Monday, December 3, 2012

I don't mind a few cases...

I like watching "Hoarders".  I find it very motivating.  Seeing someone anguish over throwing out an old potato chip bag puts my own problems in perspective.

A good example is an old sheet from Ron's bed (Ron has a twin).  It had a huge rip and was not exactly prime material for any project.  I kept it because "I might need some rags".  Here it is, years later, and I still don't need any rags.

About the only use I can imagine - in some kind of disaster it might make a good bandage or sling.  But if things get that bad I have plenty of other fabric.

So, I threw it out.  I had a pile of clothes on the floor for a while.  I finally went through them tonight and saved maybe a dozen items.  The rest either went into the trash (for reasons I'll reveal later) or the good items were donated.

I had a very large bag with a large cleanliness question mark.  So, it went, even though the items looked and smelled fine.

Ick.  I need to take some extra vitamin C.

So, why I am I sharing all these humiliating details?  Well, hopefully to encourage someone else with the hoarding tendency.  You're not alone.  Throw it out.  You won't miss it.  If you really need it later on, you can always buy a new one.

It's hard, though.  I get that.

One thing I've learned from Hoarders, everyone has a different reason for hoarding.  For me, I had a lot of insecurity in my early life.  I think my hoarding (other than genetic reasons) goes to that.

The cleaning can be difficult, not because it's hard to put things in a trash can, but deciding, do I keep it?  Do I toss it?  A lot of hoarders, I've noticed, seem to see the hoard as a part of them, so I'm doing an amputation with each removal.  Then I go watch Hoarders and the guy crying over his empty potato chip bag (a metaphor, of course), and realize yeah, that's part of the problem.

I think most Americans, in general, have the problem of saying "I am my stuff".  It can be hard to separate our identity from our things.

One of the happiest places for me was a converted garage apartment, and a cardboard box full of clothes.  I had a few used paperbacks and a single afghan I'd made.  That was pretty much it for "stuff" (other than some of Ron's cookware).  We were very happy there.

I find it telling, even after months of serious purging - which is a lot easier at the proper lithium level - that when Ron and I bought a lotto ticket, his first "wish" was his own house.  I still have some work, but I'm not doing it for his approval.

I'm doing it because I want to do it, for me.  Because there's something sad about finding an afghan I made, in the garage.  Because my neighbor helped me with my groceries today and I was so happy - not that he's a nice guy, which he is, but the front room looked great except for the Bibles.

If I could be accused of "hoarding" anything, it would be Bibles.  It's my great ambition to give them all away, and I do that on a regular basis.

I don't mind a few cases of Bibles in the front room.  Neither did the neighbor.  He just said "Have a nice day" and left.

1 comment:

Melanie said...

I have the opposite problem, I'm the "anti-hoarder". My husband is always wondering what I did with some "perfectly good" item that we never have and never will use. I can't stand clutter, I don't like knick-knacks and doo-dads all over gathering dust. Wth 5 dogs, I already get all the pet hair I can barely tolerate (but I wouldn't part with my dogs for anything).

The only thing I "hoard" is my huge (over 500 bottles and counting) of rare, discontinued, or niche perfumes. I have a huge Chinese-style painted file cabinet in my closet in which I keep my collection to protect it from light and heat (I keep this closet cold) and to avoid clutter. So many of the bottles are display worthy, but I can't keep a rare $2000 1920s bottle of Guerlain Djedi just sitting around begging to spilled. Perfume collectors all over the world would kill me if they found out I let that happen! (They'd really kill me if they knew I'd managed to acquire two bottles of Djedi, when a 5ml decant goes for hundreds of dollars). But it is my "Holy Grail" perfume, as far as being the one that just melds with my skin, nose and personality. Another rarity is "Nombre Noir" in the 7.5 ml black bottle-two of those also. A Jacques Fath Iris Gris that I got for a song on Ebay (when professional collectors can't get their hands on it), which was stored in perfect cold conditions at its home in Canada above the Arctic Circle, of all places. It's even more rare because it came in a set of two other discontinued Fath perfumes which are so rare people don't even think they exist anymore, not where they can be found anyway.

As I've said before, I adore perfume, I'm just very discriminating about it (maybe it was all those Saturdays collecting cow patties, LOL).