You May Be a Hoarder If....

As we prepared for our recent move, we were forced to clean out our rented warehouse. As we were hauling our first load I was thinking that as long as there are procrastinators and hoarders in the world, owning a storage rental business would be highly lucrative.

I realize I fall into both categories. Not bad enough to be featured on a tv show mind you, but just enough to pay $55 per month renting a warehouse in which to house stuff I wasn't able to part with. The procrastinator in me kept putting off dealing with it until one month turned  into 10...you do the math.

I do take some satisfaction in knowing that it was worth $550 to prove to Marc that he is the bigger hoarder in this family.

We had a garage sale and made just about enough to pay for the cost of that warehouse . . . I note that while I tend to stockpile furniture and craft projects that I plan to complete in the "near" future (some of these date back to the 80's), Marc hoards tools and building supplies. I'm all for having tools. The problem here is that we have at least 3 of each because a certain someone doesn't keep his tools organized and when he needs to use one he can't find it and has to go buy another.

I have to say, Marc did get rid of some stuff I thought he would hold onto forever and I made the decision to finally get  rid of old bank records.  I thought shredding those records would be a quick project and I sat on the patio and started shredding. Taking each document from the tote was a trip down memory lane (which of course slowed down the process tremendously). I had receipts from the mid 90's along with tags from clothing I'd bought. I don't know why in the world I would keep the tags unless I thought I might need to return something. Those tags were five sizes ago I might add. Along with receipts are the duplicate check stubs of literally every check I've ever written.

I come by this naturally, as my parents, or maybe it was just my mom, were hoarders and procrastinators as well. When my mom died, we found grocery bags in a storage closet that contained canceled checks from the 1950's and tax returns from the '40's.

The shredder quit working and I thought I had burned out the motor but as it turns out, you're supposed to run it for two minutes
then let it cool for 30.  Obviously at that rate I knew I would never get it all shredded.   So what did I do - why pack it up and haul it with me to Arkansas of course. At least I have an outbuilding in which to store it until I get around to burning it. Oh by the way, we had so much stuff that we couldn't shove it all in the largest U-Haul truck so we had to rent a storage warehouse for the overflow.... Hopefully we'll be able to get it cleared out before the year is out!

Meanwhile, I made a dress for journey to wear in a wedding in which she was a Flower
Girl. The pattern is what Stephanie calls "old school". It had a lapped zipper, covered buttons, darts, lining AND underlining, net petticoats and a cummerbund  I thought making it out of
Satin would be a good idea... Until I started pinning and cutting. As I was hemming it I seriously considered running out and buying something for her to wear. There was about 10 miles of hemline.  It looked huge and I was so afraid it wouldn't fit. It fit perfectly and she looked so sweet walking down the aisle in it. 

I received a Joann gift card for my birthday and I was saving it for something special and I decided to use it to make myself a maxi dress. It turned out cute -to the extent anything on a middle aged overweight woman can be considered cute. 

I have some scraps of a Lilly Pulitzer Lycra spandex fabric that I'd used to make a swim suit for rylan and its just enough to make suits for journey and Willow. I love LP fabrics but it's almost impossible to find them anymore.  I've cut out those suits and will post pics when I'm done.