A moment of Clarity

My dear, dear family and DH don't often understand my Hoarding Issues.  And they often ask "Why?", and I've been having a thought on that today......
  Some of you may have grown up going to the library all the time.  I did not.  Our little neighborhood school libraries were a good try, but nothing like what I discovered later.
  Some of you may have had a library in your home, and subscriptions to magazines that came in the mail.  I did not.  Our "family library" was a 3' wide 4' tall bookcase.  One whole shelf was occupied by The World Book Encyclopedia.  I was a voracious reader and read through the whole thing one summer when I was about 12.  There was one dictionary, published before my birth, and one Bible, awarded to a parent for Sunday School attendance in 1934.  While I do think I read the dictionary, I'm pretty sure that I haven't read the whole Bible yet.
  When I started college, we were expected to know how to use an "index to periodicals".  I remember discovering the archived magazine section at the libraries.  They had ancient copies of the most fascinating publications; all bound into volumes by year.  It was like an archaeological find, only not so much dust.  Before then, I had no idea that there were so many magazines on such a wide variety of crafts and arts.  I think I "wasted" a great deal of a year or two of college lurking in the depths of those archives.  That was before my Hoarding got to be a problem.  Everything I would ever need to know was at the library, open almost 24 hours a day, a short walk from my dorm room.
   Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe those archives were a contributing factor to the problem.  As time went by, I learned that my little college library sold off great numbers of books and magazines at a book sale every year.  Their capacity for storage had been reached, and the oldest and least read had to make way for the new and the popular.  At 4 books for $1 or $5 per bag, how could anyone let these precious tomes get away?  As long as they were in the Library, it was possible to go there and see the patterns and read the articles if they were needed.  As they were sold off, they went to live in someone else's stash closet, or horrors! to that new recycling center in the mall parking lot. Then they would be "Gone".  As time went by, the big University Library and the Public Library in the University Town started getting rid of their stuff too, and I was always right there to buy and haul home as many boxes and bags of books as I could afford.  By the time we set up housekeeping, and I was home with little ones, even the small town local Library was getting rid of periodicals over 5 years old.  They were giving them away free!  They, too, had a Fund Raising Book Sale every summer.  It was for a good cause.  And I was giving them a good-ish home.  Right?
  Sometimes, I've discovered that I actually had 2 or even more copies of the exact same issue.  I even spent a great lot of money on magazines on eBay at the height of the problem. 
   In reality, they stacked up in places inhospitable to paper and decayed away in many gruesome ways.  They have taken up space that could have been put to better use.  Space that has been expensive to maintain, hard to acquire, never enough of.  They have required heating in the winter and venting in the summer.  They have been drowned by rising water and roof leaks.  They have been nibbled and gnawed by mice and moths and who knows what else. 
  These collections were read only occasionally.  When I did try to find a half remembered article or pattern, it could never be found in the chaos.  It became much easier to just make up a pattern than to find the one I was looking for.  And now, with the Internet and Ravelry, and all the company websites like Bernat and Lion Brand and Interweave, isn't it easier now than ever to find exactly the pattern or idea that I need?  Without the Paper Overload?
   This may be a breakthrough moment; wish I had a therapist to talk to about it.  Maybe it's time to let more of them go..........