CMIL: The Pack Rat Gets Robbed

My mother-in-law is a pack rat. Her house in Tainan is full of crap that should have been thrown out last decade. She has plastic bags full of plastic bags (what synergy). She owned a convenience store in the late 80's and early 90's, when she closed the store down in 92 or 93, she brought the left over stock home, and STILL had it in her house. Her built-in display cabinet is full of old napkins, salt and pepper shakers, sugar in yellowing paper packets, and other stuff from the store, and worn out clothes from the 80's, all stored in plastic bags. She even had the overflow stored on the stairs. She had so much clutter she couldn't find her health care card and drivers license. My father-in-law couldn't stand it, but CMIL refused to get rid of any of it.

One night last year their place was robbed. My father-in-law woke up and heard noises downstairs. He yelled thief thief and the burglar took off with his "loot". Fortunately nobody was hurt.

When my father-in-law turned on the light he was quite delighted since the thief's loot was mostly plastic bags, junk from the convenience store, old clothes, and other things begging to be tossed in a dumpster. And as a bonus, the thief had found my CMIL's missing IDs and placed them on the living room table. Nothing valuable was taken other then some socks and new clothes for our son. How could there be anything valuable taken since they don't have anything valuable?

I would have loved to have seen the thief go through his loot. Bag after bag of bags, old nasty grandma clothes, 20 year old sugar. Sounds like something out of an Elmore Leonard novel.