packratism.

In case you are wondering, packratism is the tendency to hold on to anything and everything you think you might ever, ever need again- ever.

I used to suffer from this disease. I am slowly being cured. My husband still has it, and although I am trying to cure him, he seems to be immune to the methods I used on myself.

I used to have just about every note I ever received from my friends in high school, as well as a bunch of other things that sat in boxes and were never looked at. Between the two of us we had about 5 boxes (including two footlocker trunks) full of "stuff".

While mine held things like notes and pictures drawn for me, my husbands included toy cars and bulk cable, among other things.

Each year since we have been married we have managed to pull out the boxes and go threw them, finding that some of it had lost it's value and wasn't worth the space it took up in our tiny apartments. Now (five years later) we are down to two boxes. Hopefully that number will shrink even more in the next year. Some day those things wont seem important right? After all, if they are sitting in a box never being looked at- why keep them?

Hopefully packratism will be completely cured, and not passed on to our children.