Not Maree’s Place…
Hoarder: a person who accumulates things and hides them away for possible future use. (freedictionary.org)
Well, I’m a recovering hoarder and I think that definition is almost too kind. So I Googled it and came up with another, maybe more suitable definition for my kind of hoarding.
Acquiring and failing to throw out a large number of items that would appear to have little or no value to others. (ocd.about.com)
Yep that’s me. Or it WAS me. I have spent my life not being able to let go of “stuff”. Not throwing things out because of a perceived level of nostalgia attached to the items. Or maybe one day I will need to use some of the stuff I have, when in reality, it was never the case. I’m just creating clutter and chaos.
At many stages in my life I have felt claustrophobic due to the way I’ve lived. I only have one sibling; I’ve always had my own bedroom, and a decent sized one at that. When studying for my degree and living in campus housing, I never had to share a room like other female students did. Aside from living with partners (who found my inherent ‘messiness’ both tedious and unattractive) I’ve always had my own space. I’ve always started out with good intentions, but have ended up systematically trashing my living area through my inability to throw out pretty much anything. Part of it is due to laziness. Easier to leave my clothes on the floor where I took them off, as opposed to hanging them up. Easier to just stuff junk under my bed, rather than find a place for it. It takes effort to sort through items and determine what is of value and what is not.
Part of it is purely overwhelming due to the sheer scale of what I’ve managed to ‘collect’ in my 32 years on this earth. And then there’s the irrational, overly sentimental side of me that gets sad, just thinking about throwing away things that were given to me by people that have meant something to me at some stage in my life. Even if it’s a tacky fridge magnet, I’ll find a reason to keep it. Old birthday cards, blurry photos, hospital wrist bands, Frenzal Rhomb concert tickets, chipped mugs with cute slogans – these carry no value whatsoever – but try telling that to someone who sees the sentiment behind them and is loathe to throw them out.
I will never forget the lengths my parents went to in order to try and ‘teach me a lesson’ about the way I kept my room. I arrived home after school during yr8 to find my door shut with an envelope taped to it. When I had left for school that morning, the room had been a sea of chaos. No floor space. No order. Yes I had a desk, a huge bed, a wardrobe, drawers, bookshelves etc., but I didn’t really use them as they were meant to be used. I had stuff spilling out of every part of that room. So imagine my surprise when I opened the door that afternoon and found my room was immaculate. Sparkly. Clothes washed and neatly folded in drawers. Books and music in shelves. Desk organized, clothes hanging in the wardrobe. Bed neatly made. I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed the envelope off the bedroom, which turned out to be an eviction notice from my bedroom, served to me by my parents (more specifically my mother who had spent the day cleaning the room, even employing the use of a garden rake to pile all the clothes together.)
The letter stated that until I could learn to respect my room and my belongings, I would be camping in a small section of the lounge room. During this time, I would be assessed on how I managed that part of the house. If I did a good job, I’d get my room back. I headed to the lounge room and found a sleeping bag and pillow on the couch, a small suitcase with folded clothes, a couple of pairs of shoes and on a portable clothes rack were my school uniforms and church clothes. I figured this would be a piece of cake. I decided to make it an adventure. With so little possessions, I knew I’d be back in that room within a week. Mistaken again. It took just over a month to have my bedroom reinstated to me. Somehow during my month on the couch, I’d managed to accumulate more junk and left it lying around. I actually think I got my bedroom back because they were sick of having a communal area like the lounge room being dominated by my crap. Maybe I wore them down. At least with my bedroom, the door could be shut and we could all pretend that things were fine.
Mine! All Mine!!
People always assumed that being messy never bothered me because that’s how I have always been. And it wasn’t until my early twenties that it really did start to bother me. But how do you break a lifelong habit? I didn’t, until this year. This last set of school holidays I emptied my room and spent two weeks doing what I should have done years ago. I threw stuff OUT. All those notes passed in class during high school? Gone. Scratched CDs that I haven’t played since I was 17? Binned. Photos of exes and myself? Torn in half and tossed out. Clothes that hadn’t fit in years? Washed, packed up and given away. Books that I thought were rubbish and would never read again? In the trash.
I purchased new furniture that matched, and made things have a place, made things orderly. It was hard bloody work because I am extremely sentimental (to a fault at times) and I had some tough decisions to make regarding some of the things I felt were special, but in reality I know that when I die, I’m not taking that stuff with me. It was time to cut the cord and grow up. I chose to be ruthless and devoid of emotion when throwing away possessions I’ve had for 20 plus years. I had to do that, I had to not allow myself to be nostalgic, or I’d still be living in a room that felt like it would swallow me whole if I let it.
After that first 10 days of non-stop purging, the ridding of rubbish that was weighing me down, I was able to look at my room and breathe. I was able to walk away and leave the door open, not fearing that if visitors saw it, they would judge me.
My journey isn’t finished. Until I rent my own place and move back out, there will still be limitations on what I can do. I have an entire house full of furniture, manchester, dinner sets etc., in storage, and bags and bags of ‘furnishings’ that I’m yet to assess and part ways with. So are things bound to be a little crowded when I’m living in my parent’s house and have to find a way to whittle down 32 years of collecting along the way? Absolutely. And is some of my décor quirky? Yes. You’re damn right it is. The difference is that everything now has a place. Even the quirky stuff.
For now, I’m making progress. And as I look around this room, I see the floor. I see books in shelves, clothes hanging up, DVDs organized by genre- I see the room of an adult. And it feels absolutely brilliant.
Are you a hoarder? Do you have any tips on how to keep your stuff organised?
