Lol, greylove! I know! Perhaps if we knew exactly where to get the item actually needed, and wore blinders to not see the rest, it might work(!)

Heehee, Anika - I feel like the items mock me too. Then will sell (or more often give away because selling will take to much effort and time and it must go NOW) just to "get rid of the evidence".

How to know. I've figured out that if I suddenly:

* Have to have multiples and backups (just in case!), even if the item is easily available were something to happen to it (like cds -- "What if it gets scratched? Oh no! Better not chance it.")

* Am attracted to things that in all honesty I'd never wear or use (even often compounding this with the multiples thing).

* Want to load up on all kinds of things for some new project I'm charged up about.

* Want decorative items. (I tend towards minimalism and am virtually The Anti-Knicknack. My mother is a hoarder. My aversion to too much stuff started early. My horror when I later see what I've done is magnified because I vowed to never be that way. Yet there is the damn stuff! See above: "getting rid of the evidence". It can't happen fast enough.)

* Want things simply because they're attractive (including things of which I already have a bunch of the same sort of item that I don't use either).

* Start in on Ebay, compelled to buy nearly everything associated with a given catagory, no matter how ridiculous. If it's there, I MUST have it!

* If I'm really not thinking about the money, because usually I'm very thrifty (and must be -- wow, the money I'd like to have back...).

* Hell, am shopping at all (not conclusive, but I usually hate it).

Only in looking back could I see these patterns, so now I try catch myself early so as to nip it in the bud, because if I don't, before I know it, I'm in so deep that I CAN'T see it.