Either I'm having a run...
...on hoarders or the problem is all over and exploding. If you try to clean anything in a hoarder's home, there WILL be a negative altercation. That is because, as everyone knows, the first thing to go is the trash. Herein lies the problem. People have differing ideas on what is considered trash. At a friend's house, I tried to throw away party favors, like those stupid hats with rubber bands, the blow thingies and napkins. You'd have thought that I had kidnapped one of her kids. Her youngest is 10 and wouldn't be caught dead wearing a rubber band hat and the entire household had their birthdays in the previous 6 months and no one asked, "Don't I get those blow thingies? I want to toot."
That was a while back. But hoarding has reared it's ugly head again. This is a conversation that I just had:
Me: "Wait a minute, I'll give you the bucket to throw away after I fill it with trash."
Hoarder: "I'm not throwing away that bucket."
Me: "Why not?"
Hoarder: "It's a good bucket."
Me: "We can go out and drink 6 more beers and get another one if we need it."
Hoarder: "But it's a perfectly good bucket."
Me: "A lot of stuff is perfectly good AND garbage. We can't keep everything we think we may use in the after-life."
I THINK I won that one, the bucket seems to be gone. But, you never know, I could find it under a sink. Anyway, hoarders are annoying.
...on hoarders or the problem is all over and exploding. If you try to clean anything in a hoarder's home, there WILL be a negative altercation. That is because, as everyone knows, the first thing to go is the trash. Herein lies the problem. People have differing ideas on what is considered trash. At a friend's house, I tried to throw away party favors, like those stupid hats with rubber bands, the blow thingies and napkins. You'd have thought that I had kidnapped one of her kids. Her youngest is 10 and wouldn't be caught dead wearing a rubber band hat and the entire household had their birthdays in the previous 6 months and no one asked, "Don't I get those blow thingies? I want to toot."
That was a while back. But hoarding has reared it's ugly head again. This is a conversation that I just had:
Me: "Wait a minute, I'll give you the bucket to throw away after I fill it with trash."
Hoarder: "I'm not throwing away that bucket."
Me: "Why not?"
Hoarder: "It's a good bucket."
Me: "We can go out and drink 6 more beers and get another one if we need it."
Hoarder: "But it's a perfectly good bucket."
Me: "A lot of stuff is perfectly good AND garbage. We can't keep everything we think we may use in the after-life."
I THINK I won that one, the bucket seems to be gone. But, you never know, I could find it under a sink. Anyway, hoarders are annoying.
posted by Meg Kelso | 8:49 AM
7 Comments:
Hoarding is definetly a tough thing to deal with, hard to watch when someone cannot let their garbage go.
OMG! It's awful. You can't tell me there isn't vermin of some sort in there. I thought I was a sloppy housekeeper, but the house is clean once a day and the trash is all gone once a week.
Letting go of stuff should always be easier than letting go of people.
I agree with you with regards to hoarding however I feel that many times people have an internal need that the hoarding satisfies. As a social worker in a long term facility, I have many residents that hoard and in many of these cases its because they have a fear of losing. They are getting older and losing their physical abilities as will as family, friends and homes creates a physical need for them to put things back or hoard. I believe hoarding is only a symptom of a deeper condition. If we solve the condition the symptom will stop
Oh, I'm sure that there's a psychologic reason behind hoarding, there's one behind everything else. I just don't care, I'm here to bitch, and bitch I shall.
:)
OK Dave.
Just lemme know when you raise the dead. I'm an old widow with some dead people I want to come back to life, but the rest of them-in case you accomplish this task-are strictly catch and release.
Deal?
TW
Apparently, they haven't found a way to successfully sue our higher power and collect that award...yet.
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