Collector's confession

So I'm reading this awesomely funny and informative book called Clutter's Last Stand. I borrowed it from the library after we baby-proofed our living room and am reading it during pumping sessions at school. As I mentioned in that post, we got rid of a lot of junk we had sitting around the house. The sad part is there is a lot more junk stashed around the house as well as in storage bins in our garage. Although we've been good in the (recent) past with parting with some of our junk, we still have a long way to go. Fortunately, that feeling of liberation at getting rid of something that I knew I would never use, is a huge motivator for me to continue us on the path of De-junking the rest of the house, which is why I borrowed the book. I thought it would be helpful to determine what really is junk and how to part with it.
How many of you store junk or stuff you never use but are keeping because you think you might need it someday?
The following is a list of junk we realized we had been saving for years....
Stacks of Christmas cards from previous years
Stacks of birthday cards from the past three birthdays.
The cards people gave to us for our wedding
Countless vases
Batteries
Rocks
Shells
Candles
Candle holders
Cat food bowls
A box of incandescent Light bulbs

We were actually saving every rock and shell from every beach we had gone to together during our 9 years of being a couple. When we realized that many of the rocks could be a choking hazard I put them, along with the shells, into a small plastic storage bin and stowed it away in the pantry we had just cleaned out.  And what are you supposed to do when you replace most of the light bulbs in your house with fluorescent light bulbs? That's right, store the old incandescent light bulbs in a shoe box in your pantry.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. I know I've been keeping notebooks since I was 15, and although I've only re-read a few, I might want to someday, so I keep them- all 30 of them in a trunk in our garage. Those and every newspaper clip I've ever published is also in a box somewhere if it's not in a binder because I might use it as a teaching example. And of course I feel the need to keep proof that I worked in print journalism. Which reminds me- I know I also kept a small stack of my old business cards somewhere in there as well.....
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