“You’ve got to see this TV show,” my husband said. “It made me want to go into my office and throw everything away.”
That’s how he introduced me to Hoarders, a show about people who have journeyed way past collecting and moved into a strange universe of piled rubbish, rotting food, dead cats, and worse. Each episode features two hoarders with an immediate need to get rid of their stuff, usually because they’re about to be evicted. The scary thing for both me and my husband is that we see ourselves in these people. We hear our own thoughts and emotions echoed in theirs as we watch them attempt to deal (or not) with their disease.
Once upon a time, I would have described myself as a pack rat. Now, after watching the entire first season of the show, I worry that I’m really a hoarder-in-training. When I was younger, I remember looking at my (then) small collection of books and being so pleased just to own them. Their mere presence gave me comfort. The colors on the spines were so pretty that they lit up the room somehow. But twenty years down the road, having hauled the books with me for three moves and over hundreds of miles, and having increased the collection to fill all available space (and then some), the books have become a burden. They don’t light up the room anymore. They just fill it.
If the books were my only problem, I think I might deal with them easily over the course of time. That’s what the Great Library Purge is about, after all. But the books are just the tip of the iceberg. What about my collections of stuffed animals, unplayed video games, and decorative tchotchkes? And who needs more than ten decks of cards? There’s junk in every drawer, stacks in the closet, piles on the floor. It’s gotten out of control and I’ve known it for a while, but this show really forced me to turn the spotlight on my own problem.
I can see how it happened. It’s my dislike of waste and a “green” conscience, coupled with uncertainty over how to properly dispose of certain things. It’s the difference between who I am (an everyday person with limited time for the pursuit of hobbies) and who I want to be (someone with the time to read and learn about anything of interest). It’s having moved several times and still not having the house completely done. It’s a desire to give gifts to people, and a fear that the presents won’t be appreciated. It’s sadness at the idea of throwing away something received from a loved one, particularly if they spent a lot of money on it. And simplest of all, it’s a habit, something I’ve been doing for so long that I hardly know how to stop.
So we watched and we watched and the horror built up inside, and soon the need to purge the house became so strong that I spent every night for a week “dehoarding.” My husband eventually joined the fray. Boxes and boxes of books were hoisted from the house, never to return. Bags of trash and Goodwill donations followed. I cleaned the bedroom thoroughly for the first time in I-don’t-want-to-think-how-long.
My office is, alas, still something of a mess, and my hands are tied by the situation in the rest of the house. Until the great room, mud room, garage, and my husband’s office are properly set up, there will be things stored in my office that do not belong there, everything from Christmas decorations to snorkeling gear. My office is the dumping ground for those items because it’s big and because I only need the part where my desk is.
But in spite of that, I think I can still dehoard some more, or at least declutter. That is my plan for today. I will try to get just a few more stacks off the floor. That’s not too much to ask. Off I go now to do that.