"She couldn't just throw away the old newspapers; she had to examine them for important information. It would take years to go through all of them, so she avoided the task and went through none of them."
- from the Steketee & Frost book, Stuff
Since I brought up Boston in my last blog post, I thought I'd take a minute to mention the Boston Sunday Globe. The Boston Globe is one of the major newspapers here in New England. Their Sunday edition is, like many Sunday papers I suppose, HUGE. Really, the Boston Sunday Globe is the size of an old VCR. If you find a hoarder in New England, I would be willing to bet that in at least 90% of the case, you'll find one or more stacks of old Boston Sunday Globes in the home. That makes for a tall pile.
Fortunately, I've never had this problem myself. My wife buys it every now and then for the coupons insert, but we're quick about recycling the rest as soon as possible. But the newspaper seems to be a very commonly hoarded item. The word comes up over 50 times in the Stuff book.
What makes people save stacks and stacks of newspapers? I think the quote at the top of this post says it all. I'm not going to bother to elaborate on it. At least not this time.
