I seem to be keeping things that, perhaps, I should not keep. I didn’t see anything wrong or odd about it, but during our weekly phone call, Socks just about lost all of her big-girl words when I mentioned that I have a bag of pine-tree needles.

‘Urgle, humph, ah, urk, WHYYYY?’

I have reasons, of course. No one has ever asked me ‘WHYYYY?’ about my needle collection before, so I didn’t realise that they I sort of stupid when enumerating the reasons I have them. I’m fabulous for being able to create excuses, but until she asked, I had no idea I was making excuses about why I keep a caché of old Christmas tree needles!

The Excuses: There are only two years’ worth. It wasn’t that cold last year so we didn’t have many fires, and I couldn’t burn them all. We haven’t had our chimney cleaned in eight years and I don’t want to catch it on fire by burning a lot of stuff that makes sparks (a very real problem). I can’t compost this many needles as they are very acidic and are bad for making soil, and my compost bin is chock-full in the winter. It’s just one bag, I can put it up in the attic until needed: not a problem. I hate throwing away things that have a use. Our ‘stinky trash’ collection is only every two weeks and is usually full of food scraps, bones, and cat and dog poop, so there’s no room for pine tree bits. I could throw them over the wall of the estate (where everyone tosses their lawn clippings), but I really hate doing that, it makes me feel guilty and sneaky and irresponsible for my own mess. And it is just one bag; a paper bag with handles; it’s not as if I have an awkward plastic Hefty bag full!

As compared to ‘why bother?’, all those reasons stack up for me in favour of keeping the damn bag full-o-pine. But…it still sounds stupid to me. You could take away three or four reasons and I’d still have the needles in my house. Maybe it’s because she and I know this is a symptom of a larger, looming, potential-hoarder trend. But that’s another post.

After all, I have a lot more paper bags set aside, just in case I need one.