Rules of a Hoar...

...der.

Hello. My name is Cherry Blossom and I am a hoarder.

There. I said it. I’m a hoarder. I hoard. I am of hoarding nature. I possess many hoardee qualities. In fact, ‘Hoardess’ is my middle name!

Husband and I are renovating our home, and so needed to move out for a few months. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to complain manipulatively enough about the bedroom closet till I got a new improved version promised. 

“It’s the shoes, Husband, I need space for the SHOES. Just throw in a pink-velvet cushioned, stage make-up lit vanity nook in there for me while you’re about it too, would ya luv?”

Husband, however, saw it as a perfect opportunity to make me throw out all my junk. This shocked me. Junk? JUNK?! He is in direct violation of the rules!

Rules of a Hoarder Nr 1: ‘Junk’ is not an appropriate word

My stuff is not ‘junk’. It’s pieces of my life, a patchwork tangible map, carefully preserved. A time warp of memories in the Now… An extension of myself! NOT ‘junk’! But I forgave him of this little indiscretion as we are only newly weds and he still needs to learn a few things.

Since I moved in, 2 and a half years ago, Husband has complained and complained and complained about my boxes, bags, packets, satchels and rolled up things turning his wine cellar, spare bedroom and every possible cupboard or corner in sight into a storage unit. But you see, said I, I NEED all that stuff. Those things are things that I need to put these things in. And these other things are the things that go on top of those things, so I need them too. I need them ALL!

Rules of a Hoarder Nr 2: You just never know

Maybe not today, maybe not yesterday – maybe not at all in the past 7 years and I have just been carting it around with me in boxes all this time…but you see, MAYBE I will need it tomorrow! And the stuff I don’t need, well, that’s sentimental!

Rules of a Hoarder Nr 3: The level of sentimentality of an item is directly proportional to, and cancels out the level of ‘junk’ness an item may, under different circumstances, possess

And when you kind of sort of don’t remember why you were keeping something in the first place, and you wonder what it was that made you lug a 6 foot roll-up laminated fabric poster of Paris Hilton with you all these years…

Rules of a Hoarder Nr 4: When in doubt, keep.

But, marriage is all about compromise. And if I am to get my shoe cupboard with vanity nook, I decided I may as well go through my stuff and see if there is anything I could possibly part with. 

So I strapped on my pink rubber gloves, my brutal show-no-mercy, take-no-prisinors attitude,

my Japanese 'bird-flu' dust mask, 

and tackled every last box!

It took me a week. 7 full days of intervention-style chucking out! Even though I did find it an excruciating exercise (not that dissimilar to cutting off my own arm and tossing it aside), I have to admit there were a few ‘odd’ items I probably could have done without all these years. 

Here is my Top 10 'WTF' list of mystery items:

Item Nr 1. A plastic tube filled with beer bottle tops. American beer bottle tops. From a trip I took to America in 1999…and I don’t drink beer… I’m stumped.

Item Nr 2. A 6 foot roll-up laminated fabric poster of Paris Hilton. Yea, I wasn't kidding. Ok ok I actually do remember this one. Acquired while working for a music company from a colleague’s ‘contact’ at Universal or something. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever cus, like, NO one else had one… I guess I never stopped to think about the reason behind that fact.

Item Nr 3. A ceramic ‘mouse-house’ with one missing mouse head. No idea where this came from, but I distinctly remember loving it INTENSELY for the ‘cute’ factor. Don’t know where we lost the mouse head either, poor thing.

Item Nr 4. A mainkey old donkey hand puppet with one missing arm, 2 missing eye-balls and a family of moths living in his snout. He was my toy as a child, and I loved the stuffing out of him, literally.

Item Nr 5. A green dinky-car toy Beetle filled with flattened Disneyland coins from America. Again, a USA memento, and the green beetle was significant of my first car, Tori.

Item Nr 6. A rusty old OXO-block stock cube tin, filled with – I kid you not – a deflated balloon. From my 21’st. Slightly stuck to the bottom. No words.

Item Nr 7. A cigarette box painted black. This was the ‘wrapping’ of a top a friend once gave me as a birthday gift. It was sentimental for the funny factor. You know, the top - that I (barely) wore - fit in a cigarette box.

Item Nr 8. My favorite home-made 'Rollerblade' T-shirt that didn't even belong to me. It belonged to Brother. But when he tossed it out (about 15 years ago) after he was done with it (after about 5 years of use) when it was no longer white but an off-yellow colour (about 3 roller hockey seasons of sweat, 4 summers of free-blading and 2 months of half-pipe action before a broken arm ended it all...) I decided it didn't deserve to be gotten rid of just yet and kept it. Hidden. So that Brother wouldn't find out and make me throw it away.

Item Nr 9. My very first pair of 'fabulous' shoes - little chinese slippers I had when I was about 2 or 3 years old. They are pretty scruffy now, but still have my name written on the bottom of the soles and I still think they are FABULOUS! Therefore, these I am not throwing out!

TOTALY keeping!!!

Item Nr 10. My 'Gwen Stefani' dancing doll car mascot. She is a little plastic doll who's arms and legs moved to the vibrations of music played in my car, and lived on the dashboard of my Polo 1.4 Hatch for 6 years from the day I bought the car till the day I traded her in. Gwen's batteries had long since died, she couldn't dance anymore, her left leg was a little spastic, her pony-tail kept falling off, and her head had developed a 'bald spot' from being sun-bleached. But I kept her, long after the car, all the same.

I have to admit, after all this, the countless boxes of cards and letters from childhood friends that go something like "Hallow Pamilla how are yoo I am fin My arm hirts I luve doggs Frm yor verry best frend...", the sky-scraper stacks of fashion magazines in varying degree's of disheveledness, the moldy strips of rolled up carpet bits (?), ENDLESS letters, envelopes and statements from clothing credit cards dating back to 1998 (Note - the year I was 18 and thus finally able to open said accounts), already popped bubble-wrap, the 39 empty paint bottles - I counted - the ex-boyfriend files, the thousands upon thousands of magazine cut-outs of things I liked (ie Shoes) and the mis-matched Tupperware's with missing lids (or lids with missing Tupperware's) I can finally see that maybe Husband was right. And maybe before him, when I lived with Brother, maybe he was right. And maybe before him, when I lived with Dad, maybe HE was right. 

Maybe I should have gotten rid of all this JUNK years ago.

...5 More Fun Rules of a hoarder:

5. The Green Rule. Re-duce, re-use and re-cycle. The broken tea-pot bits of today become the mosaic photo frame Christmas gifts of tomorrow!

6. The MINE rule. Its mine, therefore I don’t have to throw it out and you cant make me. (Otherwise known as the ‘brat’ rule)

7. The Hello Kitty Rule. Anything Hello Kitty can NEVER be thrown away!!!

8. The Card Rule…But…these are the cards I got for my 9^th Birthday…

9. The Card Rule part 2…But…these are the cards I got for my 10^th Birthday…

10. The Card Rule Continued…But…these are the cards I got for my 13^th Birthday…Sweet 16^th Birthday…23^rd Birthday…27^th Birthday…28^th…29^th…30^th…………….

And I could go on, but have decided to reform and scrap all the rules. For now. Well, at least till I figure out how to 'hoard' without Husband, or Brother, or Dad finding out...