Hoard Tour
(aka - I wish this were an April Fool's joke entry)
I want to confess something. Something that isn't fun, or glamourous. It's not something that people will have a Pride event or Awareness Day/Week/Month for. Actually, I think it's something that the people living through it (like me) would rather hide it out of fear, embarrassment, shame and not wanting to be looked at differently by those we love and care about.
I am a hoarder. I'm not a hoarder of the caliber that you see on TV, where people can barely navigate through their living spaces because of all of their things. It's not at that level, but it's bad enough that a room cleaning that would take anyone else an hour or two takes me several days, because I feel a need to go through every. single. thing. to see if I wanted to keep it for whatever absolutely minor reason, afraid to lose it and need it down the line. Or I'd buy something, put it aside and forget I have it because it would get buried under a pile of magazines, newspapers, clothes and trash...and I'd have to re-buy it. Only to end up with three partially used sticks of deodorant; three open boxes of Q-Tips; four bottles of nail polish remover - all used to various levels; two unopened packs of razors - as well as the just-opened pack in the bathroom. You get the idea.
The other day, I got a call from the building manager that he needed to come by our house to inspect the rooms later this week. (We'd had some "unwelcome visitors" in the kitchen last month, apparently. Ugh.) This has motivated me to start working on clearing out my wreck of a room in the house. Maybe halfway through the clean-up, and I've already taken out 11 bags of garbage. It almost feels like a (short-distance) walk of shame every time I take the bags out of my room and to the curb. Like I'd gotten to this point, how could I do it? But I'm trying to not berate or belittle myself because that won't do any good. All I can do is acknowledge that I'm trying to make progress. Even if I end up with 20 garbage bags at the curb, and maybe two bags of clean clothes for donation. It's far better than where I'd started: with hardly any space at the side of my bed, unable to see the hardwood floors and hating to come home because it was such a wreck that I didn't want to deal with.
I want to confess something. Something that isn't fun, or glamourous. It's not something that people will have a Pride event or Awareness Day/Week/Month for. Actually, I think it's something that the people living through it (like me) would rather hide it out of fear, embarrassment, shame and not wanting to be looked at differently by those we love and care about.
I am a hoarder. I'm not a hoarder of the caliber that you see on TV, where people can barely navigate through their living spaces because of all of their things. It's not at that level, but it's bad enough that a room cleaning that would take anyone else an hour or two takes me several days, because I feel a need to go through every. single. thing. to see if I wanted to keep it for whatever absolutely minor reason, afraid to lose it and need it down the line. Or I'd buy something, put it aside and forget I have it because it would get buried under a pile of magazines, newspapers, clothes and trash...and I'd have to re-buy it. Only to end up with three partially used sticks of deodorant; three open boxes of Q-Tips; four bottles of nail polish remover - all used to various levels; two unopened packs of razors - as well as the just-opened pack in the bathroom. You get the idea.
The other day, I got a call from the building manager that he needed to come by our house to inspect the rooms later this week. (We'd had some "unwelcome visitors" in the kitchen last month, apparently. Ugh.) This has motivated me to start working on clearing out my wreck of a room in the house. Maybe halfway through the clean-up, and I've already taken out 11 bags of garbage. It almost feels like a (short-distance) walk of shame every time I take the bags out of my room and to the curb. Like I'd gotten to this point, how could I do it? But I'm trying to not berate or belittle myself because that won't do any good. All I can do is acknowledge that I'm trying to make progress. Even if I end up with 20 garbage bags at the curb, and maybe two bags of clean clothes for donation. It's far better than where I'd started: with hardly any space at the side of my bed, unable to see the hardwood floors and hating to come home because it was such a wreck that I didn't want to deal with.