“The ultimate packrat here.” — Wow, sounds like it!
I’ve gotten rid of everything old as new things came in. My first house was 30’ x 30’ including a one-car garage and three bedrooms! About 750 sq ft living space. No room to be a packrat. Then we moved up to a 1,550 sq ft rancher built in 1952 (living space) and thought we were in a mansion. We sill own that place.
Our house just had 2 bedrooms upstairs. Teeny tiny. But it had 3/4 of an acre. So when the opportunity came to add to the house, we put in a foundation bigger than our original house. People STILL think there are two houses here instead of one. I love it as intensely as I did when the realtor brought me here at first.
I just lost my brother a couple weeks ago, but the day he died I was able to find the letters he wrote me in the 50’s when he left for the air force, and his air force patch, and the family photographs of him to put up on my website. The memories keep him alive so that makes the packratting all worth while.