All of us are guilty of collecting things....rubber bands to put around open chip bags, tools that may come in useful one day, socks that may eventually find a mate, jeans with too many holes but are still so comfortable, dogs, books, half used chapsticks, you get the idea.

I pride myself in being able to part with items I have not used recently. I don't collect anything and can't stand clutter. I do have a problem getting rid of horse blankets (I only own one horse but have about five blankets for him) and can't stand throwing out plastic containers and try to reuse them as much as possible. Jarred and I also have a hard time getting rid of back packs. I think we have at least five larger backpacking backpacks and about eight regular packs, ranging in size of course. While we don't need these, we can't seem to part with them and have an entire closet dedicated just to backpacks.

BUT there is a limit and my realization came to fruition last weekend. Last weekend we headed up to Tacoma to move Jarred's dad out of his duplex. Earlier this fall, Jarred's dad, Gary, fell and suffered a serious brain injury. While he is on the mend, he's not ready to live on his own yet and is currently in an assisted living facility in Spokane. Since his brain is not fully functional, he has little use for the myriad of things he collected. So, last Saturday Jarred's family and I got together to pack up his house. Now I'm sure Gary would not have considered himself a "collector" but the shit this guy had, definately put him in that category. I was in charge of packing up his clothing. As I hit the first closet, I thought to myself, "Wow, this guy has a lot of flannels." I think I counted 10. The second closet surprised me with EVEN MORE FLANNELS. I decided the man had hit his limit at 10 and gave the rest to the Goodwill.

We next hit the garage. Tools, tools and more tools and this was after he delivered an entire two tiered tool box, full of tools, to Jarred last fall. Not only did he collect tools, but he also collected car parts, tape, flashlights, sleeping bags and blow up rafts. Since packing up the garage was a team effort, much discussion went into what to ditch and what to keep. The collectors among us emerged. As we bantered over whether or not to keep fuel pumps from three different types of cars, we all came to the same realization....what will people say about us if they some day have to clean out our garages or houses? Will we be laughed at for what we decided to keep? I think we all secretly went home to analyze our "collections."

To solidify the theme of the weekend, as we were driving home on Sunday we passed a motorhome. I noticed the dash of the motorhome was cluttered with something and as I took a closer look, I realized that beanie baby on top of beanie baby were piled up on the over sized dash. I chuckled to myself as I imagined that motor home overturning and beanie babies flying everywhere...what would the medics think?