Please release me, let me go....
....for I don't love (want, need) you anymore....
I have a secret to confess… I’m a "hoarder."
Okay, well, I’m not anywhere NEAR as bad as the people featured on those shows. I’ve never been a compulsive shopper, I don’t actually ‘collect’ anything, there are no dirty dishes, food, wrappers, trash or filth around, and my stuff is mostly confined to my room. The floor is visible and I don’t need a path to navigate through it. I won’t be calling a cleaning crew to come dig me out wearing ‘HazMat’ suits, although I have threatened to rent a dumpster and toss stuff out the window. I just have a serious problem with not being able to throw things away.
At first I thought I was just disorganized or lazy. I’ve read books, magazine articles, and web pages on organizing and de-cluttering. I’ve tried various systems, calendars, index cards, containers, notebooks, files, incentives, deadlines….I’ve talked to my therapist and psychiatrist. I had a few theories about how my problem came about, but I honestly thought I was some kind of anomaly….until I started watching the two shows on Cable about "hoarders." Before that, I didn’t even know there was a "name" for the problem.
As a child, I listened to my grandmother extol the virtues of my aunt, who always took care of her toys as opposed to my mother who broke everything she had. I took that very much to heart and was very, very careful with my things. I hardly played with them for fear of breaking anything or even wearing them out. (After I got married and had children of my own, my grandmother would make me take some of my old toys home every time we visited. They went directly in the trash as soon as I got home because they held such bad memories for me.)
In my teens I started buying two of everything I really liked, one to actually USE and one to keep perfect and pristine. Of course since I was always ultra-careful with everything I owned, the one I used never got all that messed up, but I couldn’t stand to have even a single scratch or dent on the item. As long as I knew I had a brand new perfect one in reserve, with no scratches or scuffs, I could allow myself to use the original freely.
When my kids were young I had a hard time allowing them to play freely with their own toys. I would insist that they get out only one set of things at a time. If they combined sets I would get very anxious and when they were finished playing I had to separate all the pieces and make sure none of them were lost. One day when I wasn’t home, my husband had let them play freely and they had set up an entire city with Lego’s and Fisher Price Little People sets. I was horrified. Then I thought about their creativity and how I had been squashing it. That day I decided to give up worrying about everything being used for its intended use. It was difficult to let everything be mixed together, but I allowed it for their sake.
I think the term "hoarder" is a bit harsh. It truly is a mental disorder. Although it seems totally incompatible, part of the problem comes from being a "perfectionist". It took me a lot of time and therapy to understand how this could be, but after a while I realized it’s just another form of my "all or nothing" thinking. There could be clutter everywhere, but I would compulsively separate the laundry into ‘whites’, ‘dark colors’, ‘light colors’, etc. The dishes in the dishwasher had to be organized by size and type. I could ‘control’ those things.
The rest of the house was a disaster. My husband would put things wherever he wanted, no matter how I tried to organize. There were no "assigned" places for things. Every time I would clear off a counter or the piano top, he would dump more stuff on it. I gave up because I couldn’t deal with something being partially done. If I couldn’t finish a project, I couldn’t begin it. It had to be perfectly in order or a perfect mess. This led to a lot of procrastination on my part because it was all so overwhelming.
It became a joke. If somebody couldn’t find something, I would always laugh and say, "Well, it’s here somewhere because nothing ever gets thrown away!" Every time I would decide to just start tossing things, I would end up finding some reason that I needed about 90% of it. Some of it was growing up with a "poverty mentality." If something was still useful, I HAD to keep it because I might need it some day and not be able to afford to replace it. If it was broken, it had some sort of sentimental value, making it impossible to part with it.
Somewhere over the years, so much of the stuff that we packed up 8 years ago when we moved, and never unpacked, became intertwined with ‘happier times’. I am desperately trying to
hold on to my kids’ childhood by holding onto their toys, school papers, each itemized hospital bill from the birth of each child, their baby teeth. (Yes, I have 4 sets of baby teeth and I will freely admit that I no longer remember whose are whose!) Some of the things I have remind me of the person who gave them to me and I can’t get rid of them because I feel like I’m losing the only connection I have left with that person, or with who that person used to be. Or maybe even who I used to be when I knew that person.
Parting with what seems to anyone else to be obvious trash is like losing a part of myself. And as strange as it sounds, I feel like I’m abandoning items that served me at some point when I decide to let go of them. It seems like a betrayal.
