The term pack rat brings to mind visions of attics crammed with nifty but mostly useless stuff, basements of boxes and crates with things that might come in handy at a later time.

This does not describe my home.

When I was young, I travelled light–in the manner common to all young adults existing on the fringe of poverty and living on mac-n-cheese with tuna fish. I had no choice–I never knew when I’d have to move at a  moment’s notice due to a blow-up with a roommate or other such nonsense. The only things never left behind, besides my clothes and a few treasured heirlooms, were my books.

And then I got married. I had a fairly good clue about my husband’s nature before I ever moved in–I did, after all, spend a lot of time at his house. But it never dawned on me until recently just how steeped in crap this house is.

We’ve been remodeling the house for about a million years now. We connected the garage to the house, turned it into living space (where I’m sitting now, actually). A nice family room with  a 10′ x 8′ bookcase and cathedral ceiling enabled us to move from the old cramped living room, which is now filled with his tools as we begin the next phase of the remodel.

Remodeling necessitates moving shtuff from one room to another so you can work. Most of this shtuff, I’ve come to realize, is nothing more than crap.  There is crap everywhere: tucked in boxes and stuffed into the corners of rooms; crammed into green plastic garbage bags like Dexter‘s victims and piled, forgotten, in a little used area of the bedroom; packed in plastic Rubbermaid totes shoved into the loft; neatly stored in decrepit cardboard boxes, layered in the dust of the ages, and stacked in the attic.

I have no clue what’s in most of these various storage containers. When I go through them, once in an eon when the mood strikes or when I have the time or when I simply can’t stand it and have to eradicate some of the junk or go insane, I can’t recall why I saved any of it. Goodwill doesn’t want most of it, so we’ve spent more on dump fees than it takes to run a small country.

My worst fear has been realized: my husband has totally sucked me over to the Dark Side. I have become a Crap Rat.