Pack Rat

For me there is little more difficult than parting with things. I do not consider myself to be materialistic; I understand that you can't take it with you and that, especially in a RV, it all requires space to store it. Some of my more aggravating habits are due to my being miserly. I reuse everything, trying to eke out it's maximum value. For example; I have a water bottle in the fridge that I have reused countless times and paper towels get rung out to dry for reuse. My father was notorious for keeping used items squirrelled away in hopes they would find some future use. I remember my Mom flipping out when the bulb she found in my Dad's treasure trove didn't work. Blogs and websites are littered with warnings to keep what you lug about to a minimum. I downsized and sold my brick and mortar home (actually a trailer) right after major surgery. Missy took advantage of that as she loaded the RV. As I lay recovering in my lounge chair (another item I dearly loved-it had massage and heat) she would parade by asking me if I really needed or wanted one thing after another. For me certain things represented parts of my life and getting rid of them meant leaving that behind. Anyway; we have been carrying around a ton of stuff and we attacked it yesterday. I had a couple of collapsible chairs that I won at chili cookoffs. Both of them had a broken plastic attachment rendering them useless. I couldn't bear parting with them because they were embroidered with the time and place of the cookoff. I also had two collapsible tables with various broken pieces. Well, we made one chair and one table out of the two and chucked the rest. The basement in an RV is much like the ones found in houses, and there's no telling what you'll find. As our cleanup progressed, we encountered manuals for items we no longer owned and boxes that lay empty. I rationalized that the empty boxes might be useful should we have to send item(s) in for repair, or that they would add value to the item(s) should we sell them. In a way, I guess it was cathartic and I reveled in our new found space. Today, we attack the basement again and my baseball hats are on the hit list. I must have over 100 hats that I have owned for over twenty years and they have traveled many a mile with me. I remain resolute in my mission to clean house and rid myself of "things" that are of no use. The only items I refuse to part with are my stuffed animal souvenirs and TY bears. Ain't gonna happen!