Are You A Packrat, Too?

I'm a bit of a packrat. Actually, I come from a long line of packrats -- my mom was a packrat, and her parents were packrats and her grandfather (my great-grandfather) was SUCH a packrat that he had to have a huge old victorian house just to store all the stuff that he had squirrelled away and I'm pretty sure that the whole reason they had my grandfather in the first place was so that he would grow up to buy a house and then great grandpa'd have some auxilliary storage space.

Of course, how was he to know that grandpa would grow up to be the kind of person who doesn't have a single square foot of available storage at his house, either...?

Anyway, about a dozen years or so ago, I started bemoaning what a hassle it was to be a packrat, and started getting all sorts of helpful adivce from my friends about how to break the pattern, like: put stuff you never use in boxes and date them. Then, when you move, if you haven't looked inside that box for a year or more, put it in the old apartment's dumpster instead of moving it to your new apartment.

<Shrug> Ok, that seems fairly simple. Except I bought a house before I got around to doing that (have I mentioned my procrastination, lately?), and haven't moved, since (plus, we don't own a dumpster, although we do make occasional dump runs), so now I've got a whole 2nd house (ok, it's really "the barn"; but it was the original house on this lot!) full of boxes of stuff that I've not looked at or used for 10 years, but somehow can't bring myself to throw away.

Actually, I'm getting a little better -- more on that in a minute -- but it's painful and slow-going and the slow-going-ness of it makes it more painful and... <whine, whine, whine!>

Scott Adams (The Dilbert Guy) wrote a funny blog entry a while back (actually, he writes a lot of either funny or thought-provoking or both blog entries) called Inconvenient Garbage, in which he talks about inadvertantly contributing to the problem. In addition to being kind of funny, in a "hey, I'm one of the people who are stupid in the way that Scott is mocking <chortle, snort>" way, it was sort of insightful, and actually may be putting me on the path to curing my packrattiness.

Maybe.

It seems that there's this category of stuff that has a vague notion of "sentimental value", but no actual value and, in fact, carries a sort of cost -- or negative value -- in terms of the fact that it's clutter and sort-of junking-up my life in a way that I find vaguely annoying.

My wife -- quite a bright woman -- suggests "well, what would be the bad thing that you imagine might happen if we just take <whatever> to the dump?" Good question! The problem, of course, is that I have no idea. I'm certain that if I knew the answer to that question, I'd be able to look at it, and say "that's dumb!", and then just toss whatever it is. It's like, "but then I won't have <whatever it is>, and at some future point I might want it."

Or something. As I said, I don't actually know the answer -- at least not fully.

But now, at least, I have an interesting way to look at the problem and think about it. And, as I said, I am getting better! I used to have two whole footlockers full of old computer stuff. And by "old computer stuff", I mean things like a binder full of green-bar 14" source-code printouts for the 1st computer game I used to love playing (*-wars on the Qantel), an entire shoebox full of punch cards for the 1st big program I ever wrote and a few old 8k RAM cards for a computer I no longer own (back then, 8k was a LOT of RAM, and cost more than a 1G DIMM does, today!)

(Note for the numerically challenged: 8k = ~8,000; 1G = ~1,000,000,000.)

Actually, I had a good excuse for the punch cards: I occasionally teach intro programming or computer courses, and it's fun to do a little history and break the ice with "back in the day..."-type war-stories. And I had plans to re-invent *-wars on modern technology.

But then, in a blinding flash "let go, Luke...!"-esque moment, I realized that (a) I could tell the war-story with about 3 punch cards to show as example, relieving the need for the other 8,000 of them and (b) that there was not one single line of code in that source binder that was going to be the slightest bit useful in my re-implementation of *-wars (which, btw, in it's latest evolutionary redesign-as-pipe-dream, is nothing even remotely resembling the original game, anyway, so keeping the binder around for code-as-design-notes wasn't even a valid excuse, anymore.) (Have I mentioned my procrastination, lately?)

Where was I? Oh yeah -- so I pitched that huge sorce binder (actually, I think I put it, a few pages at a time, into a bonfire, out of some weird thought that, technically, I was probably still under NDA for it, in some old lawyer's mind), and 98% of the hollerinth cards, two 9-track mag-tapes, all-but-one of the S-100 bus circuit cards and a bunch of other useless junk, and now the whole two footlockers' worth of stuff is squished into that shoebox.

To be honest, I don't know when the next time I'll have occasion to tell "back in the day..." stories with visual aids will be -- so the shoebox could probably be tossed, too -- but I regained nearly a cubic-yard of storage space, so feel better about that, anyway.

The funny thing is: my sense of aesthetics says that those open, austere, no-nick-nacks rooms are the prettiest, yet I don't think I've ever owned one, except in the moments immediately before moving in. I'm trying to exit the "well, the solution is to get a 12,000 sq.ft. house, and keep 11,000 sq.ft. of it full of junk, with one big, open, sparsely furnished living room to admire" mindset and approach the "you know, a good 75% of this stuff is junk, and could easily go to the dump (or Goodwill/Salvation Army/your charitable group, here.)

Actually, in a funny combination of both procrastination and packratiness, I've convinced myself that there's a fortune to be had selling a large fraction of my junk to other people on eBay. Somebody ask me how that's going a year from now; maybe if I haven't sold anything, it'll convince me to take it to the dumpster.

But what really amazes me about all of this is what an amazingly uphill climb that is! Normally, I'm the kind of guy who just says "ok, I need to do <blah>", and then I devise a plan, and start doing it, and pretty soon, I'm done. But with this "get over your need to hang on to old junk" thing, it's a real stumper -- I just don't get what my internal resistance to it is...

Some days, I think I should just go on vacation, and leave someone I trust with instructions "rent a dump truck, and take one heaping load of stuff that you're certain is junk that I'll never use and haul it away." Then, when I get back, I can gasp and scream and maybe cry a little about how "my favorite goldfish bowl -- I was going to fill it with loose change and take Vicki some place nice..." (or whatever) was gone but then, a few days later, I'd feel happier about how the sheer weight of junk in my life had been lessened by one dump-truck's worth and maybe -- just maybe -- it would be easier for me to do the next load.

Maybe.


But I'm sort-a chicken to try. I mean, what if my trusted friend tosses my old goldfish bowl?!?!

And that's the really weird part that I don't get. I know my blog is new, and nobody's reading it (if, for no other reason, than because in my 1st post, I said it wasn't for you to read, yet, anyway!) -- but I can sort of imagine readers falling into two camps:

Camp 1: "Just get over it, dude! Toss that junk, you'll never use it -- it's GARBAGE!"
Camp 2: "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean; I have exactly the same problem."

Ok, and maybe...

Camp 3: "What's the big deal? Those are treasures and you should save them!"

Still, if anyone's reading -- and especially if you're from Camp 2 and you have some bright ideas (it's always easier to coach others than to do, one's self!) -- I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.