When I stopped saving

It all began with stickers. I collected and saved hundreds of stickers when I was a girl. Lisa Frank was my goal but any kind would do. I collected and saved all sorts of crap. I collected rocks. I collected books (and still do) and I have collected and saved too many clothes, shoes, bracelets by the thousand, necklaces. I always went by what my mom had taught me- save it because you may need it later. This led to a weird habit of mine that turned rather wasteful once I was out in the world on my own. I would save bits of food in the fridge for months and not eat it always saying, I am saving that for this meal of such and such. I was single, living alone, with a fridge full of spoiled food that I kept saving. I never even really made the connections that link it back to my mom. We had to save everything when we were growing up because we were fairly poor and couldn't afford another of anything. It was really interesting to me to figure out where this habit came from and when I recognized it I always thought "How weird, I want this now but I am saving it for something." I had two sisters so they always got their preference whereas I got what was leftover, or handed down. When I lived alone I didn't notice this habit. After over a year of living with Kevin, I guess I save things for him. As a single woman it led to rotten vegetables in my fridge and the stereotypical month old Chinese food in a carton populating my fridge. I am trying to break this habit of saving, except for my books, and get in the habit of living. I want to use everything just to buy it again. How capitalistic it sounds all written out like that but really what am I saving for if it is just going bad or collecting dust? I do not have an overabundance of space in which to put said saved things, but I have taken instead to the habit of what I call gluing (but the rest of America terms scrapbooking.) Yes I am a scrapbooker. After a lifetime of saving for who knows what, a lot of my memories from pictures and old party hats to the Buick emblem and more have been collected and glued into a (several) book of memories. These are worth saving. But it is hard to muster through it all, one easily gets lost in the pile of "(s)crap" and joy and sadness abound at the returning of my mind to that moment at New Years Eve or the time I got my Buick stuck in a muddy ditch with my best friend and a 30 pack. There are not truthfully alot of pictures in my scrapbooks. I prefer old ticket stubs and autographs, crazy wrapping paper and things like that that will stand out in my memory. I have thought about collecting movie stub tickets as I love to go to the movies but I don't know where to begin. I re-collect mentally all the different movies I have seen who I was with and when. These are good memories, worth saving.