Packrats Anonymous

My name is Jen (Hi Jen!) and I have been a packrat all of my life, in fact before I was born. Now I am not making light of using the "Anonymous" premise by any means. My father was a recovered/recovering alcoholic before he died. But he was also a packrat, as was his father and so is the family. There are many a T.L. stories of what he hoarded. Example, printing presses, lawn mowers, cars, toy train SETS, a floor to ceiling and wall to wall - room of newspapers (yes these are ALL plural). Now don't think I am just picking on the Wakefield side, my mother, parents and her family is packrats too. Some parts of the family have it in check I must acknowledge.

My Grandma Betty's favorite story to tell was about in my youth; she came to my house and helped me clean my room. She found under the bed many items, her favorite were rocks, lots of rocks. I should have been a geologist.

I can share many more stories but this is a mere introduction to my secret world. Since moving in with my husband, I have pared down most of my collections of crap. I have the notion that I will use it or it is too nice to give or throw away. Part of my deal is that, my sweet mother raised me to use it up. She was a single mother raising 2 little girls.

Our family (mainly on Mom's side), were the original recyclers or was it white trash? We would wash the foil TV dinner trays and use them at our cabins at Bear Lake.

So what do I do about this? I do what anyone does, I buy, collect and hoard more crap...oh I mean I buy a book. The book is called "One Year to an Organized Life" by Regina Leeds.

I will keep you updated, at least monthly on my endeavors. July is "Fun in the Sun: Scrapbooks, Memorabilia, Greeting Card Collections and Your Address Book". I will return to it, it is a huge task for me and won't be easy. I hope to make it month #2 on my year.

Instead I am going to do "March; Organizing the Business Life". This has to do with paperwork mainly. For my purposes I will organize my papers, make a new office upstairs and reorganize my massage therapy room. This will lend itself to helping me get into July's task in the book. That is, if I don't end up going over.

From the book "Paper is the average adult's bogeyman". And boy-howdy, is that so true for me. I am going to dive into it and get the big problem areas out of my way first.

Whew, wish me luck!

So on that note, I’m headin’ out of town for the weekend! LOL! But I am going to be reading the book and doing the journal.