Fighting Packrat-itis & giving up on veggies
Cliff November 7th, 2006
One of the cons of being a Reference Librarian is that you have to work some weekends. Those weekends that I don’t have to work, I try to “get stuff done.” This last weekend, this consisted of my battle against the dreaded disease Packratitis. Being the archivaholic that I am, I save everyting with the hopes of one day cataloging it for future generations. And when I say I save everything, I mean that. From graduation cards, to notes from my mom, to ticket stubs from concerts. All of this has piled up over the years to create a giant mess in my home office.
My final decision? Photograph the lot and toss it. Yes, throw it away. I figure that it will save more of my sanity points in the long run to have it photographed and tagged (making it searchable while preserving the memories) rather than having it take up space and me never putting it into scrapbooks. Trust me, it was a tough thing to do. And since packratitis is a often a hereditary disease, my mom about went into fits when I told her.
But I did save some things, such as my sister’s wedding announcement, and a handwritten letter from my grandmother. These things can’t really be replaced, and even though I’m backing up all the pictures, I don’t want to risk losing the original artifacts. Altogether, I currently have around 540 pictures, and I’m not done. I’m not going to set the majority of them as public on flickr, but at least this way I will be able to organize them.
Somewhere admidst all of this home memorabilia preservation, I got the sudden urge to garden (?!?!). So with a little help from Dennis, the neighbor’s cat, I weeded the side garden and put down ground cover. Imagine my surprise to find that I still had peppers growing from two seasons ago. I dumped ‘em in a flower box, and we’ll see if they make it through the winter. I’m thinking of giving up on veggies this year, and just planting herbs and flowers. Any suggestions?
