My Labor Day Weekend (The Cure For Hoarding)

     While other folks got to go out, travel ‘up north’ or go camping over the Labor Day weekend, I found myself instead doing something out of the ordinary – I was hard at work for the entire holiday weekend. Since childhood and through teenage years and young adulthood, I have collected hundreds – if not thousands – of objects, belongings and ‘things.’ For a long time, I was in a small bedroom where the mess and clutter was atrocious because I simply did not have enough room for my things. George Carlin, I feel, explains it best.

“Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff.”

-George Carlin, (See more here.)

     So, in order to get more room for my ‘stuff,’ I annexed, claimed and took over the basement. I finally had room for my stuff. Except I didn’t. I didn’t fully grasp just how much ‘stuff’ I had. And what’s more, not seeing how much stuff I had, I let myself get even more stuff. And then I put it down somewhere: “I’ll find a place for it later.” And more new stuff was simply placed next to the first things. And then I went through some boxes, and I found old stuff I wanted to keep. I put it by the new stuff; I’d find a place for it later, I told myself. In the end, my living area was nearly unliveable due to multiple moments of inattention that ended up in four days of serious cleaning that still leaves room for improvement.

     I was lucky, I didn’t have to do this process entirely alone. While my dad had offered to help – “If you don’t get it done by September, I’ll go down and throw it all out. I’ll get it cleaned.” – I still felt alone in the process. My sister then offered to assist me and while I hesitated, ultimately I went with it and there are not too many things this year I’m happier I went along with.

     Initially, I didn’t want her to see the mess that my hoarding had built up to. I also didn’t want her help to be: throwing things away without asking me if it was actually junk or not; or questioning my choice to keep something due to some sentimental value that might seem silly to someone who didn’t have the association I did.

     Trepidation aside, my sister was instrumental and ultimately I couldn’t have accomplished what I did in that period of time without her help. Her very presence not only motivated me to try to accomplish as much as I could in as short a period of time as possible, but to impress her with how much I could transform my environment in the amount of time she was willing to spend working downstairs with me. Besides trying to impress her, the simple fact that she was there to help kept me on track and my mind focussed on the goal and project at hand. Several times when I started to bog down in nostalgia as I went through piles of things and weeded out the actual worthwhile items from the chaff, she came back from some task or other and chimed in, “Michael, what can I do to help? Where would you like me working now?” The final role which she filled in excellent fashion was keeping me company; I didn’t have to feel alone with my things, or alone in trying to fix what a series of mistakes and poor judgements had left me with.

     I could also focus on the person in the room with me, so I did not get bogged down by the contemplation of these things and their relationships to me. Hoarding (or Disposophobia as it is referred to by professionals in social work and psychiatry) is partially an irrational need to accumulate objects, and partially an overattachment of emotion to the objects received at any given point in your life. It is the need to keep something because you don’t know when it is going to come in handy, when it’s something you might need. You may have bought it three years ago, intent on using it but never doing so, but that doesn’t mean you might not use it later – and if you throw it away, you’ll have to feel silly and buy it again, which surely is not as rational as keeping it in the first place, right? Well, it’s right to the hoarder…

     The trouble for a hoarder of throwing something away is simply a restatement of that argument: I might need it later, and I’m going to feel really dumb if I had it in my possession, got rid of it and then find a situation where I need it. However, things are not like a Swiss army knife. You keep one with you because it can do so many things in addition to just cutting tags off of clothes, or paring fruit; however, the Swiss army knife’s other functions could come in handy while not taking up more space than the original knife itself. The things that could contingently be useful are simply taking up their own space, and that hurts if they ultimately are never used. So every paper you had from school, every work review from a job you were fired from, every bag of exotic dried peppers you bought during your Capsacin phase in college seems like something you need to have, because they could provide some clue to your development, your growth, or a really great pot of soup.

     But all of this did not help to move forward. Ultimately, nothing did except the decision to simply begin and proceed with caution. And with that decision made, I was amazed how much better I felt as bag after bag of things to go to the dump, or things to go to Goodwill, or simply things that I no longer needed to keep handy, disappeared from my living area and left behind it a commodity which I now feel may be rewarding to hoard in and of itself: space. Where once I had placed a collection of get-well-soon cards from a trip to the hospital, I now had an area at which I could work on schoolwork away from the distraction of my media center. Disposing of more things, I had the space necessary to roll away my old TV stand and replace it with a new entertainment center, complete with a separate, idolatrous housing for the glorification of my Nintendo Entertainment System. I even found several bills – ranging from Ones to Tens and even a Twenty – while digging into the depths within and underneath my couch area. But most of all I found the space in which I’d been living. Space which could now accommodate me in the best way possible. The space I can now use for whatever I wish, instead of fill with whatever is lying around and currently handy.

     I have much progress still to make before I parachute onto an aircraft carrier and declare, “Mission accomplished!” But I have begun the process to improve myself, to improve my environment, and to get, and feel, better. I don’t think the problem was at all rational, but having done more research, I understand now where I came from; I understand why this process was so stressful and hard to start. But I also understand and know that it was worth it. Simply opening up a space for me to live in, opened up a space in myself. I felt immediately relieved, alleviated, and detoxed as the process unfolded. I know I’ll feel even better, and happier, when the project is done. And finally, I know that I will swear to myself on that day: I won’t let it happen again. And I’m damn proud of that.