Or, alternatively, a highly accomplished and skillful packrat.

I am the uber-packrat.

It's one of those "matter of perspective" type thingamabobs.

Not that this is a new concept for me. It's hardly a surprise.

I am a hoarder by nature. I know this. I am not ashamed of this personality trait of mine in the slightest. Waste not, want not, and all that jazz.

But it's one thing to be aware off something from a purely intellectual standpoint, and quite another to come face to face with the empirical evidence.

I've got a lot of work to do, a lot of things to throw away, give away, or simply deal with in some way.

Not fun.

We've been here in Italy now for coming up on three years, which is longer than any of our other European contracts. That extra time, however, has increased the amount of pure junk exponentially.

This is not a large apartment. How did we manage to cram all these useless items in every single nook and cranny? And how could I have become so blind to it?

I have, on the bright side, managed to make good use of the bag farm. I blame the bag farm, like so many things, on my mother. She was always one to appreciate a steady supply of used shopping bags, so useful for so many things. And with the bag farm, of course, comes the gift box farm, and the wrapping paper farm, and the bits of used tinfoil farm. Thank God I've spared myself the washed out sour cream and cool whip containers farm (although not, sadly, the used but still perfectly good ziplock bag farm).

Mother, alas, lives a big house. Two of them, now.

I live in a one bedroom apartment, and I'll be damned if I'll move all my farms across the continent, to another small apartment in an even smaller country.

So I've been using the bag farm to dispose of the above mentioned farms, plus the ratty emergency underwear farm, the jeans of various sizes farm, the stained t-shirts that are still good for working out in even if you never wear them farm, the lamentable fashion farm, the odd sock farm, the wrong color lipstick farm, the beauty products that do not come close to performing as advertised farm, the not quite dead yet lighter farm, and the rest.

And as for the mountains of pantyhose with runs (but who sees runs under trousers?): Let's not go there.

I've run out of suitable bags.

Oh, the bag farm still exists, but it has been harvested of all useful produce.

Good thing I bought that jumbo roll of garbage bags.