I am a reformed pack rat.  By reformed I mean that I throw tons of things away that I usually have to re-purchase within 30 days.   My reformation does not apply to sentimental things or family items.  In regards to those… I am an organized pack rat.  Everything is boxed up and in the attic.  I try to be very strict about some things… if you haven’t used it in a year send it on its way.  I wasn’t always this way…. I am reformed.

Dana is not reformed. Dana is a pack rat of the worst kind.  He’s a pack rat that thinks his pack rat skilz are some sort of moral high ground because he’s turning his back on consumerism or some such craptastic logic.  He is also a disorganized pack rat and some of the stuff he saves is just trash (but I’m not bitter!).  He once moved a humongous box of wood scraps across town to our new house.  He tried to move 2 more but I threatened to kill him dead and bury his body in the back yard.  He took the hint.

Here’s a good example of these 2 philosophies NOT blending.  I once organized our home office and discovered a whole bunch of dusty notebooks.  Some were broken.  I threw them away.  All of them. 

Fast forward 3 months when I go to Dana’s office to meet him for lunch.  I discover a box of old dusty notebooks, some of which are broken, sitting in his office.  I freak.  He justifies.  Says they’re good notebooks, gotta lotta life in ’em.

Fast forward 18 months.  Dana’s job ends.  Gets new job where he now has a cubicle and not an office.  Lots of crap has to come home including a box of dusty notebooks, some of which are broken.  Out of desperation I have him put the junk in the attic.

Rinse and repeat a million times over.

It has taken many years but I recently got Dana to realize how many hours a week he works just to pay for the attic space to hold all of this JUNK.  What helped my case was when we got moving estimates and we were able to see just how much money the attic…. just the attic… would cost to move. 

So now we’re having a garage sale.  The goal?  To get rid of at least 50% of everything in the attic (75% would be just slap happy wonderful.)  So tonight we started.  Unloading, sorting, pricing for the sale, and organizing.  We worked for 3.5 hours.    We only made it 1/3 of the way through all of the junk in the attic.

It’s gonna be a long week.