Computers make being a packrat so much easier. Things don't look dusty, they don't look old no matter how long you've had them. You open up Windows Explorer, and oh, all nice and neat. No indication whatsoever of how much junk is in there. If you work with Unix, it's even worse. You don't even know which ones are directories! You don't need to throw anything away. You just make more directories. My ten gig hard drive is filling up fast. Download songs, videos, pictures, neat little things....but not to worry. There's a balancing thing to make sure that things don't get too out of hand. You see, what happens is that digital things are so....immaterial. So ethereal. It's not a thing. So there's less of a desire to keep stuff. You can always get it back, either by downloading it, or by recovering it from your hard drive or something. It's too easy! But alas...the ease of packratness has overcome the ease of throwing things away for me. I'm a packrat.

Yay!!!

Allison

wow... i never thought of it that way before. me too! i'm a packrat in every sense of the word (except rat)(who came up with that term anyway? can i be a pack...umm....gopher? girrafe? yeah. i'm a pack giraffe) i wandered, didn't i? i'm a digital pack(something) AND a real-junk pack(something) and ALSO a mental pack(something) (though that one doesn't seem to be as much of a problem as i wish it was... i sometimes forget a lot of things...) =) i've been reading your column too long... i forget my point so now i'm done.

jones