Friday, December 4, 2009

Hoarders

I supposed I watched the opening segment of Season 2 of A&E's Hoarders just to convince myself that we aren't that bad.

hoarders.jpg (29497 bytes)

Yet.

The episode focused on a woman who had to buy a second house because they had run out of room in the first house in which to keep all of their stuff, and the bank was threatening to foreclose on both houses.

I will admit that as I watched the show, I was standing in the kitchen cleaning up the counter. (I discovered it's blue--did you know that?) I didn't want to turn around at the end of the show and feel like I was still watching the show!

We aren't that bad, little thanks to me, and most of the thanks to Walt, who at least keeps the sownstairs part of the house from filling up with piles of stuff on the floor. But there are a couple of rooms that might give one of those hoarding-specialist psychiatrists something to sink their teeth into.

kerry.jpg (26706 bytes)I knew I wasn't as bad as this poor woman, who had to physically touch or see and approve everything that was thrown out before it went into the dumpster and who had a melt down when someone thoughtlessly threw away a tiny piece of a broken floor tile that matched two other broken pieces that she intended to fix some day. (They never did get her house decluttered, apparently.)

OK...Even my kids have to admit that I am notthat bad.

But as I watched the psychiatrist work with her and try to gently guide her into throwing away some things, I began to identify with the poor woman and I knew exactly how this whole thing started to get out of hand.

I've been obsessed with "making memories" ever since I was a small child. I remember obsessively taking photos (with a film camera) at age 10 for the sake of "making memories." I couldn't tell you what I was making those memories for but I knew that it was important to "make memories." One of my favorite things to do as a small child was to look through my mother's old photo album, which I knew by heart, and look at all the pictures of myself and my sister as we were growing up. When I got my first camera, at age 10, I got my first scrapbook and the rest, as they say, is history.

I also could never resist--even as a small child-- the lure of what Walt and I have come to call "the ubiquitous gift shop" that magically appears, sometimes out of nowhere, whenever you travel anywhere. It was always important for me to save something as a memory of some place we'd been. Again, I couldn't tell you what the purpose of saving it was, but it was important to "make memories."

Our kids lives have been photographed almost with the diligence of a paparazza, making certain that every event in their lives, no matter how insignificant, is documented. I wanted to give them the joy that I always had going through my mother's scrapbook. Of course my mother had one scrapbook and I have too many to count, and they are hidden away in our official hoarder room and rarely does anybody look at them.

Nothing in our house is worth much monetarily but every bit of junk that you see has some "memory" attached to it, whether it's something a kid made out of wood and string, or a stuffed animal that is no longer recognizable as a toy, or 33-1/3 records that we have no turntable to play on, but which tell the whole musical history of our lives from high school until the invention of the CD. There are so many little souvenirs of so many trips to different places that mean absolutely nothing to anybody but me, and possibly to Walt.

What can I say? I'm a sentimentalist and I understand the hoarder woman feeling her heart torn out because that bit of tile was important to her.

I'll tell you the truth. If someone came in here tomorrow and gutted the house, my anguish at losing everything probably wouldn't last more than 24 hours and I would be relieved to be rid of it all. But to have to physically go through every little tsatske, every photograph, every book, every CD, every spoon (I collected spoons for awhile) just seems overwhelming and so you let it go for another day...and then another day...and then soon you find that your in-laws glare at you because they know what's going to happen when you die, and your kids roll their eyes and tell you to just start getting rid of it.

But where do you start? Tossing the little styrofoam man made by some kid so long ago I can't even remember who made it? The little statue I bought at Hadrian's wall, which is broken (but repaired) and which I love for reasons I can't put into words? The stuff that belonged to Gilbert? That baton which may or may not have been used by Arthur Sullivan? I stand in the middle of a room and my head swims. Maybe I can part with a couple of things, but how can I throw out that thing? or that thing? In the end, I haven't even made a dent.

There is also the money factor. I can never justify spending much on most of these trinkets I pick up on trips, but nonetheless, collectively they represent a chunk of change and I feel guilty if I just throw them away.

