Packrat Tales: Continuing....

Aunt Trudy loves containers. She has many, many, containers and she uses them to hold all matter of stuff. There is no container that is too old, too big, too small, or too mishapen to use. All containers have value and worth.

Most important are the bags. She has quite possibly saved each and every shopping bag she has ever encountered. Paper bags are neatly folded and stacked. She keeps them in closets, on the floor, and on top of her vintage 1950s era washing machine. Anytime she wishes to do laundry, the bags of bags must be moved - to the floor - until the laundry is finished. Then they are replaced to their perch on top of the washing machine.

Inside her closet are bags of newspaper bags. The kinds of bags the newspaper comes in are plastic - oblong and really not very reusable. But Aunt Trudy saves them and they sit in a brown paper shopping sack on the floor in her closet.

"Let me recycle these," I say, moving them out of the way to gain access to an elusive treasure she wants me to unearth from the back of the closet. "Oh no," she says. "I need them."

"What will you DO with them, Aunt Trudy?" I ask, straining to be patient as I move a box of very old-looking drapery hardware. "You have plenty of other bags."

"I use them when I sort things out," she says, as if sorting things out is something she does early and often.

The plastic grocery sacks she uses for garbage - quite literally since she refuses to USE the garbage disposal lest she "wear it out." She also uses them to line her trash cans and the extras area placed into this crafty-looking hand-towel plastic bag saver that an elderly neighbor gave her for her birthday ten years before. I would wager money that the FIRST bag she ever placed inside this thing still resides there.

If there is an after-market for 'disposable' microwave dishes, Aunt Trudy could make some nice pocket change. Each and EVERY disposable microwave dish that has EVER crossed her threshold remains in her kitchen until there is no space left. THEN they are stacked into like piles and put into bags and placed - yes! - on top of the washing machine with the paper bags. They too get moved down to the floor when a load of laundry is in the washer.

Yogurt and applesauce containers get stacked up too. After washing, they may get used to hold paperclips, rubber bands, nuts and bolts, staples, empty prescription bottles, tape, and old pens. They are everywhere. They are legion. Those unworthy of cluttering the house get relegated to the paper bag and will reside on top of the washing machine, to get a change in scenery whenever the sheets need laundering.

Since Aunt Trudy rarely buys shoes, the shoe box population in the house does remain manageable. These boxes are old and I imagine that anyone collecting old shoe boxes would consider them a treasure trove. On the bottom of most of the boxes are the lids - serving as coasters, no doubt, and spending more time on the bottom of the box than they EVER did in their rightful position on the top. The boxes have old coupons, old bank statements, letters, documents, medical bills, rolls of tape, address and phone books, clunky hardware, old tools, pictures, coffee cups with broken handles, key rings from touristy places, and painstakingly dated papers that need to be "gone over" before they are relegated to another pile, file, or the shredder tray.

"I could sure use these trays for paint at school," I say, hoping to reduce the clutter on top of the poor old washing machine.

"If you can use them, take them!" Aunt Trudy tells me, happy that her containers were saved and will now find a proper home.

"Wonderful! The kids will be so pleased. How about these? And these?" I hold up the bag of yogurt containers and plastic bread bags.

"Take them! Take them all." And before she can change her mind, I haul all this loot to the car, fully intending to recycle them once I returned home.

But later that night she calls my mother-in-law, in a panic.

"Kimberli threw out my containers! They were perfectly good! I can't find them anywhere."

"You gave them to her for paint at school," reminds my patient mother in law.

"Well.... I just hope I don't NEED any sometime soon." AS IF she couldn't use those useless newspaper bags.