TheBanyanTree: Pack Rats

[Margaret R. Kramer]

When I can’t open a cupboard door without something falling on my head, that
means we have too much stuff.  When I have no place to put a freshly read
book, that means we have too much stuff.  When I can barely slip my car into
the garage between the rows of furniture, wood piles, and tools, that means
we have too much stuff.

We’re both packrats.  Ray works as a maintenance man at a grocery store and
it tore his heart up to see how much stuff the store threw out.  So he
brought things home.  I have a 20 year supply of toilet paper.  A two year
supply of coffee.  A five year supply of laundry detergent and dryer sheets.
No matter how many sandwiches I take to work, I’ll never run out of small
plastic bags.

I buy books by the crate.  I have bookshelves all over the house stuffed
with books.  Even if I don’t like a book, I have a hard time getting rid of
it.  I got into scrap booking, but I barely have scrap booked anything, so
the stuff from the cruise last year and the cruise this year are piled on a
table in my office waiting to be placed into books.  Maybe by my eighth
cruise, I’ll start scrap booking for real, and then I’ll be so lost and
confused, I might not get it done at all.

So Ray and I keep accumulating stuff.  We both love garage sales and we
could go crazy buying weird odds and ends, but where are we going to put
them?  I buy clothes constantly.  I do try to weed out the closet and get
rid of clothes I don’t wear, but the closet is still bursting with clothes
for every season.  And you know, I basically wear the same favorite things
no matter how many clothes I have to choose from.  We have plants in every
window and wait for it to get warm enough so we can put them outside to make
space for more.  When do we STOP?!

Well, Ray’s going to be working for a different grocery store, and the rumor
is that they don’t allow employees to take stuff home.  I haven’t been
buying as many books lately and won’t until I read the ones I have.  I’m
going to a scrap book class this week.  Ray’s cleaned out the garage and we
have a little more room in it now.

And we made the ultimate sacrifice yesterday.  This was the weekend of a
community garage sale and we didn’t go.  We took the grandsons to the
science museum instead.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

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Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun.
Enjoy the trip.

~Author Unknown