Charter member of Accumulators Anonymous. It's a twelve step program: it's only twelve steps to the dumpster. Twelve hardest steps I'll ever take....

She’s a woman, they all are nuts, but then they say the same thing about us guys.


Were right and they are wrong…

Ah yes....to be one of those diagnosed with the 'dreaded' "Packus ratus' disease......fortunately the cure is simple....though somewhat 'troublesome' for some people......

The diagnosed person is simply allowed, within reason (based upon individual needs, available space, previous need of supplies...etc), to maintain a their 'cache' of 'needed' 'supplies'. The diagnosed person's redemption comes from those (often few, though sometimes frequent) situations where 'something' they 'saved' comes in indisputably handy/necessary.

Fortunately it is not a terminal disease......it may be really annoying to some.....but it's better than many other things......

You might be a diagnosee rather than a diagnoser because that solution has a couple of deficiencies.

(I have a distant relative whose house had to be burned after my father and uncle removed many dumpster loads of stuff - including the obligatory dead cat - from this lady's house. And my spouse seems to have tendencies this way so it's a real issue for me.)

The problem with that approach is that the "needed stuff" grows without bound until it fills the house, the garage, two or more storage units and spills across the property boundary into the neighbor's yard and forces purchase of another house to live in because this one is full.

It CAN be fatal when a pile of stuff falls on the pack rat. (not common but it happens - typically to an elderly packrat who doesn't have much physical strength anymore and succumbs to the wall of 1950's newspapers collapsing on them.)

If someone else lives with the pack rat there is always a war over the boundaries. It's best to fight that never-ending war to hold the boundaries when the territory at stake is small. Expect a guerilla style war.

And from my observations - the pack rat is not redeemed when she cannot actually FIND the item needed after searching for a week among the piles but instead has to go to the store and buy another. "Piles" are not an effective warehousing system for item retrieval.

And when they die, their executors hate them instead of mourn them. :-(

Don't enable this behavior if you have a choice.

It CAN be fatal when a pile of stuff falls on the pack rat. (not common but it happens - typically to an elderly packrat who doesn't have much physical strength anymore and succumbs to the wall of 1950's newspapers collapsing on them.)

This sounds like "My Brother's Keeper" by Marcia Davenport, published in 1954. True story, truly horrifying. I absolutely recommend it.

We just had an unprecedented basement flood (we're on the top of a huge hill, but we didn't plan on a gutter downspot accidentally moved directly into a window-well on a day with 2" of rain in a half hour).

So far, I have I filled 20 large trash bags with the the remains of the walls of my formerly-finished basement as well as ample quantities of stuff I thought I'd need, and as I did so, I felt wonderfully freed and liberated from the endless curating of "Maybes" and have made a firm commitment to limit my "this could be useful one day" collection to three, relatively small, plastic shelves plus a 6' high, 28" wide cabinet.

I was especially glad that the Big Box of Cassette Tapes was totally ruined, and I was even glad that all of the spare computer parts were soaked and ruined. There's a 12 yard dumpster coming this evening, I know I'll only need 6 yards, so I look forward to filling the rest of it with stuff. A friend of mine just told me a great way to de-clutter your life - get the house and yard ready to sell, even if you aren't really going to sell it. If you can trick yourself into thinking you're selling, all of the projects tend to fall into clear perspective.

Pile of rubble by the driveway? GET IT GONE.
Collection of scrap copper pipe? SELL IT NOW.
Small hole in the ceiling? PATCH IT!
Bedroom needs paint? PAINT IT.

We're in that mode now, and now that I MUST clear the basement to the foundation walls, owing to the heavy water damage and immediate mold bloom, I'm taking stock of what's really needed and what's been just crap.

It feels great to let go.

The next door neighbor at the farm got a job working for the village, managing the sanitary land fill. It was nearly his undoing. Initially he started out salvaging building materials, to build himself an office at the land fill. One built, the 10x10 shack needed to be furnished with discarded desk and sofa,heated with 55 gallon drum wood stove and salvaged pallets, decorated with discarded pictures of children with big eyes and black velvet artwork. He found himself spending all his time there, salvaging clothing, food, mechanical items and tools. When his wife complained that she never saw him anymore, he salvaged a trailer and started hauling things back home. Eventually he lined 500 yards of logging road with discarded appliances, small gasoline engines and car parts-the road led to his sawmill, which was powered by a '54 pontiac on blocks, with a drive belt looped around a rear rim...the radio still worked. His wife stopped talking about divorce and started talking about homicide. So he quit. Based upon his experience, I declined the job-I know my limits.

unimogbert, too serious.........

Meant it with a good dose of tongue in cheek humor......I am 'diagnosed' with it.....but like DR, have found myself liberated by clearing out the real junk......

I always had a real problem with this.

My father is a commercial properties land lord, he used to have a bunch of buildings in NJ and California. So, when I was a kid I was always going with him to check out buildings he was going to buy and fix up, or help him clean up buildings tenants moved out of. We always would find a ton of good stuff. It's amazing what people leave behind, either because they didn't care about it or didn't have the room to take it.

To give you an idea, we've got boxes of candles, a Wurlitzer jukebox loaded with 45's, an old generator (belt drive), bullets, engines, lawn mowers, even entire vehicles (a beat up F150 pickup and E-series van). Our shop is still full of stuff we've found. If it's good or we can fix it, we keep it, if not it gets sold for scrap.

Because of that, I hang onto darn near everything that has some sort of sentimental value or scrap value. I've got at least 15 of those big plastic containers full of crap down the basement. It's come in handy quite a few times, but it's getting to that point where I'm going to have to go through it and bring the dumptruck home to get rid of whatever isn't worth saving.

Sorry about that. It's a sore point for me.

Of course I too have my "junk closet" and my preparedness supplies.

Packus Raticus gene surely has survival value so a little is good.

I try to self-liberate periodically. Seems to work best when I'm feeling really grouchy (like when staying away from the TV during so-called Presidential Debates).

Last week I threw away a bunch of scanner (radio) frequency references that were nearly 20 years old and no longer accurate. I can throw stuff away when I'm ticked off then I feel SO much better :-)

Gotta be careful these days about what you put in the dumpster. Many places don't allow electronics in there anymore because of the lead content of the solder used to stick the parts together.

One trick that also works is to put stuff out during the neighborhood garage sale labelled : FREE! (Let the other packrats have it)