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Hi. My name is Mickie and I'm a hoard-a-holic.

For the last ten years I have been promising hubby I would go through all the boxes in the basement and throw away useless items that have accumulated in our family through the years. Saturday I made good on my word.

I don't know whether my decision was made with a clear head or whether it was hormonally induced. Either way, it was Katy-bar-the-door as I bounded down the steps in pursuit of my first de-cluttering since I cleaned out my room in 1956, a move, I might add, that came about due to a threat from my father to withhold my $1.50 weekly allowance.

Pushing and shoving past boxes stacked floor to ceiling my first encounter with the past was a duct taped square box labeled "Old Record Albums." I picked up the box-cutter and tore at the tape with reckless abandon only to come face to face with Johnny Mathis.

Chances are, when you wear a silly grin, the moment you come into view.....

Instantly I was transported back to a sticky summer's night sitting in the front porch swing with my beau as the words from the record player wafted through the open window, the curtains billowing up against the screen in the soft breeze. No way am I tossing this away! Johnny, you stay, honey.

A few finger flips and Glen Campbell's Southern Nights conjured up another memorable summer's eve. Then Tom Jones, Perry Como's Catch a Falling Star, and The Best of Dean Martin.

I was hypnotized and quite unable to finish the task at hand, lost in a flood of memories. Never mind that we don't own a record player or haven't even thought of these LPs for over thirty years. These are priceless, I thought. Why, I could sell these suckers on E-bay and make a fortune.

Next, was the box of over twohundred 45s, some of which bore names of artists like Chubby Checker, The Cascades, Frankie Valli, The Caravelles, and The Shangri-Las. Again, unless I'm willing to shuck out a couple grand for a jukebox it isn't likely I'll be listening to any of these either. But hey, I payed $1 a piece for these records at City Pharmacy some fifty years ago and played them non-stop throughout my teenage years. How can I part with them?

Another box of 8-tracks held sweet memories of my sons' childhoods. Songs like Dottie Rambo's Down by the Creekbank, and John Denver's Grandma's Feather Bed, just to name a couple. I wiped away a tear and set the box aside. Ditto, a box filled with crumbling old corsages, prom programs, old movie ticket stubs, two rolls of expired Super-8 movie film, a pair of 3-D glasses, and a hall pass signed by principal Kenneth Kelly. A moth-eaten woolen mitten, a remnant of long ago days, when a bunch of us were sliding down a snow-covered hill at Mr. Frank Guillebeau's, lay near its faded mate. Someday I might toss them. Not today.

A closet, full of dresses so small I doubt I could fit my left leg into any of them, is brimming over. Five bridesmaids dresses only a blind man could love, a Lincoln County basketball sweater dated 1965, the year I lettered; a football jacket, number 57; a size 5 Brownie dress; a Future Farmers of America jacket worn by hubby when he was thin and lanky; and our wedding "going-away" outfits, my nubby wool suit that was obviously cut from a Barbie doll pattern, and hubby's green and brown tweed jacket with, I swear, pink rice still in the pocket!

Moving on, having not added one single item to my trash pile, I unearthed a Wok, a Nintendo, about two dozen board games including Candy Land and Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. Boxes and boxes of books, many so old the pages had disintegrated, old college textbooks and one high school Basic English book from Mrs. Alice Albea's classroom. I can't remember if my ending up with that book was an oversight or whether I, God forgive me, stole it.

It is the favorite of all my textbooks for it is filled with sentence diagramming, an old-time discipline that I adored and that, in my opinion, needs to be resurrected in schools today.

Hula Hoops, toy trains, paper dolls, roller skates (minus the key), a rusty alto saxophone, baby clothes, high chairs, basinette, Halloween costumes sizes birth-adult, a dog-eared Dr. Spock book (the M.D., not the guy from Star Trek), baby bottles, a couple of shriveled up Binkies, and stuffed animals too many to count have occupied a special place underneath the stairs for twenty-five years now. I could no more toss them out than I could my husband, on his good days, I mean.

Souvenirs of trips afar fill plastic bags at the back of the basement workroom. Mexican pesos, a sombrero, a shedding pinata, a Statue of Liberty snowglobe, two seeds from a giant Redwood tree, and a dried pair of orchid leis seem destined for the trash heap but even those, I don't think I can part with.

I have this sense of fear that I may someday need something and not have it. Or, what if my children need these things that have withstood the test of time. Surely there are things hidden away in this house that my children may someday wish to have. Pots and pans, old sheets, mounds of books, Elvis Presley bubble gum cards, milk stained baby bibs?

Okay, maybe not. Listen, I know I have a problem. I admit that. I simply don't know why I hang on to things the way I do. It's an addiction. That's the bad news.

The good news is, I am not adding to the stash I have already accumulated and I'm thinning out little by little. I now have one closet upstairs that has space enough to hang a couple of coats. I'm making progress.

As I said, hubby would be perfectly satisfied to back a U-Haul up to the house, load it, then toss its contents in the woods and set fire to it. (Doesn't that hint at some sort of personality disorder, too? I think it does.)

I'm simply not ready to let go of some of the things that are precious to me or that have uses I've not yet discovered. There may come a day when I can. If not, my kids will either treasure them as I have or use them for kindling.

In the meantime, however, should any of you dear hearts have need of some hard-to-find item such as, say, a vintage solid brass suppository mold, just give me a call. You are welcome to it.

Remember, though, I absolutely must have it back.