Ok, sometimes it pays to be a packrat.......

God love 'em, but at least 4 generations of the women in my family have been packrats & we're talking serious packratitus. Where upstairs bedrooms are so full of things that "you might need someday" that all you can do is walk into the room & walk back out backwards in your same foot steps. Hallways crammed with filled boxes of outdated fabrics & patterns. Closets of extra serving dishes & platters. My grandpa, bless his soul, also had this "problem" (don't want to call it a disease, since I question if it was something brought about from living during the Depression Era). He would go to estate sales & bring home boxes of "things".

Growing up with this, it seemed "normal". I never questioned the clutter. Once I moved away I realized, "oh my God, these people are packrats!" I vowed from that day on, that I would break that chain in my family.

I did pretty well until I started creating art again. It's a lot easier creating when you already have the paper you need for a journal signature or the right color of thread to finish a quilt. I spoke with other artist friends on how to "cope" with this disease & if it was acceptable or shunned & I was reassured it would be ok, but that I had to be careful, that it could easily get out of control. So, I keep it "in check" by organizing. All of my paints are in 2 clear rubber maid totes, my rubber stamps in another, fusible webs, etc AND they are kept in my studio either in the closet or underneath my work table. I cannot store extra rubber maid totes visibly in my studio, so this is a way of me controlling how much I can "hoard".

I generally give my grandma a hard time about all the things she keeps & shouldn't, but this time, I'm glad she did. When we went back to see her last week, she gave me a grocery bag full of the postcards that you see here. There had to be over 150 of these postcards & in fabulous shape for being over 97 years old!! They're all correspondence between my great grandmother & a friend of her's, most of them still have the 1 cent stamp that was needed to mail them on it still.

I feel like these postcards are a small part of my family past so I won't be cutting them up to use in my art. Instead, I have plans to scan them into my computer & then use them possibly in my work & as for the actual postcards, I think they'll be put into an archival binder where one can easily enjoy them any time!!