A smaller closet forces me to edit my collection of Goodwill sweaters and daring dresses twice a year: trading winter woolens for spring linens and forsaking trendy boots that looked much better on the rack than they do on my feet. I am not brilliant at it, but the space requires that I be harsh. Even if I wanted to, I could not collect purses or shoes or flamboyant hats for a one-off wedding.

I do not have such space limitations when it comes to seeds, and the result is a chaos so completely opposite to the way I conduct most other aspects of my life that I'm embarrassed to admit to it.

Twenty-five years ago, my seed box was a little Tupperware container – the type meant to hold a rectangular half-gallon of ice cream before cylindrical cardboard shaved a pint off our consumption and added four bucks to our budget.

Ah...the organization of it all. I still get shivers thinking about it. Three 3x5 cards acted as tabs – 'Vegetables,' 'Flowers,' and 'Herbs,' – separating packets neatly on their sides for easy access and joyful January evenings. When finished perusing or planting, I simply replaced the airtight lid and the neat little box was returned to a back corner of the fridge where it occupied space next to a lonely tub of miso paste.

It was the vegetables that spoiled everything. The peas, in particular.

As my gardening know-how began to expand, I grew dissatisfied with the stringy pods and starchy contents of the pea packets thrust upon the spring-time consumer in the average store. I came across a catalog at a friend's house and put in an order for something different. It arrived, along with dozens of other tempting catalogs – my name and address having been purloined by competing companies notified of my desire for "something different."

Peas take up a great deal of space in an ice-cream container. The larkspur started feeling put upon and along with the rest of the flowers, moved out into the less-luxurious digs of a nearby Ziploc bag. Chaos reigned over the flower seeds from that point onwards, but they were flowers, and I had a cottage garden – it seemed appropriate.

Meanwhile, I began to investigate new avenues in squash. 'Borer resistant,' 'trailing,' 'sweet,' 'earthy,' – each new variety tickled the imagination and fueled springtime dreams of gourd arbors and prize-winning pumpkins. Like peas, squash is not a diminutive seed. The Tupperware groaned, but those circa 1981 lids had an iron grip upon their contents.

Seasons passed. My clothes closet went through many changeovers. My closet remained trim. Not so with seeds. My new adventures shared space with old adventures. That's a lot of adventures. I couldn't make myself get rid of any of them. The thought of so much un-germinated potential stayed my hand each time I tried. I even kept empties to remind me of my early naiveté, or the thrilling rush of a horticultural triumph. But six seeds here, and ten seeds there does not a garden grow.

One can only tread this path for so long. My trusty 30-year-old container, now yellowed, sat in a large reed basket with several Ziplocs of varying size and contents. Rhyme and reason had fled. One bag held seeds "Used in 2006", one bag held seeds "NOT used in 2007." I couldn't throw anything out – what if it germinated? I couldn't trade anything at a seed exchange – most were shamefully too old for beginning gardeners to try.

There was no other choice. I started perusing the container aisles looking for something to hold my hoard, secretly hoping that nothing would appear and I would therefore be forced to face the problem the same way I faced my clothes closet every season – as Shiva the Destroyer.

In this day and age of cheap mass-produced petroleum products, my glimmerings of better nature didn't have a chance. I found a container, and enabled the problem still further. But in those moments before I transferred my chaotic jumble into its new 'tidy' home, I called my mother in a last-ditch effort to invoke shame upon the situation.

"What are you asking me for?" she said surprised. "I still have a packet of tomatoes I planted when you were four years old. What's more, I germinated a couple last year."

So much for parental shame. They don't make it like they used to.