There’s a problem that starts off small, and grows to often life-destroying proportions. We all collect little knick-knacks, and maybe sometimes we aren’t quite as meticulous as we should be about keeping the home and hearth clean, but in moderation, there’s nothing wrong with that. Some people collect everything, thinking they’re being thrifty, conservative, or just plain resourceful. Sometimes that’s true, and other times they’re staring hoarding down the throat and are on the verge, or deep in the middle of, a very serious problem. Pack Rat Day is your warning to take some time to look at your life and determine if you have things you don’t need.
History of Pack Rat Day
The history of Pack Rat Day is the history of a pathology and the people who live with it. Compulsive hoarding is a serious problem, we see it in people who collect things past their homes ability to contain it. Worse, these same people are sometimes unable to determine whether or not saving a thing is truly useful or not. Sometimes it simply results in a home that is packed with useless items and an uncomfortable living space. In others, the case gets much direr.
Hoarding can completely take over a person’s life, rendering their entire space impossible to inhabit. Kitchens and refrigerators may be overloaded with junk to the point they are unusable and incredibly unsanitary. Bedrooms quickly become filled with random collections of items, sometimes to the point where there’s no way to use the room for its intended purpose. If there is, it’s largely just the bed that’s able to be used, and often not all of it.
If collecting just odd knick-knacks wasn’t bad enough, it can get so bad the person with the hoarding problem can’t determine whether or not something is actually gone bad. Clearly, rotten food will be kept until it’s just completely mush, meat that’s gone bad can ‘still be saved’, moldy pancakes and the like will all be hoarded. The degree to which this can affect a person’s life is tragic.
How to celebrate Pack Rat Day
The first thing to do is take a serious look around your house, no matter how fastidious you are with your items, and determine how much of it really needs to go. If you have difficulty moving around your house because of all the stuff, but still think you need it all, it may be time to seek help. On the other hand, if you’re just a little bit of a pack rat, then just try to thin out the non-essentials.
