Today is Pack Rat Day, and once again I shall ignore it. I am a pack rat. And I am not ashamed to admit it.
Each year of May 17, people are encouraged to do some late spring cleaning and get rid of the stuff we don’t need. Maybe even replace it with stuff we do need.
But I know I won’t. I tend to keep stuff. Because you never know when you might need one of those.
I have no idea how this happened. I certainly was not raised by pack rats. My father was fairly well known for throwing things out. There was that one time where we were moving from one house to another. We had only been in our present house for four years, son there wasn’t a lot of time for things to accumulate. But during the move, he took any boxes that had not been opened from our previous move on a one way trip to the dump. Never opened them. Never checked them. If we hadn’t needed what was in them in the past four years, we didn’t need those things any more.
And it wasn’t just when we moved. Every so often things would go. And really, I guess there is something to be said about that. But I still don’t like throwing things out.
Some of the things that build up I swear aren’t my fault. My spare time and the open hours of the local recycling center just don’t match up well. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
And there’s always the fact that when you finally get around to cleaning things out, you know you will find a need for some of those things almost immediately after.
I know that some day I have to sort through all that stuff and clean it out. But in the meantime, I am happy being the type of person I’m sure Marie Kondo has nightmares about.
But I will sort through it. Some day.