Hoarders

I have GOT to stop watching Hoarders on A&E.

It's like some terrible car accident and I can't stop rubbernecking as I drive past it. I am amazed that people can ignore such a mess for so long.

I think most of us have issues with keeping clutter under control and are guilty of piling up some place with junk, and then, instead of dealing with sorting through all that stuff, we just move on to some other place and start piling it up there.

A good example for me is the mail. I will let it pile up in the Mail basket, then do a meager sort into a rough grouping of to-be-filed piles, which will then sit in a heap on my desk for 3-6 months before I file it in the cabinet. My excuse for not filing is laziness; I just don't want to deal with it everyday-or every week-or every month. Then the pile becomes this huge chore that will take HOURS. I can't just file the first 10 items, as that seems like a waste of time. No, I say, it makes much better sense to just leave it until I have the time to file all the pile. However, at some point, I can't take it! I will spend the whole day sifting, sorting, filing,culling.

So, I get it. The only thing that separates me from these clinically diagnosed hoarders is my ability to NOT be able to ignore it as long as they can, and that's a very thin distinction.

I save things for three primary reasons:

1. fear of loss of information
2. crafts (Hey, I can use this [insert item name] to make something, one day!)
3. thrift (Wow, I should keep this to save money!)

Hoarding for fear of loss of information really took a backseat once I understood the value of the Internet. I figured out it was way easier to look it up on the web than sort through that mess of articles/newspapers, etc. My other reason for letting go of print media was that most of my stuff was out of date. Why in the world would I waste time brushing up on a topic only to be 5, 10, 20+ years out of the loop?

Reasons two and three are tougher for me to resolve. My parents were babes of the depression, and their generation (and those before them) did not grow up in a disposable, "Made in China" culture. They practiced reuse, recycle because they HAD to. So, the very thing that keeps me from ringing up my charge cards is also the reason for a bit of hoarding tendency.

I have started to cull a lot of the junk I had saved to 'do something with later'. The time frame varies, but after a while it gets on my nerves and I own up to myself that I am never going to get around to this task anytime soon, so why keep it! I can always start saving it again if I feel the need. It seems easier to part with items that have value only to me, versus parting with stuff that I assume others might covet as well.

I guess that last sentence is the dividing line between me and the true hoarder; I know the difference between trash and treasure.

If I can just keep up with letting go both the trash and the treasures, I will keep off the TV show!