PackRatitis

I'm creating my own word- PackRatitis- meaning having the disease of being a pack rat. Which I have tendencies to be, and my husband definitely is. Which can or cannot be a problem depending on how you look at it. But when trying to make room in a smaller house for a baby, it can be a problem. I've done a fairly good job of cleaning my stuff out of our "office" turned baby's room lately. So today, our day off, I'm being a taskmaster and begging Andrew to clean out his desk so we can move it out. Since it's raining and dreary out he's being kind enough to humor me. I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we've accumulated since we got married especially and moved into a bigger than 3 room apartment. Somehow I think the stuff multiplies to fill the space you have. Anyway, I feel like we have tons of stuff, why do we keep it, what's it for, who really cares how much stuff we have? etc... And really, why can't we just toss stuff? Like my notes from college, do I really need 90 pages of notes about intercultural communication? You never know, maybe... gross, I disgust myself.

But then, I was cleaning off the top of the filing cabinet, trying to figure out where we are going to move the filing cabinet to, and wondering why it was endearing to me at one point that my husband loves music so much he seriously owns 300 cd's, and why do I have to be the one to move them to a new spot? When I found this:

Random I know. But it made me smile and kiss my husband. This seemingly pointless piece of a tree trunk that measures about 6 inches in length is a piece of our first Christmas tree as a married couple. Which has a wonderful story to it. First of all, had to have a real tree. No discussion. Secondly, lived in a teeny-tiny barely room for us apartment. Thirdly, we went so late in the day that it got dark, I got cold, I'm sure I cried at some point, but we got a huge honking tree out of the woods, paid the man, and made it home. Only to drag this, I swear 7-8 foot tree upstairs to our apartment and have to cut probably 1+ feet off of it. We made it though, and the tree took up about half of our 12 foot living room that Christmas. Seriously, there was room to walk by it, sit on the couch, and watch TV about 2 feet away. But it was real, it was big, and it was beautiful. And it made great memories for our first Christmas together.
And this little piece was part of what Andy had to saw off the bottom after we got it up into the apartment, and he decided to keep it. I couldn't figure out why, I mean seriously, sticky piece of wood sitting on the bookshelf in our apartment. I cringed and teased him every time I dusted around it. But he was stubborn and would laugh back at me and say something to the effect of "just leave it be". So I did, and when we moved to this house, it got put on the filing cabinet with the rest of his odd collection of stuff to keep.

Until today, when I decided to clean it off and move most of it to the top of the dresser which until now collected clothes and stuff the dog was trying to eat. And I found this piece of tree, no longer so sticky, and I didn't cringe, I was instead so thankful that my husband is thoughtful enough to care about the little things, to enjoy the little moments of our life together, and to keep a part of our first Christmas Tree. And even though we're probably still packrats, I have a lot of memories from the past 3 1/2 years that I'm reminded of in a lot of the "stuff" that we keep around. And honestly, I wouldn't trade them for anything, even more space.