Fighting the Hoarder

Some of you already know that I am a hoarder. I don't think I can be said to be a recovering one quite yet. But things are getting easier.

This week, the recycling pick-up guys will have noted an increase in my paper recycling. I have started getting rid of my gardening magazines. I started this particular streak with several years' worth of a BBC gardening magazine, and then continued on the Danish Gardening society mags. Starting with January 1997. Because I have previously managed to get rid of the older ones.

Of course, this doesn't solve the whole issue of hoarding, nor even just the gardening mags. Because I am going through each and every one of them, and tearing out pages or cutting  small bits out. Which are making a rather fair-sized pile all by themselves. At least it is smaller than what's being tossed. I think I have tossed about 15 kgs worth of gardening mags in this round. And there's still a bit left. If we go by my mags, we are now ready for April 2007.

It does help that there was a period of time between 2001 and 2004 where there were no mags. That's when my parents stopped being members, and when I joined. I will probably opt to keep one or two years' worth of magazines, and then get into the habit of sending them off as the new issues arrive. I still haven't decided when I'll go through all the pages I've torn out. And who knows how I am going to store them and be able to find what I'm looking for.

But having reached the point where I can go through them and toss them at all is a major step forward. I have so much paper it isn't funny. Last year I started tossing old calendars, both the monthly wall ones, and the book format yearly ones. I had saved many of the wall calendars because of the pictures. All sorts of adorable animals, and mostly cats. The oldest ones were from 1974. I turned three that year. The student calendars, whether by complete year, or by school year, were all saved from 1985. I tore out the pages from the first one so the paper could be recycled, but I just binned the rest up to 2000. Too much trouble.

For some reason I have got stuck at 2000. I really need to pull up my socks and proceed. There's not much in them anyway.

The largest hurdle by far was getting rid of my (ice) hockey magazines. I had eight to ten complete volumes of The Hockey News, I had eight years of a Swedish magazine, multiple years of several Finnish ones, and then lots of random issues of Canadian and American magazines. I discovered I'd already got rid of the German ones.

And then there was the scrapbook. Since 1985 I had cut out all and any newspaper articles about hockey, and pasted onto paper and put in binders. During a good number of years we actually got three newspapers at home; a Danish, a Finnish and the International Herald Tribune. Plus I grabbed any articles from newspapers I could get my paws on.

It will probably not surprise you to learn that I had fallen way behind on the sticking things in. So I had boxes and boxes of newspaper pages, torn out and small notes about date and paper. And one day I would get it all in order.

I first started thinking about getting rid of them all last autumn. It was a mad thought. It was an evil thought. I forced myself to contemplate it. It took me half a year to bring it up to my parents. It took me some weeks to look for someone who might be interested in them. I failed.

I decided I would have to go the tough way. I gathered them all together. This is what it looked like.

The black packs are all Hockey News, the brown kraft boxes and the binders left of the lamp are scrapbook material, the two piles in front of them are the Finnish mags, and the ones in front of the lamp are the Swedish ones.

If all the mags were stood up in one pile, it would have been about my height. And they weighed 118 kgs. Yes, I weighed them all. One day, dad and I filled up the trailer with the lot and drove to our recycling centre. I stood and stared into the big cavity of the paper container before hurling in pile after pile. I was nauseous. I felt like throwing up. I felt like I was going to faint. It was a physically and mentally draining ordeal. I couldn't do much the next few days.

The worst thing is, because most of them had been stored up in the attic, I don't have a sudden vast empty space to show for it. And I sort of got stuck on continuing by getting rid of my hockey equipment, and looking into what to do about my card collection.

Instead I have managed to focus on the gardening mags. And in part my collection of crafting mags. I think you have noticed a pattern emerge. I have no idea when I slid from merely being a collector to being a hoarder. In fact, I was pretty certain I wasn't a hoarder. Until I read some books on the subject, and then answered some questions. Truthfully. Even then I wasn't really alarmed. That happened when I watched some BBC programmes about hoarders. Who had way more stuff than I do.

What scared me was hearing them say exactly the same things about their stuff that I have been saying about mine. I could tell they were blind to some realities about their stuff and their space.
Could I be blind to some realities myself?

I have now been trying to work on this for more than half a year. It is a bit depressing. I know I have gotten rid of lots of stuff. There just doesn't seem to be visible progress. I guess I have to be more patient. And just keep on. I still haven't reached the point where I can just say "oh, to heck with it!" and toss it. There's still the voice of angst whispering "What if you suddenly miss it next week?"

I am on the right way. I know I need to keep on. I will get there in the end. I am making sure anything that comes into the house is necessary. Or limited in amount. When I reach my 60s, I won't be living in a hoarder show home, I'll be living in a nice, reasonably cluttered home. I don't think I'll ever be a tidy person. But I have seen and heard what could be my fate. And I'm walking down a different road.