Hoarders: Cocktail Napkin Edition

When we moved into this house, I brought ALL my belongings in one trip in my mini-SUV. Not an average or large SUV... a MINI one.

With less than 17 days to go until we move, I felt ambitious and thought I would start packing up. I started with a storage closet that I assumed would fill up two boxes and then planned to move onto the buffet in the dining room. Well, 9 boxes later, the storage closet is still half full and I also was ashamed to learn that I have a very serious problem: I hoard cocktail napkins.

I stumbled upon this issue after four boxes of serving platters and two hands caked with newspaper print. I walked away from the closet that was beating me and moved onto the dining room. There, to my disgust, I opened up a drawer and like a clown pulling dozens of stringed together scarves from his nose, I proceeded to take out pack after pack of cocktail napkins. From Halloween to Hanukkah (I'm Catholic, by the way) to school spirit themes, there were enough cocktail napkins to fill up the mini SUV that brought me here: 

And that's not even half of them.

Either I don't keep track of what I buy or I have a major alcohol problem. Since the latter isn't true, I realized that I'm easily charmed by cute, novelty napkins... gosh, I'm weird.

So after discovering my napkin stash, I packed the rest of the buffet and decided to call it a night, fearful of what other "collections" I would discover. Although I'll give you a preview... I opened up a kitchen drawer I haven't visited in a while and was greeted by an array of chopsticks from dozens of restaurants we have visited over the past three years. How do you say "oy vey" in Chinese?

I'm going to tackle some more packing today and I'm sure I'll continue to unearth collections and items that surprise me. This whole moving process never ceases to make me stop, worry and think about myself. This move has really exposed some of my strengths and unfortunately some of my weaknesses... I sometimes don't know how I'm going to make it to closing, but when its all said and done, I'm going to treat myself to a stiff cocktail... and at least we all know I'll have a variety of cocktail napkins to choose from.