Confessions of a Pack Rat

It is truly is a disease. I can't throw away anything that might be remotely useful at some point, no matter how distant. Baby food jars? Never! I can use them for storing homemade fingerpaints for Peanut someday! Old clothes? Gasp! Someone else might be able to wear them, I'm going to make a quilt, we are going to have more babies! Outdated magazines? In a while, right after I copy that recipe/knitting pattern/craft idea/story/poem/quote that caught my eye!

The result of this is a home that starts to look like a storage warehouse. It's doubly disastrous when you live in a small house with no basement or attic and limited outside storage. Add on top of that the fact that I indulge in several different crafting hobbies (for each of which I own enough supplies to merit a room of its own) and a healthy addiction to books. It's is frankly a wonder that I have not perished at the bottom of one of my collapsed piles of junk, crushed by the very weight of it, clutching an armful of old magazines and three balls of yarn.

My husband mostly takes all of this in stride, although sometimes I can see in his eyes this wild look that speaks to how much this all bothers him. He was raised an only child in a very neat and organized, everything in its proper place, don't sit on the furniture, kind of house. His parents are lovely people, but two generations removed from my own, and were raised in a very different sort of time. They waited to have their child when they were older and "could afford it" and their mindset really shows in the way my husband prefers his home to look.

I on the other hand was raised by very bohemian, hippie parents who had me when they were nineteen, had a second child at 22 and divorced soon after that. They were growing up right along with their children and maintained a very relaxed but very messy (I can remember times when I was young that the dished went unwashed for two weeks!) home. We also moved quite a bit after the divorce, from one apartment to another, never staying very long anywhere. I'm sure that this transitory existence is a big factor in my need to hang on to things, and my tendency towards being a homebody.

All analytical psychology aside, I really need to find something to do with all of this stuff! My husband has made some murmurings about putting in new shelves and cupboards with our income tax return. Let's hope so! It's so nice to have a husband who is handy enough to do all of our own carpentry work!

Oh, before I forget, the whole reason I actually started this post. While digging through said piles, I found a few issue of my absolute favorite magazine tonight, Mary Jane's Farm. It's half magazine, half catalog, and all scrumptious! They cover all kinds of topics that might interest farmgirls and farmgirls-at-heart with no ads except for their own products (which I might add are organic foods, keen old-style needle work, and the most delicious shoes you ever laid eyes on!). What I wouldn't give to spend a week at their "Pay Dirt Farm School"! They have only had five or six issues, but I am hooked. It is sometimes hard to find them at your local newsstand, but you can order current and back issues from their website. And yes, they are so worth the almost six dollars an issue price. This is one magazine that even those not afflicted with packrat-itis will hang onto indefinitely!