I married a pack rat

We bought a laptop computer yesterday and it came with a free printer (after a mail in rebate.  Don't get me started on rebates.  I've got six rebate forms totaling $290 I need to send in for the rebates on our new computer equipment purchases.).  Our old printer is a monster.  In it's day it was quite a sophisticated piece of technology.  It scanned, copied, faxed and printed.  It was also the size of a small refrigerator.  It squatted, huge and forbidding on our desk taking up 1/3 of our usable work space.  We don't print a whole lot, so it's just been sitting there, acting as a giant paperweight.  If I ever tried to scan, copy or print anything, it would groan and sputter, eventually spitting out something that vaguely looked like the document or picture I asked it to print.

Naturally, when the sales kid told us we could get a free printer with our new computer, I was thrilled.  John and I both answered him.  Me with an excited "YES!", John with a solid "No thank you."

"No?!" I asked him "our printer sucks ass!"  I turned back to the sales kid and told him that of course, we'll be taking the printer.  John muttered something about more rebate forms, to which I replied that we will already be sending in a rainforest's worth of rebate forms, what's a couple more?  He agreed and we got the printer.

With new toys in the house to be played with, John stayed up late setting up our new laptop and installed our new printer downstairs with our desktop computer.  This morning I came downstairs to find that with the removal of the beast, we now have doubled our usable desk space!  The new printer, compact and sleek, actually scans and prints! Then it occurred to me.   

"Honey, what'd you do with the old printer?"
"Nothing"
"It's in our storage room isn't it?"
"No"
"It's in this house somewhere!  I know you didn't throw it away!"
"There's no reason to throw it away, It's a perfectly good printer!"

This is what he says about anything we replace.  Old rotary phones, empty shoe boxes, old VHS tapes even after we've replaced them with DVD's... The man can't, I mean actually, physically can't, throw anything away. Will we EVER dig this shit out of our storage room and use them again?  Could we even sell any of this junk in a yard sale (not that he would ever even consider getting rid of it)?  No.  It's crap.  Yet, he insists on keeping it all "because we can".  Meanwhile I'm stuffing Alex's old baby stuff (things we actually should keep for the next kid) in closets and under beds or loaning it out to people with new babies because we just don't have any storage room for it.

I guess I need to just stop fighting it and chalk it up to the many things I may never understand about my husband.