To Hoard or Not to Hoard

Baby Boomers hold on to things. Could be because their parents grew up during the Great Depression and didn’t have much. Could be they knew the value of a great tin toy and couldn’t bear to part with it. It’s possible that, once they retired, they didn’t have the energy to get out and participate in the real world, so they started watching QVC and the Home Shopping Network. Face it, the people on those shows could sell ice to Inuits!

Millennials are more minimalists. They don’t like clutter, they don’t like things and they adore tiny spaces. (Hence, the tiny house phenomenon.) May have something to do with the fact that their parents were Baby Boomers and kept all kinds of crap.

Either way, you probably know a hoarder. And it doesn’t have to be physical items that constitute hoarding. Do you know someone that can’t delete an email, no matter how trivial it is? These people have 5-100 email accounts to keep them all. It may not pile up in their house, but it’s piling up somewhere!

Here are ten signs that you may be a hoarder.

1. You have one room that is full of unopened boxes from a home shopping network.

2. You refuse to throw out that last teaspoon of olive oil in the bottle on your shelf because you just might need it someday.

3. You break out into a sweat when your friends want to come over and hang out at your house, but there’s nowhere for them to sit unless you move newspapers, boxes, and cats.

4. You have ten email accounts with emails from Mrs. Somebody or other claiming you have a large inheritance in South Africa just waiting for you if you send a $100 handling fee.

5. You spend hours at IKEA and come home with one of everything. That continues to sit in boxes because you have no room to put it together.

6. You don’t need to buy your friend a wedding present. You just pull something out of the pile in your living room.

7. One of your favorite mottos is “So many books, so little time” as you move one stack to make room for another.

8. Storage sheds start popping up all over your back yard.

9. You had one just like it as a kid, so now you have to buy 5 of them to keep on hand.

10. You started collecting Coca-Cola cans because they are all so different!

I am a confessed book hoarder. I don’t believe in Kindle or any electronic e-book systems. One of my favorite memories is walking down the halls of the Salvation Army in Washington, DC with my Dad. The creak of the wooden floor, the musty smell of the old books, what a delightful memory! Even more precious now that my Dad is gone. So I buy books, old books, used books, books with lots of eye prints. As I sit here at my computer, looking at the five floor to ceiling shelves in front of me, packed full of books, I wonder if I have a problem. Nope. Well, maybe a little. But at least when I read them, I pass them along to someone else. That doesn’t live here. So at least they are leaving the property….one book at a time.