Rick's Mom is in a nursing home. We know she's not coming home. Tonight while Rick was mowing the lawn at her house, I cleaned out some closets and drawers. The "stuff" in the two rooms I got to was amazing.

Shoes that I doubt she wore for the past twenty years. A TON of clothing, again, not worn in a long time, much of it in sad shape, but still kept for whatever reason. Fabric and sewing notions from when she used to sew, Christmas bows, the whole works. I barely scratched the surface.

I wonder why folks don't part with stuff they no longer wear/use. I'm not a pack rat, nor a collector. Hopefully, I'll be making it easier if someone has to clean out my house someday.

Are you a pack rat? Do you think about the day someone may have to clean out your house? Maybe it's time to dump some junk.

 

I am. I have tons of stuff that I'll never use again but that's too good to throw out. Down in the basement I have two coffee cans filled with odd screws and nails that are left over from the 12 years worth of projects we've done around here. When I need a screw or nail I can never find exactly what I need in the coffee cans, so I don't even look anymore, but the screws and nails are way too good to throw out. You never know, you might need one someday.

And so it goes. The collection grows, and before you know it you've got a lot of stuff.

Luckily for me Liz goes on a "lets make some room" campaign every second or third year. I stopped fighting it a few campaigns ago, and now I even enjoy the cleasing process. Sooner or later we'll get our space back. Our gain is recycling's loss.

 

I'm a packrat, too. Unfortunately, it always seems that you need something that you just barely threw away the other day. Thus, I keep a lot of things for that magical day... the day on which I will need it.

 

I'm not really a pack rat, but I am lazy. Except when under pressure, like visitors or something. I remember cleaning out my aunt's house when I moved her up here. She had not done a thing for who knows how many years - 50? It was a real headache - fortunately, my mom and sis helped out or it never would have gotten done. Whew...I gave away so much stuff to her friends (clothes, etc), the local library and the Salvation Army. And I auctioned off the furniture, glassware, etc. we didn't want by contacting an auction house in a nearby town, who sent a truck to load everything up. Then sent a check after everything was sold. That worked out well.

One thing that forces a cleanup/out is moving from a big house to a small condo! I did it ten years ago. Then I bought a larger one this year and the +1 moved in. He didn't have much furniture yet, having recently moved here to DC, so it wasn't too hard to combine households, except for lots of pots and pans. We need to give some away.

 

+1 (an only child) has been working with her mother on this issue for quite some time, bit by bit cleaning out the stuff. And somewhere along the line, we figured out that we ought to do this for ourselves in real time instead of all at once, at the end.

My parents, on the other hand, make pack rats look unburdened. I foresee a divergence of opinion between my siblings and me when it's time to do the final clean up: I'll vote for a big dumpster, and they'll want to sort through things one-by-one. I'll probably be outvoted, so it's all going to be rough going for a long while. HPH

 

Last night's clean up was a bit hurried as a family member may need to stay in her house for a while.

I know I probably dumped some stuff that someone else could have used, but I didn't have the luxury of time to sort it. I did manage to put aside one bag of stuff that can go to the Salvation Army or another charity.

I brought home a large amount of what I'll call "Vintage jewelry" nothing expensive, but I think some antique shops sell that stuff. I'll have to check.

The kitchen will be a big project, and we don't even want to think about the garage yet.

 

My dad gets into a cleaning frenzy every few years. Now, this is a man who saves scrap pieces of lumber in the garage because he 'might need them some day', so you can imagine how much junk he has stashed in there.

He tends to go overboard with his cleaning, and over the years has thrown out a box of Christmas ornaments that my mom really misses (sentimental value), and...

a $200,000+ comic collection that I had stored there.

Of course the comics weren't worth that when I bought them for pennies each, but I read each one carefully and stored them in mint condition.

One day I came across a newspaper article talking about issue #1 of a comic that sold at auction in the UK for GBP 20,000, or close to $40,000. I had issues #1 thru 200 of that comic in pristine condition. Until my dad threw them out.

So be careful with the dumpster approach. You may have treasure in the attic and not even know it.

 

Blush. But in my defense, I'm forever using those scraps for some little thing or other.

I learned this from my grandfather, who owned a farm. On rainy days, we'd spend time straightening bent nails that he'd saved from when he took something apart (at that point, the wood was beyond hope).

The Great Depression had the effect on many people of stimulating their pack-rat genes, I guess. HPH

 

That could explain why older people tend to be pack rats.
They suffered during this period,and they remembered.
I tend to be a pack rat,when it concerns "Car parts".

 

Yeah, if you have a use for them that's a whole different matter. My dad never used any of them

My dad was born in 1940, so they had shortages of food until the '50s. His first banana came in a teachest full of things that his aunt sent from America. They didn't know what bananas were, so they just bit into them without peeling them.