Somewhere I heard that the environment you surround yourself with, your outer world, is a reflection on your inner world. It’s so very true of me. All around me is chaos, confusion, disorder, a jumble of things I can’t get rid of….things that remind me of what was, or what could have been, and what will never be….things I cling to with all my might because I’m afraid to let go of them….things that tie me to the past and keep me from moving on….things that in all honesty bring me more pain than pleasure.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know which came first. Did all the chaos in my life cause the internal chaos, or was it the internal that spilled out into the actual world. All I know is that they definitely feed on each other. And, as I said in the beginning, all my stuff is primarily in my room, shut in and shut out from everyone else, just as I have become. My private life, my secret shame. Just as I have pulled into myself, my husband has spread out and expanded HIS "hoard" throughout the house. The obscure feeling that I’ve always had that I had no real "say" in what happened in the house…where things ‘belonged’….where I belonged….the feeling that none of it was ‘mine’ or ‘ours’….that in truth everything was about him…has manifested itself physically.
Over the past 6 months I’ve felt increasingly unhappy with having all this "stuff." More and more I feel the need to unburden myself of all this literal ‘baggage’ and move on. I would love to be able to just close my door one morning, walk out, and never look back…leave it all behind and get a completely fresh start. But I know that in doing it that way, I would still be carrying ‘regrets’ into any new start I try to make. I have to clean up my own mess. Any ‘pieces’ I leave behind are not going to be from my collection. When I close the door it will be with a clear conscience.
I’ve started the process. I’ve made the decision and I’ve gotten rid of the easy stuff. I know it’s going to get harder before it gets easier and nobody can really help me. These are all choices only I can make. When I look at my stuff as a whole, the job looks completely overwhelming. Some days I feel strong and determined and I feel like I’m making progress. Other days—and right now these far outnumber the good days—I just want to give up. I tell myself it doesn’t matter and that it’s not that bad. I look around and feel like the progress is too slow, that I just want it to all be done right now.
We all walk around thinking that we are so clever….that we are hiding our true feelings from everyone. Who knew that the way your house, your room, your desk, even your car looks speaks volumes about your emotional well-being, or lack there-of?
I have a secret to confess… I’m a "hoarder."
Okay, well, I’m not anywhere NEAR as bad as the people featured on those shows. I’ve never been a compulsive shopper, I don’t actually ‘collect’ anything, there are no dirty dishes, food, wrappers, trash or filth around, and my stuff is mostly confined to my room. The floor is visible and I don’t need a path to navigate through it. I won’t be calling a cleaning crew to come dig me out wearing ‘HazMat’ suits, although I have threatened to rent a dumpster and toss stuff out the window. I just have a serious problem with not being able to throw things away.
At first I thought I was just disorganized or lazy. I’ve read books, magazine articles, and web pages on organizing and de-cluttering. I’ve tried various systems, calendars, index cards, containers, notebooks, files, incentives, deadlines….I’ve talked to my therapist and psychiatrist. I had a few theories about how my problem came about, but I honestly thought I was some kind of anomaly….until I started watching the two shows on Cable about "hoarders." Before that, I didn’t even know there was a "name" for the problem.
As a child, I listened to my grandmother extol the virtues of my aunt, who always took care of her toys as opposed to my mother who broke everything she had. I took that very much to heart and was very, very careful with my things. I hardly played with them for fear of breaking anything or even wearing them out. (After I got married and had children of my own, my grandmother would make me take some of my old toys home every time we visited. They went directly in the trash as soon as I got home because they held such bad memories for me.)
In my teens I started buying two of everything I really liked, one to actually USE and one to keep perfect and pristine. Of course since I was always ultra-careful with everything I owned, the one I used never got all that messed up, but I couldn’t stand to have even a single scratch or dent on the item. As long as I knew I had a brand new perfect one in reserve, with no scratches or scuffs, I could allow myself to use the original freely.
When my kids were young I had a hard time allowing them to play freely with their own toys. I would insist that they get out only one set of things at a time. If they combined sets I would get very anxious and when they were finished playing I had to separate all the pieces and make sure none of them were lost. One day when I wasn’t home, my husband had let them play freely and they had set up an entire city with Lego’s and Fisher Price Little People sets. I was horrified. Then I thought about their creativity and how I had been squashing it. That day I decided to give up worrying about everything being used for its intended use. It was difficult to let everything be mixed together, but I allowed it for their sake.
I think the term "hoarder" is a bit harsh. It truly is a mental disorder. Although it seems totally incompatible, part of the problem comes from being a "perfectionist". It took me a lot of time and therapy to understand how this could be, but after a while I realized it’s just another form of my "all or nothing" thinking. There could be clutter everywhere, but I would compulsively separate the laundry into ‘whites’, ‘dark colors’, ‘light colors’, etc. The dishes in the dishwasher had to be organized by size and type. I could ‘control’ those things.
