True Confessions

I am a pack rat.

I save an inordinate amount of stuff that should have long ago found its way to a landfill or recycling center. Specifically, I horde magazines, catalogs and books. There's something about the printed word that makes me want to hold on to it long past its expired date.

When we moved out of New Jersey, I bundled and put on the curb years and years of back issues of magazines like Adirondack Life, Adirondac, American Hunter, Audubon, National Geographic, New York Game and Fish, etc. Most had been read and enjoyed before then being placed into storage for some esoteric reason. (Terry has her own bunch of magazines about stitching arts and/or cooking. Just so you know I'm not the only one.) I never looked at them after the first week or so in the house.

Since arriving in PA, I've repeated that bad habit so that I now have nearly four years of accumulated issues. Today I started bundling them again so as to take them to the local garbage disposal center. It's quite a pile. Oh, not as big as the one when we left NJ--those could have been made into a heck of a cabin by themselves if glued, stacked and anchored appropriately. The R-value of paper in such a densely built wall is probably akin to that of an 8" log wall if not higher. Still, I really need to get into the habit of reading and disposing within a month.

Oh, I'll still hang on to some of the magazines I subscribe to. Publications like Wood, ScrollSaw, The Family Handyman, etc., contain useful how-to articles as well as patterns that I can use. The same goes for Fly Fisherman. You never know when I'll want to go back to tying flies some cold, snow day in February.

Let us not even talk about the boxes and boxes of floppy discs and software for computers that no longer exist.