I am a pack rat. I have packratitis, which sounds kind of like pancreatitis, but isn’t even a little bit the same thing. I keep things because I think that maybe some day I will be able to use them as ingredients for my art. I almost never do. Then my studio gets too cluttered and I have to toss a bagillion things that I can’t figure out why the hell I ever thought they’d come in handy. And by “gets too cluttered” I really mean that we move again and there’s not enough room in the moving van. And by “not enough room in the van” I really mean that my husband won’t let me take things like mannequin arms across state lines. I would like to join a group of other pack rat hipsters, and we could become the Pack Rat Pack. We would wear sunglasses at night and drink dirty martinis and take up smoking and sing old jazz standards until our smokers’ voices got too deep to hit the high notes anymore. Oh, and we’d collect useless shit in the name of art.

Here is an example of me actually using something I didn’t want to toss. My mom handed me the little bread loaf wrapping fastener (what the hell are those things called?!) and made the mistake of saying, “Here take this,” instead of “Throw this away.” I don’t think this is what she meant.

Every time I visit my mom I leave post-it notes that I’m assuming she’ll never throw out because she should be a pack rat, too. It should be genetic.