Packrat (person)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A packrat is a type of person who is characterized as being reluctant to discard property, even after others consider its useful value depleted.
Packrats take on various degrees of this obsession, most downplaying their habits. The most extreme packrats practice compulsive hoarding. However, many packrats view themselves as either collectors, or as resourceful people who don't want to waste.
Some packrats simply do not discard things after their normal usefulness is over, or they have already been replaced in the person's home, such as TVs and audio systems. Others go out and actively acquire items. The latter can be seen frequenting antique shops, yard sales and thrift stores for whatever treasures luck would bring their way. Some are insistent that their items either are, or some day, will be worth lots of money to collectors, and they are enthralled by television shows such as Antiques Roadshow which simply reinforce this notion.
Many packrats have the motto: "I would rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."
Few things are as exciting to a packrat as when their stored items are needed. For example when a friend says "I could really use a left handed smoke shifter" or perhaps "I need a bacon stretcher this weekend" and the packrat responds euphorically with "I have one of those in my garage" (or in the attic, or under the bed, or on top of the piano, or in the trunk of the 1976 Cadillac stowed in the back of the garage, which will never run again, and I couldn't get it out even if I wanted to because there are 4 tons of stuff between the hood and the garage door) "I have been saving it for such an occasion."
