I opened the drawer, and when my eyes fell on what was inside, I cried out in shock and fear!

[csziggy]

41. It gets worse - HIS father was an engineer

And married into a family of packrats. Our family has stuff dating back well over 150 years. And not just good or nice stuff - old ledgers, snowshoes (they left Michigan for Florida in 1925!), letters, scraps of notes, pieces of posters, all kinds of stuff.

It's cool to see a family chart in my great-grandfather's writing on a piece of stationary from the Chicago Northwestern Railroad where he worked in the 1880! Or to read a letter from the brother of my great-???-grandmother as a response when she wrote home to Lincolnshire after the death of her husband in New York state. Or to hold the medical license of a cousin that was signed by Abraham Lincoln because he got it while serving in the Union Army.

Of course, it is golden from a historical or genealogical point of view, but still it is mountains of STUFF!

And none of this counts the stuff that Dad (and Mom) accumulated during their lifetimes. A whole garage of tools, closets of computers (there is still an unopened, never used Texas Instrument computer in there somewhere!), and MORE STUFF.

They moved after all us kids left home and it took 30 years for them to clear out the old house. It may take that long to clear out the "new" house once they are gone. And they are still going, collecting not as much stuff, at 88 and 90.

Is there a smilie for a hoarder?