her kidney stones in a jar. They don't even GIVE you that shit anymore, it goes out with the rest of the biohazardous material.

As it should, I'm shuddering at the viral and bacterial implications of that shit just sitting in a jar somewhere. I know they put formalin in it but that doesn't kill everything. Blegh

I do save old diaries - I think they're cool to go back to.

[Kitty]

I don't keep anything.. i'm very big on change and re-inventing myself. I'm also not really sentimental. I give away my stuff frequently.

[tina1979]

OMG and you're okay with your SISTER deciding which of your keepsakes to keep or throw away?!?!? Do you consider yourself "sentimental"? Cause I am so I save like every little thing that reminds me of a place, time, event. LOL
I'm very sentimental. Thats why I keep most of the stuff in the first place. What it comes down too is that I trust her. She knows the things that I would absolutely kill her if she tossed. If I tell her before hand Don't touch that box, she won't even open it. She does however go through my papers and my clothes and other random crap. I'd still have clothes in my closet from highschool if it wasn't for her.

[ce607]

I'm not, though I do have boxes of older things that I look to look at for sentimental value. My mother in law is a true packrat, though, and it scares me when I look at her two houses packed with stuff and think about how I'm going to have to deal with it someday. She has whole rooms in her house filled floor to ceiling, so they can't use the rooms anymore, and I've never seen anything like their attic. She begged me not to tell my neat-freak parents about it.

She realizes that leaving us to deal with this is not something she wants to do, but any progress she makes is so slow that more seems to come in than she throws out. When it starts involving other people, it's a real problem.

[*K10*]

She realizes that leaving us to deal with this is not something she wants to do

Maybe that's a way to move through some of my stuff!? Figure out what I want to and feel okay with leaving behind for children I don't have - or if I died tomorrow what I'd be okay with my mother digging through... hmmm that's a good thought - thanks CE! :p LOL

[steph78]

My mother in law is a true packrat, though, and it scares me when I look at her two houses packed with stuff and think about how I'm going to have to deal with it someday. She has whole rooms in her house filled floor to ceiling, so they can't use the rooms anymore, and I've never seen anything like their attic. She begged me not to tell my neat-freak parents about it.

My mother-in-law is the same way! I think she wasn't always this way, but it started when my husband's father passed away when we were in college. So now, six years later, she's accumulated a LOT of stuff. It's not quite floor-to-ceiling bad, but it's a lot of stuff. Like you can't eat at the dining room table without clearing it off of all the stacks of magazines/catalogs and boxes of photos, and one of the extra bedrooms has become a storage room with stuff covering the whole bed and most of the floor space. I was scared that this would continue for decades, BUT she just decided to move out of this house where she's lived for 35 years and move back to the town where she grew up, so she's cleaning it out herself! She is apparently building a new house and is all revved up about the idea of buying new furniture and having a pretty/clean new place to live. We could not be more relieved!

[ce607]

My mother-in-law is the same way! I think she wasn't always this way, but it started when my husband's father passed away when we were in college. So now, six years later, she's accumulated a LOT of stuff. It's not quite floor-to-ceiling bad, but it's a lot of stuff. Like you can't eat at the dining room table without clearing it off of all the stacks of magazines/catalogs and boxes of photos, and one of the extra bedrooms has become a storage room with stuff covering the whole bed and most of the floor space. I was scared that this would continue for decades, BUT she just decided to move out of this house where she's lived for 35 years and move back to the town where she grew up, so she's cleaning it out herself! She is apparently building a new house and is all revved up about the idea of buying new furniture and having a pretty/clean new place to live. We could not be more relieved!

That's great news that she's going through everything herself! I have to laugh, though, because this sounds so familiar - that's exactly what I meant: the guest room and even a nice sunroom are now storage areas, and the dining room table is just what you described. It's funny that this is relatively recent with your MIL ... I wonder if her husband made her keep it in check, but now it just runs free...

[steph78]

That's great news that she's going through everything herself! I have to laugh, though, because this sounds so familiar - that's exactly what I meant: the guest room and even a nice sunroom are now storage areas, and the dining room table is just what you described. It's funny that this is relatively recent with your MIL ... I wonder if her husband made her keep it in check, but now it just runs free...

Yeah, I think it was a combination of losing her husband and having her youngest kid (my husband) finally out of the house. She got hit with being a widow and an empty-nester all at the same time, so I can understand how that might make you want to hold on to STUFF if all the people in your life are suddenly gone. Also, she has this addiction to buying crafts and antiques that was probably kept in check by her husband before, but now that he's gone she just buys whatever she wants. She lives in northern VA and is selling her tiny-ass house for an unbelievable amount of money because of the inflated housing prices there, and is moving to the rural midwest where she is building a new house twice as big for about 25% of what she is getting for her old house. So I guess she will have a lot more room to store stuff now if she can't keep her urge to shop in check! Maybe she will just buy lots of presents for her sons and daughters-in-law. ;)