There are a lot of things I'm not good at throwing away.

In the bathroom my shower ledge is littered with bits of soap because it seems wasteful to toss them out. Under my sink I have a store of old toothbrushes saved for all those tough to clean corners that I never get around to scrubbing. Containers of (almost) empty cream rinse and shampoo don't get tossed when they get low, they get diluted again and again until my hair no longer gets cleansed or conditioned when I pour their contents over my head, just a little bit wetter.

In my kitchen I save popsicle sticks (good for craft projects), empty tofu containers (make excellent storage bins for saved popsicle sticks), used herb jars (I can't stand to throw out a perfectly good jar with a shaker top) and the rubber bands that hold together stalks of broccoli. You never know when a thick blue rubber band is going to come in handy. Chipped dishes get stacked in a corner until I need one to put under a potted plant which, by the way, grows well in a chipped or cracked coffee mug.

Old magazines get put in cardboard boxes to be used for collages. Cardboard boxes get put in the shed, attic or garage to be used for...well, there are just so many uses for cardboard boxes that you kind of have to save all sizes because you never know what you're going to need one for.

Unmatched socks go into my ragbag together with threadbare towels and sheets. I have a stack of old calendars that are too pretty to throw away and a bunch of outdated maps that I keep because my kids might want to make envelopes out of them someday. I save any and all wide-mouth jars to store leftovers in the fridge and sturdy plastic containers to reuse when we go on outings. You get the idea, I'm a hard-core hoard-aholic.

My husband is as bad as me when it comes to saving things. While I tend to wax poetic over my assortment of decorative Kleenex boxes recycled as attractive drawer organizers, he gets misty-eyed over manilla envelopes. As he explains it, with the addresses crossed out, they're as good as new and you never have to run to the store at the last minute to find an unusual size since, for the past 3 decades, he's saved every size and shape imaginable.

Is it possible to inherit a packrat gene? I wondered this last Christmas when we visited my mother-in-law. As cluttered and full of just-in-case-I'll-need-them-someday items my house is, my mother-in-law is in a class of her own. She has been stashing away maybe-someday items for over 50 years yet has the uncanny ability to locate a squirreled away item in a matter of minutes. I'm in total awe.

Seasonal bouts of overzealous straightening strike me like they do everyone else but, oddly enough, when I finally do make myself throw out something, a few days later I'm seized with a desperate need for precisely that item. It's as if I'm being punished for finally tidying up. Am I the butt of a sinister joke orchestrated by some Demon of Dust or Junk Gremlin with a perverse sense of humor? If so, I wish he'd lurk in someone else's garage and find some other packrat to taunt.

I doubt I will ever live in a clutter-free home although I admire those with austere interiors. It's not me, but it sure does look nice to actually see walls, floors and countertops. I doubt I will ever succeed at clearing all the junk out of our house but then, if I did, what would I do with all that free space? I'd probably just go out and buy things and fill it back up. Then, of course, I'd have to find someplace to save the all the boxes they came in!