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And finding a lot of crap, too, I might add.
My Christmas tree has been up for about a week now. But it's stood pathetically, shamefully naked this whole time because I didn't know where my Christmas lights are. I have no ornaments or tinsel or anything of that nature, so at the moment it looks, not like I've decorated for Christmas, but like I have a big plastic pine tree in my apartment for no reason whatsoever.
Tired of looking at it like that, and concerned that an avowed Christmas-lover like myself always does so miserably in the decorating department, tonight I went into the little storage closet just outside my apartment door and started going through every box in there until I found the lights.
I found them (though I won't put them up until tomorrow--I'm tired now, and it's almost my bedtime anyway). But I found a lot of other things, too.
Things like an envelope containing a lock of hair given to me for no discernible reason by a girlfriend I had . . . in 1995.
Things like the box my original Game Boy came in. Not my Game Boy Advance, mind you. Not the DS (which I don't have just yet). The original big grey Game Boy.
Things like my Greek mythology notebook . . . from fourth grade.
This is just sad. I want to emphasize, in case this isn't common knowledge, that I live on my own. This is not the place I grew up in. That means that I moved out of my parents' house and--apparently!--brought all this crap with me, and just stashed it in the closet, evidently in case I needed it later. You know, like if I have an emergency need to show someone what my handwriting looked like when I was nine, or in case I have a sudden compulsion to put a curse on my ex-girlfriend.
And what did I do afterward? Did I take these useless items and throw them away? Of course not. I placed them all carefully back in the boxes and put them right back in the closet. I knew I was a packrat, but this is just sad.
posted
It is not always good to be a packrat, but I am the opposite and that is not always good either. I get ride of everything that I am not using or I am not really attached to. The list of things I am attached to is short. Sometimes I wish I could read the poetry that I wrote in 3rd grade, or listen to the CDs that I loved at 10. I guess there are advantages to both ways of living. I have less worthless stuff, but you have more memories.
Posts: 1015 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
That was a hilarious post, Verily. I'm also a packrat, as was my father and his father before him. It's a venerable tradition in our family (or an inherited disorder, you decide.) And I bought the house that my parents lived in for 30 years. It sounds like you only have your own stuff. I have three generations of it!
And the funny thing is we all three have/had a thing for engineering drawing stuff. So like I already had a jillion pens and pencils, templates, T squares, triangles, french curves, scale rulers, erasers of various materials and configurations, and so on. This is stuff that I just bought on my own because I think it's cool. Now I also have my dad's even more voluminous collection of such stuff, PLUS my grandad's that dad couldn't bear to get rid of. I have three times infinity of this stuff.
Oh, and by the way, would anyone care for any engineering drawing paraphenalia? I have lots!
Edit: It was the collection that was voluminous, not my dad! He was only about one standard dadvolume.
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Hmmm, sounds familiar. I have tons of crap sitting in my apartment. More than will fit in, er, 5 closets of various size and location. And most of it is junk, plain and simple. My grandfather got me into collecting things. Just imagine, the man actively collected stuff, minerals for at least 20 years, and paperweights for the last 5 or so years prior to his death. You can't begin to comprehend the collection that my dad was left with when my grandfather died. It seemed every room in his good sized house was filled with the stuff. And I'm just thinking about the displayed ones, let alone the stuff in storage. I'm just glad my dad doesn't collect like that. Though he has threatened to take up collecting.
Posts: 609 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Well, there weren't any monsters, but there was a dead beetle. Of course I threw it out; I don't want any exoskeletons in my closet! Ha ha! Exoskel . . . oh, the hell with it.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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My mom just decided it was time I came home and went through all the stuff I left there when I moved out. Boxes and boxes and boxes of it. I filled at least four big black plastic trash bags, maybe five. I had to take two home with me to my trash because my parent's trash was full. (They had thrown a bunch of stuff out too, to be fair.) It took hours, spread over three days.
I had notes passed between friends and me in junior high. I had my first dog's collar and favorite squeaky toy. Sent two boxes full of brand new stuffed animals to Neighbors. (Brand new because they were given to me by various boyfriends in my teens and early twenties, and I hate being given stuffed animals by boys. Generally shows no thought as to what I might actually like, and makes me feel like they think I'm five. The exception being my brother, because he makes clever choices.) I, also, had class notes from elementary school. Tons of pictures. Two boxes of trashy romance novels I bought at a garage sale for 10 cents each one summer. My 6th grade report card.
I know there was more, but I'm blocking it out. I cried and cried and cried as I went through it, and tossed most of it. I saved almost all of the pictures, most of the cards, and too many of letters from my HS boyfriend who I never quite got over. And, um, the dog collar and toy. I got it down to about two boxes of keepsakes... I'll try again in another decade or so.
Oh, and I found this fabulous velvet hat that I bought at a vintage store years ago and never wore because it's a kinda odd shade of ruby/rusty red that doesn't really go with anything. It was new vintage, original tags still on, never sold, probably from the 30s. I need to find something to wear it with this winter...
Anyway. Throw out the gameboy box and the notebook. If it was a long-term girlfriend, keep the hair. Get it over with now, if you wait until next time you move you'll just move it again. Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Well, we dated for over a year. But like I said, that was nearly a decade ago.
I wish I could just throw stuff out. I wish I could just walk into that closet tomorrow with a box full of Hefty trash bags and toss everything that I can't immediately think of an actual use for. But I can't. Because the moment an object is out of my life, I wish I had it back. I've felt too much guilt in my life over items I've thrown away. And I don't want to get into details, but some of that guilt was legitimate.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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