sad day

today lincoln and i tackled a large project that has been taunting us for quite some time - organizing the garage so lincoln could park in it.

being the extreme pack rat that i am, i had 6-7 large rubbermaid bins full of stuff that i have been storing for years. school stuff, childhood drawings, theater stuff, love letters from all my old boyfriends (hah!), toys, etc. every so often i weed out some junk (i probably started out with 10+ bins). today was weed day.

here i am sorting through some of the nonsense. i keep some of the most random things, like tinsel from prom or the candy cane lincoln gave me freshmen year... i'm not even kidding.


when i was a sophomore i went through a wild sock phase. here are some i kept. see the orange and black ones? they are toe socks with poms on each toe. ridiculous but oh so cute and school spirit-y.

this is my flower girl dress and flower hair thingy from 1987.

here are some of my toys i saved. i was into trolls. not sure why, they are actually kinda ugly and not that fun. see my barbies? one of the guys is a NKOTB - joey i believe. i used to cut my dolls hair thinking it would grow back. plus i would steal my younger brother's baby socks and make them into barbie dresses. the other box is full of micro machines and mcdonalds toys. sad thing is most of those were collected in my pre-teen to teen years.

now this is big deal, the whole reason for this post. for as long as i can remember i have had a weird compulsion to save all my shopping bags. not regular walmart or fry's bags, but all the ones from the mall or vacations. my mom used to call me the lil ol' bag lady. i sometimes even buy things just to get the bag. every few years i try to lessen the collection. but i end up just adding to it. and what do i do with these bags you ask? absolutely nothing. they get folded up and put in a bag inside another bag then in a box and stuck in the closet or the garage.

today i chucked my collection. it was very sad. even lincoln was sad. at first i sorted them into a few piles. like mall bags and vacation bags. paper bags and plastic bags. handled bags and non handled backs. then i pulled out the duplicates. but i decided it was time to move on from this odd obsession. i then sorted out the ones that would make good garbage bags and the rest will be recycled. the pictures don't do the piles justice. i would guess i had over 600 bags.

as i was sorting, i would pull out a bag and remember when i got it. oh, that roxy bag was when i got my winter coat. that see's candies bag was my father in laws christmas box of chocolates. or that mlb gift shop bag was when lincoln got his l.a. dodgers hat in california. it was sorta sweet. i had bags from my three college's bookstores. i had bags from several casino's on the las vegas strip. i had some dr. marten bags from london when my parents went over 10 years ago. i had bags from every disneyland trip. i had the bag from my first pair of expensive shoes.

oh well.