I can relate. I'm not a total packrat, but I cannot stand to leave something that brings me utility. Even if it's utility that I'm unlikely to ever use. In Cataclysm, it's hard for me not to have every tool in the game on my person all the time. I fully share the need to identify everything.
This is the worst part. My grandparents were fond of defending their hoarding with "You never know when it might come in handy..."
And now I think that way. Even when the handiness of said items is only hypothetical and much open to debate.
You know the Chips Ahoy bags with the little plastic trays inside for the cookies? Now, both of those can be reused in a number of clever ways. The trays can hold all sorts of items that you want to sort. The bags can....well, they're bags! They hold stuff! And they have built-in crimp ties!
So my grandmother would take them after all the cookies were gone, wash the tray, clean out and neatly fold the bag and store them away. After she died, we found over 500 of each, neatly and orderly stacked away in the basement.
It wasn't about using them, it was about
having the potential to use them. I've come to realize that hoarding kinda goes hand in hand with an obsession with preserving
potential. I'm afraid to make big decisions because they almost always mean discarding potential outcomes. I see a dozen potential uses for something, but I never actually use it because doing so means discarding eleven of those potentials.