In my previous post I talked about accumulation of stuff, which can be fun and enjoyable (collections for example). HOARDING goes beyond just collections or decorating one’s home. This can become a serious mental health issue and may require professional help not only in organizing stuff but also with the hoarder themselves seeking treatment.

When hoarding starts, it usually starts as a secret. No one knows for sure if a person is hoarding or not…. until it gets out of control, there is no more room to store things away or it starts to destroy the structure it is stored in. 

This story is about me and my familial hoarding tendencies: My great-grandmother was a hoarder. Granted she was an adult in the depression and lived on a farm, so it didn’t occur to anyone that she was a hoarder, it was just called survival at that time.

I don’t think the terms “hoarding” and “mental health” were even part of society in that era.

Her daughter, my grandmother, was a bigger hoarder, but she was an organized hoarder. Granted she was a kid in the depression era and learned her behavior from her mother. She also had a business making and selling porcelain dolls, so she needed a lot of supplies. Her organization was great; she would get big boxes with lids from the grocery stores, have grandpa paint them white then label them with whatever was inside.

Her daughter, my mother, was a big hoarder also, not as organized though. Her thought process was more “if one is good then 50 in the same color and style was great.” She dabbled in crafts, t-shirt screening, card making, doll making; you name it, she probably did it at one point in her life.

Her daughter, ME, was a hoarder up to the time I moved from my house to the semi-truck full time…… I was neither an organized hoarder nor lived in the depression. I was like my mother and was a semi-organized hoarder. I accumulated stuff just to accumulate stuff. My house was not full of garbage and trash like you see on TV, but it was always messy and dusty.

I, like my mother, love to craft so I would see something and think “I will use that someday to do______ with.” and then never do anything with it. Granted, I have been in nursing and nursing management for many years and was usually too tired to do much with anything after work.

My daughter has not fully developed the hoarding gene, she has been able to stop herself before things get out of hand. She has her own business which is sewing and Cricket vinyl work. I am pretty proud of her for keeping that hoarding monster at bay.

I am proud to say that I am a recovering hoarder. There are times when I feel the urge to buy something just for the sake of buying it but I don’t and next week, I am going to talk about how I stop my urges to accumulate and my PURGE experiences and how I got through all that. Stay tuned….

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