Thursday, 27 March 2008

• Currently Reading It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff By Peter Walsh see related

  Confession

  Tuesday night, I watched...*foreboding music*...Oprah. (That's not the big confession, just a little one. Let's just say that I'm not really a fan of Oprah's. I typically only watch if it's Dr. Oz. Even then, I have to kind of suffer through Oprah's annoyingness.) This particular show was about compulsive hoarding, particularly the story of this one couple who had over 75 tons of junk in their house. They were living with all of this stuff so piled up that they couldn't get into the majority of the rooms in their house. They moved through the rooms on little paths, with stuff piled up higher than their heads on every side, like a cave of clothing. I missed last night, which was the second part, but I read a bit about it. When they were done, they had a rummage sale that took up a 10,000 square foot warehouse and brought in over $13,000!!  That doesn't even include everything that they threw away. Just the stuff they got rid of amounted to over 3 full semi trailers!

  My confession? I am a compulsive hoarder, or at least heading dangerously that direction. If you're waiting for the punch line to this joke, you won't find it. I am serious. I found this information on a website from the Institute of Living:

  Compulsive hoarding is thought by many to be a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).  People are thought to have a compulsive hoarding problem when they meet all three of these criteria:

  • They regularly keep a large number of possessions that most people would not consider to be very useful or valuable.
  • Their home, or parts of their home, are so cluttered that they can no longer use those parts of their home for their intended purpose.
  • The clutter is so bad that it causes significant distress or impairment.

  Guess what? I meet ALL THREE criteria! (I always was an A+ student.) I try to tell people that my house is messy, and they tend to think that I am exaggerating or kidding, which I am prone to. They think I mean that I need to dust. In reality, I mean that my house looks like one you would see on a talk show where they hire professionals to help clear it out. (Fortunately, it has not reached the point of the family on Oprah. But it could. Really.) I hear things like "Oh yeah. My house is a wreck, too!" And I think "No. I've been in your house. Have you been in mine? Of course not - there's a reason you haven't!"

  I can delve into some of the psychological reasons that I have a hard time with this stuff. The general principle is the same reason that I deal with some of my other pet issues: I am a control freak. Funny how that leads to me being out of control, huh?

   

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