Justifications from a Pack Rat

Being a pack rat is mildly annoying at best.  Especially when you love to be organized and your husband hates clutter.

I recently found a couple of boxes of 'keepsakes' from when I first lived in Manhattan and I literally have a Playbill from every single Broadway (and Off Broadway) show I've ever seen.  I have ticket stubs from every professional sporting event and concert I've attended since high school.  And my creme dela creme?  Well, that is a vicious competition.  Maybe the pages of notes between a friend and myself during high school English class about who "sucks" more.  Or not one but TWO programs from a 1998 D.A.R.E Charity Volleyball game with signatures of various unknown Denver Broncos players.  This stuff is sentimental gold!

The interesting thing that I've learned is that we all tend to hoard in our own way.  My husband may have a strict, "If you haven't used it in 6 months, we don't need it!" policy but for some reason he can't part with a single item from the garage.  You should hear his justification on why we need to keep the snorkeling gear that we inherited from when his parents owned the house.  20+ year old flippers!?!

But (and with a pack rat there is always a but) every once in a great while it actually pays to keep some of that annoying useless junk.

I worked at my hometown movie theater for four years between high school and college.  Hands down the best job ever.  Late nights screening movies while drinking Mountain Dew like it was air.  In my college years, I made slightly above minimum wage and had two other jobs just to pay rent but I was able to watch as many free movies as I wanted!  Every now and then I even got to keep cool promotional materials for the movies.  Fast forward ahead 12 years and I just hung up these movies posters for my daughter's playroom.

Oh sure, I could have just bought a Finding Nemo poster online but what's the fun in that?  Keeping a bunch of movie posters all these years wasn't about how much I love the Finding Nemo movie.  It was about having a representation of one of my favorite times in my life.  The key is to be able to determine what is random junk (uh hum...D.A.R.E programs) and what brings you joy by taking you back to a special time in your life.