I Am a Teenage Pack Rat by Guest Blogger Andie Furber

My Mom calls me a pack rat, but I prefer to think of myself as an archivist.

My room is the "DANGER ZONE" of the house. If you ever opened my closet door you'd know why. I have so much stuff I need multiple places to put it all. For example:

1. My desk: it's an architect desk, so it has nine compartments on each side. 18 compartments to hold things in!!!! WOW....
   
2. "Under" my bed: my bed sits on the floor, and has six compartments with baskets to keep my clothes in. Saves space in my room by not needing a dresser.
   
3. My nightstand: my nightstand is really tall, and has 3--what do you call it--layers? There are three different places to put stuff, and I keep magazines, books, pictures, my alarm clock, CDs, and notes there.
   
4. The left side of my closet: my closet has 2 sliding doors, and the left side is used for some clothes. It has my laundry basket (which is usually empty because my clothes are all over the floor), button up shirts, coats, formal dresses, and shoes.
   
5. The right side of my closet: used for just random stuff. Books, old magazines, bags, hats, just some other random things. But my mom exaggerated when she said I had six tiny bottles of ketchup in there.

My room, even though it sometimes can look like a cyclone hit it, is my favorite room in the house. The bad thing though, is my valuable stuff, like my iPod, camera, and other things get lost a lot. I listen to my iPod almost everyday, and when I can't find it, I FREAK OUT!!!!

About once every 6 months, my mom has me "purge," as she puts it, my room, and I have to clean my floor, desk, and my whole closet. She gives me about 5 garbage bags, says "When you fill all these bags, you're done."

When I purge my room, I approach the project like an archeologist. I carefully dig through each layer and admire each artifact. I recall the week I wore those dirty jeans to school (they were clean then), I recall the fun sense of accomplishment I felt when I presented my six Egyptian clay jars in my core class (I wondered where those went, until I found them under my pink chaise), I remember my friend Allyson telling me about the fun road trip she took, and how nice she was to bring me back four (not six) tiny bottles of ketchup. The purging goes on like that for some time. Sometimes, several days. It takes me that long sometimes to find five bags full of stuff I can bear to part with.

I think that my room really shows a side of my personality that will come in handy when I grow up and start to look for a job -- maybe I'll be a curator in a museum, maybe I'll be an anthropologist, maybe I'll be an archeologist. My Mom says maybe I'll be a garbageman (or garbagegirl).

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