Picking without piling: A remedy for the everyday hoarder
Our oldest daughter Charlotte was adamant in her rebuke.
“You people have no business browsing through other people’s junk,” she wrote. “You’ve already got enough clutter of your own!”
It was the morning of the annual community yard sale in Orrville, and we were just slipping off to the hunt. How she even knew what we were up to from her own home several towns away remains a mystery. Still, her message arrived nearly the moment we’d decided to “fall off the wagon” and back into picking mode.
“Now, dear daughter,” Kristin transcribed my words, “you know very well that your parents have been looking to replace that old, worn-out sofa in the living room. We just figured that maybe one of our neighbors might be upgrading.”
“Ugh! You people are impossible! One day you’re both going to the old folk’s home and I’m going to be left sorting through all your crap! Stop! Stop now!”
The truth is we are very aware we have a teensy weensy issue with “collecting things.” Our daughter chooses to call it hoarding, but we stand by our own diagnosis: We chose to hold onto things that may, one day, given the right circumstances, be useful in some possible way to some as yet unknown person. It is true there remains very little unused storage space in our home of 33 years — closets bulge and crawl spaces swell — but the living spaces appear as normal as that of a typical nonhoarding American family.
(Note: I am selectively excluding the attic, basement, garage, shed, the guest room, the mud room, my own office and the corners of our bedroom from the definition of “living spaces.”)
Our problem is rooted in the truth that we are both “keepers.” Some couples are blessed with a happy balance of personality types where one spouse is a “keeper” and the other is a “tosser.” This situation leads to a peaceful state of equilibrium where, Kristin and I imagine, “hubby” comes home with a new barbecue grill and “wifey” smiles happily while pushing the old grill out to the curb.
There is none of that here. If I should happen to score a new to us, slightly used but well-taken care of barbecue grill, I would figure out a way of stacking the other two grills we’ve already got on top of each other in the shed to make room for the new arrival. Kristin would supervise this activity making suggestions along the way.
“Maybe if you get some more of those bicycle hooks and screw them into that beam up there you could hang one from the ceiling,” she’d say.
We’ve got each other’s backs.
Because we recognize our situation has the remote potential of becoming a problem, we try to self-regulate the amount of additional stuff we bring into the house. For instance (and this is absolute truth), we fully intended to skip the community yard sale altogether this year and instead chose to stick to our Saturday morning routine of taking our mutt, Frankie, for a run at the park at the end of our street. We did just that … then on the walk home I struck a deal on a cast iron frying pan and two stadium chairs from a guy just down the street. Kristin bought an entire boxful of glass slippers and a Dr. Seuss book neither of us had ever seen.
Before you write off our transgression as an act of failure, know this: The following day the glass slippers went to a friend of Kristin’s who collects them. We then delivered the frying pan to Charlotte’s own campfire-cooking husband, Andrew. Grandson James ended up with the children’s book, and the stadium chairs now hang in the kid’s own garage, standing at the ready for the years of bleacher-bound spectating that surely await the young parents.
We’re calling the new practice “Picking without piling,” and it might just be the best thing ever. (Charlotte has yet to rise to our level of enthusiasm.)
Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.