I know a lot of people who are packrats, but I’m not one of them. I give away clothes and books as soon as I can, I subscribe to the theory of “use it or lose it,” and I love a spartan desk.
But I do have packrat tendencies when it comes to information, especially in the form of magazine articles. The thirst for knowledge, the need to document, and the hope that someday I’ll need to look back on that piece that I remember reading six years ago all conspire to create in me an obsessive desire to save and catalog interesting articles. Any time I come across something save-worthy, I put it in a big box in my closet, and every six months I go through that box.
Today, I went through that box, and carefully sorted all the papers into one of the following categories (in alphabetical order):
Business and economic theory
Christian stuff
Global hunger/poverty
Magazine covers
Science and technology
South and
Sports
Urban issues
US business
US politics
World economy
In reality, I have hardly ever gone back and looked at these archived articles. But the fact that they’re in my closet, organized and ready to be read, is enough to satisfy the little packrat in me.
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