Saturday, August 7, 2010

Pack Rat of What?

First a quick update on my previous post about hobbies/talents- I have checked about many books for the library and read though them.  I think I understand what I am reading on how to take a better picture but I am not always sure how to transfer that over to my camera.  Yesterday I took my camera outside and played around with the different auto settings.  I think I like what I got.  (You have to check out FB for some sample pictures).  I am still working on the whole Adobe Photoshop thing, but in my mind if I learn to take better pictures first I wont need to Photoshop very much.  I will keep playing there.

Ok, so this has been the last week before school starts and I have been doing the deep after summer house cleaning.  That means cleaning out the kids' closets, under beds, in drawers, and all other hiding places I can find.  While cleaning the thought occurred to me that everyone must be a pack rat or hoarder of something.  As I helped clean out the bedrooms I learned-
  • Rebecca and Savannah's like to keep all kinds of trash, Dum Dum wrappers, broken crayons, dried out markers, broken jewelery, and stuffed animals.   
  • Little Joe also like to keep all kinds of trash, old school papers, and tiny useless toys.  (I am not even sure where the toys come from.
  • Kiley and Sarah's room as been the catch all crap room for years.  It houses everything that I don't know where to put or think I will put it away later.  There were a couple of donate to Goodwill bags, lots of bags and boxes of clothes that are either too big for Kiley or Sarah. I am proud to say that I got everything put away.
  • As a family we have (the first things to come to mind)- outdated computer games, pages and pages of usernames and passwords to various websites, and cassette tapes (we lack anything to play them with).  I am sure there is more.  While cleaning out the girls' closet I came across two boxes.  I knew exactly what they were, 14 years of church magazines.  As I looked at these boxes I asked myself why I was keeping these magazines because if I really needed an article or something I could get it from the computer.  I keep these Magazines because my mom does.  Well, I decided since they were not getting used much there was no reason to keep them but I could not bring myself to throw them all out.  So to help myself out I kept two Magazines from each year- the May and November issues of The Ensign (there are the conference issues).  So now I have a half box filled with General Conference talks going back to 1997.  

I am sure that everyone reading this has something that you just can't get rid of.  What do you find your family pack ratting or hoarding? 

3 comments:

Debra said...

I've done that with Ensigns too. I also decided to only keep the General Conference copies, but I'm planning on reading the rest of the magazines cover to cover before I toss them.

Other than that, I've created a collection of various recipes, cutting them out of magazines, etc. I don't know why, since I can look up recipes online and don't cook all that much.

Karena Alyse said...

if it's free, we'll take it! so we pretty much pack rat EVERYTHING...random stuff! and then when i have to clean up my house, i never know where to put any of it!j

The McKnights said...

Debra- I think we "collect" magazines and recipes because mom does.