Pack rat
Instead of going to Lord of the Rings this afternoon (missed one showing, next one sold out), I emptied out my storage unit. I put stuff in this storage unit back in '96, just before going on my Wanderjahr, and when I got back from my travels it was more convenient to leave stuff in storage than to bring everything back to my new apartment. And various friends have used the unit for storage at various times, and I've been too lazy to empty it out. But for the last six months I've been thinking "Why am I paying to keep this unit when it's less than half full?" I asked for a smaller unit; they put me on a waiting list, but that was six months ago, and none have opened up. Finally a few weeks ago I pulled half the boxes out of it and stacked them in my living room; today I got the rest.
(Digression: this is one of my few really positive customer-service experiences. On a Friday afternoon around 5 pm, in August '96, I started calling storage places because I was leaving town in a few days and needed to put all of my stuff in storage. Several places didn't answer; others were brusque and grumpy and annoyed at me for calling them just as they were closing. One, a Public Storage place in Mountain View a few blocks from where I was living (and half a block from where I now live), told me that there were no open storage units between here and San Francisco, and that I was just out of luck. I despaired. Luckily, Arthur said, "What about that Public Storage place?" and I said "I just called them" and he said "No, that other one, the one that's a block away from the one you just called" and I said "They won't have anything, the one I called said there aren't any open units between here and San Francisco" and Arthur said "Just try them" and I did and they said "Sure, we've got plenty of space, come on over!" So they got off to a good start, and they continued to be friendly and helpful for the next five years. I like them a lot, and would recommend them to anyone who needs storage. Public Storage on Old Middlefield in Mountain View. I do not recommend Public Storage on Rengstorff, the ones who didn't bother to refer me to their co-franchisee a block away.)
So anyway, I'm poking through boxes. I've got copies of my high school newspaper in here. I've got computer catalogs from six years ago. I've got two boxes of checks—a total of 408 checks—that I wrote between 8/91 and 5/95. (In the days when banks would return the physical checks after they'd been cashed.)
Before my grandmother died, in '87 or so, we went through her house in Philadelphia. She had stacks of newspapers ten years deep. She had neatly labeled grocery-store receipts from 1967. So this packrat stuff runs in the family, clearly.
But I do have limits. I'm going to dispose of the checks. I realize that this will be a great blow to future historians, but until such time as future historians start paying for my storage space, I'm afraid they're outta luck.