Day 33 – How Much is Too Much?

33/365 – I admit it, I have a thing for pencils. 3H pencils, not HB, hate those soft ones, they wear down too fast. And they need to be sharp, which is why they are always point up, ready to stab. But I am not a collector of masses of stuff, I have neither the room nor the inclination. My father was a hoarder, I would rather live without than live with too much. I like neat and tidy spaces… no, I don’t have it in me to be a hoarder, at least I hope not.

We’ve been watching a TV show on A&E the past couple of weeks, one that makes me squirm in horror. Not because it is full of blood and gore, logically I know that’s a graphic representation. No, this show is all too true and hits close to home. It’s called “Hoarders” and it’s unbelievable. Actually, I should rephrase that, it’s completely believable because I’ve experienced trying to help clean up a hoarders home, but it’s just beyond comprehension that people can get to such a point.

I recognize so many of the arguments the hoarders use. They cite “sentimental value”, they say that they will use it “someday”, that it has “monetary value”. I recognize them because I heard them over and over as I struggled to help my father find his way out of the piles of “stuff” surrounding him. We battled over such trivialities as a plastic jug that used to contain clothes pegs on the back porch of the house I grew up on. He cited its usefulness as a delivery container for cat food…I asked which one he’d like because there were four in the cupboard….

Boxes of gifts never given, piles of gifts received but never opened, hundreds of rolls of wrapping paper, broken chairs, magazines dating back to the 1960’s, exercise equipment not used in 20 years, cuttings upon cuttings of plants that should have been tossed when the parent plant was trimmed, letterhead from companies that he worked for that no longer exist, out of date accounting legalese books, piles of boxes that might be useful for wrapping presents in, stacks of notepads, expired gift cards, jars full of popsicle sticks, bags of bags, piles of newspapers in case a fire should be wanted. And yet, strangely, in the midst of all the chaos, boxes of Christmas bows, sorted out of mixed bags and organized into clear containers by colour…. The mind is a strange thing.

It was the most frustrating week because I am not a hoarder and I fail to see any reason to retain things that are unnecessary to me. If I haven’t used it in a specified span of time, if I haven’t worn it, if it is can be considered to be clutter…it goes. If it can be used by someone else, off it goes to a charity, a friend, anyone who might find it useful since I obviously do not need it.  I have one single trunk containing some of the things from my childhood. The cookbook collection is restricted to a single bookshelf/cabinet. If a new one comes in, an old one goes out. Ditto for the wine glass collection. If things don’t fit into their designated spaces, either no more are allowed in, or something else has to go out. It is a system that works for me.

I get positively twitchy when I am confronted with a mess. My labmates used to laugh because I’d clear my desk at the end of each day. All tidy, nothing left askew. I just like to start the day knowing that i have a clean slate, and therefore I tidy it all up when I am done. I still do the same thing on my desk at home. It’s probably more important to me there since it’s small.

I generally have one or two small spaces where things accumulate. Mostly in one drawer, and every week or so, as things I have stuffed in there get difficult to find, I haul the entire thing out and throw half of the contents away. Usually papers. But that’s about the extent of my hoarding, and I don’t even really think that classifies, that’s just a laziness to deal with those bits immediately. That’s not irrational, that’s just procrastinating…out of sight, out of mind… until it’s not out of sight anymore, and then it drives me out of my mind.

There is a used bookstore that i used to go to, but I can’t stand it any more because you can’t actually find anything anymore. The owner has a severe case of hoarding. He can’t turn away books, but he no longer has any idea what he has. I don’t really understand how he remains open since I can’t be the only one who doesn’t bother anymore. I stumbled across his disorder accidentally, I would say he is probably classified as having “Bibliomania an obsessive compulsive disorder involving the collecting or hoarding of books. Wikipedia classifies it as one of several psychological disorders associated with books characterized by the collecting of books which have no use to the collector nor any great intrinsic value to a more conventional book collector. The purchase of multiple copies of the same book and edition and the accumulation of books beyond possible capacity of use or enjoyment are frequent symptoms of bibliomania. I suppose it is a bit different because he owns a store, but I truly wonder how much he actually sells.

Wikipedia also identifies another form of hoarding, Digital hoarding. It involves “collecting files on one’s computer beyond the point of usefulness.  Examples are music collections, often beyond what one enjoys or can listen to and television shows, movies and computer games. Hoarders, or “digital pack rats”, often resort to buying optical media or new hard drives to store their collections, rather than deleting what they may never use. Digital hoarders find it just as difficult to press delete as traditional hoarders find throwing items in the trash can. They have the same feeling of clutter and chaos, and feel that they might find the item useful “someday,” and similarly spend large amounts of time acquiring and organizing their collections. However, unlike physical clutter, automated systems exist to organize digital clutter. Scientific American remarked that humanity’s propensity for data collection is growing at a rate faster than their ability to store it.”

OK, I suppose if I were to fall into a potential category, that might be it. But I do delete TV shows after watching them. Time to delete some old emails though….

But every time I see another episode of Hoarders, I need to clean something and throw things away… want to see what I mean, just follow the link and watch an episode or two….