I got a compost!

This past weekend I learned that my husband’s packrat tendencies come from his father, who gets it from his father. It’s a stagnant gene pool collecting everything.
Scared me to death.
Confession: I used to be a packrat. I thought everything had sentimental value and was worthy of putting away. No longer. Now I want to throw away everything except for leftovers in the fridge.
Chris: But I might need that someday.
Not if you don’t even remember that you have it because it’s in a pile with three million other unknown objects.
To be fair, he has done a lot this past year to clean up. He cleaned the office and threw away a lot. He cleaned the garage. Again, threw away a lot. We can now fit two cars in there! Yay! I really can’t hold this against him.
In our visit, his father said, hey, go through all this and take what you want.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
I have to say, though, that Chris limited himself. We came away with a stack of records (which I wanted more than he did – I’m a sucker for records), a working phonograph player (again, we both wanted it), old pictures, some paintings his grandmothers and great grandmothers did (none were really any good, to be honest), these blue glass telephone cap things (I don’t know, but I have to admit that they look cool), some random silver pieces that need some love, and a compost. So, I can’t complain. I can’t wait to set up the compost. I want to set it up right on the other side of the window above the sink so that I can just open the window and throw. And one of the records is an unopened Elvis record. I already have Abbey Road. (I stole it from my parents, although I’ve told them a dozen times I took it along with their Steppenwolf and Frank Sinatra. They get upset every time they “discover” this fact, which is about once every few years, though they don’t have a working record player.)
So I guess a little packratedness is good, but don’t tell Chris I said that. I’ll never hear the end or be able to throw anything out again.