The rest of the house was a disaster. My husband would put things wherever he wanted, no matter how I tried to organize. There were no "assigned" places for things. Every time I would clear off a counter or the piano top, he would dump more stuff on it. I gave up because I couldn’t deal with something being partially done. If I couldn’t finish a project, I couldn’t begin it. It had to be perfectly in order or a perfect mess. This led to a lot of procrastination on my part because it was all so overwhelming.
It became a joke. If somebody couldn’t find something, I would always laugh and say, "Well, it’s here somewhere because nothing ever gets thrown away!" Every time I would decide to just start tossing things, I would end up finding some reason that I needed about 90% of it. Some of it was growing up with a "poverty mentality." If something was still useful, I HAD to keep it because I might need it some day and not be able to afford to replace it. If it was broken, it had some sort of sentimental value, making it impossible to part with it.
Somewhere over the years, so much of the stuff that we packed up 8 years ago when we moved, and never unpacked, became intertwined with ‘happier times’. I am desperately trying to
hold on to my kids’ childhood by holding onto their toys, school papers, each itemized hospital bill from the birth of each child, their baby teeth. (Yes, I have 4 sets of baby teeth and I will freely admit that I no longer remember whose are whose!) Some of the things I have remind me of the person who gave them to me and I can’t get rid of them because I feel like I’m losing the only connection I have left with that person, or with who that person used to be. Or maybe even who I used to be when I knew that person.
Parting with what seems to anyone else to be obvious trash is like losing a part of myself. And as strange as it sounds, I feel like I’m abandoning items that served me at some point when I decide to let go of them. It seems like a betrayal.
Somewhere I heard that the environment you surround yourself with, your outer world, is a reflection on your inner world. It’s so very true of me. All around me is chaos, confusion, disorder, a jumble of things I can’t get rid of….things that remind me of what was, or what could have been, and what will never be….things I cling to with all my might because I’m afraid to let go of them….things that tie me to the past and keep me from moving on….things that in all honesty bring me more pain than pleasure.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know which came first. Did all the chaos in my life cause the internal chaos, or was it the internal that spilled out into the actual world. All I know is that they definitely feed on each other. And, as I said in the beginning, all my stuff is primarily in my room, shut in and shut out from everyone else, just as I have become. My private life, my secret shame. Just as I have pulled into myself, my husband has spread out and expanded HIS "hoard" throughout the house. The obscure feeling that I’ve always had that I had no real "say" in what happened in the house…where things ‘belonged’….where I belonged….the feeling that none of it was ‘mine’ or ‘ours’….that in truth everything was about him…has manifested itself physically.
Over the past 6 months I’ve felt increasingly unhappy with having all this "stuff." More and more I feel the need to unburden myself of all this literal ‘baggage’ and move on. I would love to be able to just close my door one morning, walk out, and never look back…leave it all behind and get a completely fresh start. But I know that in doing it that way, I would still be carrying ‘regrets’ into any new start I try to make. I have to clean up my own mess. Any ‘pieces’ I leave behind are not going to be from my collection. When I close the door it will be with a clear conscience.
I’ve started the process. I’ve made the decision and I’ve gotten rid of the easy stuff. I know it’s going to get harder before it gets easier and nobody can really help me. These are all choices only I can make. When I look at my stuff as a whole, the job looks completely overwhelming. Some days I feel strong and determined and I feel like I’m making progress. Other days—and right now these far outnumber the good days—I just want to give up. I tell myself it doesn’t matter and that it’s not that bad. I look around and feel like the progress is too slow, that I just want it to all be done right now.
We all walk around thinking that we are so clever….that we are hiding our true feelings from everyone. Who knew that the way your house, your room, your desk, even your car looks speaks volumes about your emotional well-being, or lack there-of?
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Update.....
No sooner had I written this entry, than my older daughter told me about a conversation she had with her father the other day. He LOVES to go to the library and used book stores. He said to her, and I quote, \"I love the used book store. I love to buy books. I don\'t usually get around to reading many of them, but just knowing that I bought them and have them makes me feel good.\" (By the way, his \"hoarde\" consists of books, tapes, CD\'s, DVD\'s, and files and files of old notes and papers from college through his jobs over the years.)
This is the same man who always criticizes me for buying a new book for my youngest daughter from time to time and tells me she could get it at the library. Yes, okay, so it\'s $10 instead of $3....but she reads and re-reads her books and lends them to friends and reads them again, sometimes I even read them! They definitely DO get read!