I would love to be ruthless. Many years ago, in the years when I was into crafts, I made something for a friend and gave it to her, so proud of what I had done and so sure she would treasure it for the memory it evoked of our time together. Many, many years later, she was clearing out junk from her house and gave me a box of books and things that she thought I might like to have, one of which was this craft project, wadded into a ball and stuffed in a corner of the box. She obviously didn't remember that I had made it for her. She also had never treasured it the way I thought she would.

I'd like to care so little for things like that that I can dump them. But I can't.

My mother is frantic these days because she wants to get rid of "all this stuff" in her house. I look around her house and wonder "what stuff?" All I see is order, and nothing of much sentimental value whatsoever, other than photos.

I may be many things but "my mother's daughter" in the area of "memories" is definitely not one of them.

But I did clean off the kitchen counter. Or 3/4 of it, anyway! Walt got home from work and asked if he was in the right house.

7 comments:

Michelle said...

This is so me. But it's binders with me. I collect e-books, which I may or may not use. And I print them all out to use `someday`. Hubby even had to buy me another bookcase just for my binders. Hmmm...collecting spoons sounds like fun. I'm found you at December mingle. I enjoyed visiting you.

Bex said...

I never was a really obsessive hoarder, except where books, CDs, and DVDs are concerned. Oh, and vinyl 33-1/3 rpm records. And maybe old spices in little glass jars. And extension cords. But that's all. Except for safety pins, and pencils and pens, oh, and catalogs.

Stop!

I used to keep all that stuff (and a lot more) but once I hit 60 more than a year ago, that has all changed. I began throwing things out willy-nilly, and am loving the difference. It's like I had a personality transplant!

Lise said...

I can definitely relate to the hoarding problem. But I've discovered that the problem with keeping too many things because of the memories is that it can keep you from making new memories.

My Mom kept every gift, every magazine she might read again, every single thing with a memory attached, as well as things that she might need someday. And it made her house so full of things that there was no room for people. It was very difficult to visit her there. We lived three hours away, but we had to stay somewhere besides her house when we went to visit her. She missed out on a lot of time with her grandchildren. It was a huge wake-up call to me when we started going through her things after she died. Three quarters of those things she'd so carefully saved had no value to anyone else and went straight to the dump. And for this she gave up time with her family?

I'm also a hoarder by nature, but I'm working hard to overcome that tendency. I lived in the same house for 22 years, and then moved into an apartment briefly while searching for my current house. Moving twice in two months will definitely force you to purge your posessions. It's such a liberating feeling to have space instead of stuff surrounding me. Although my house could never be described as sparse or perfectly organized, I'm now able to have people over without cleaning for weeks beforehand. I recently threw a party for 30 people with only an hour's notice - something I would never have dreamed of in my hoarding days. The memories of that night mean far more to me than the random "stuff" that used to crowd my life. But I have to force myself to keep purging, and limit myself on what I can bring into the house.

And now I have to get off the computer and get back to sorting through old videos.

Pandi said...

The best way to avoid hoarding is to move every few years. Worked like a charm for me!

Tessa said...

I used to think of myself as a nomad. Only keeping what I would need to take to the next place. Then I found my current husband (a hoarder) and realized "I'm not going anywhere without out him"
There are days that I have threatened to take everything out of the house, make it as spotless as the day we bought it, and only bring back in the bare necessities.
I haven't done that yet, YET!
But I did find FLYlady.com a few years ago.. I nice lady from NC. I'd been beating myself up about not knowing how to do anything or "be a wife/mother/etc" reading her site actually helped me.. get me a little more grounded. And I still have a ways to go.
Luck to you, Mingling.

Tessa

Bev Sykes said...

I tried FlyLady for awhile, but I spent so much time reading the damn e-mails she sent out several times a day I didn't have time to clean anything!

jon said...

My cousin was a bit of a hoarder. most people who go to a landfill to get rid of their garbage. He went there to get it. He refered to it as his "mall".
When he moved out of his house, the town had to burn down the house. It was beyond saving. He was a unique person. He died a few yers ago. They held his wake at a strip club.