How to Tell You Are A Hoarder
For the past few years I’ve had a growing suspicion that I am a hoarder.
Especially when I collect things I like for no specific reason. It’s been my secret guilty pleasure for years and up until recently I thought no one knew because I was so crafty about it.
I’m not talking about mounds of unused clothing, empty food containers, and hundreds of questionable lawn ornaments that you see taking over yards and houses on TV.
In some of these places, people climb through a back window to get inside because the front door is inaccessible. They use the restroom at a gas station because their bathroom and everywhere else is loaded with trash they consider treasure. Sometimes the water and electricity are turned off and they are too embarrassed to call the plumber or electrician.
For me, it’s not like that. Yet. But still, does it matter what you collect?
I have hundreds of antique teapots and majolica pottery that were passed down to me by my grandmother. They were so pretty I kept adding to the collection — replacing ones that were chipped or cracked, finding new ones with the same pattern. They line the tops of my kitchen cabinets and are gradually displacing the bowls and plates we use for food.
There are glass cases of my precious pottery in just about every room in the house. My antique oak barrister book container displays have glass doors so I can see part of my collection all the time. Finally, even I realized I had to stop and move on to something else. Something more portable, something easier to hide.
It was yarn. I love yarn. I love to dye yarn. I love to spin yarn and knit yarn. I use yarn all the time. But pretty soon I could not go out on my porch or into my living room without finding baskets of yarn. In my dining room I made yarn displays instead of fresh flowers you might find in other houses. After I had filled numerous totes — some on wheels for accessibility, my husband and I agreed: NO MORE YARN!
So I started hiding it. I was easy since it was so squishable, but my bliss came to an end when I realized I had spent more money on yarn than I would ever knit. To me, a hand dyed hank of yarn was a finished piece. It was pristine. I did not have to knit it. To my husband it was mortgage money. I put the yarn on Ebay and sold about half of it, so we could get to the kitchen.
No yarn in the kitchen was my personal rule, but I had broken that rule in my last house so we moved to a much bigger house, a ramshackle farm. It had thousands and thousand of square feet, plus a three story barn.
The farm house had a library. I put all of my books on it and it was barely full. What to do? I purchased a private library. It has thousands of books. I like a lot of them, but the ones I don’t have time to read go up on Ebay. Our barn is full of book pallets, as is out garage and wraparound porch. I have over 10,000 books.
Am I in trouble for taking up so much space? Of course I am. Even though I have thousands of books purchased for pennies on the dollar.
One of my friends came over. As we were looking for a place to sit on the porch, I asked her point blank if she thought I was a hoarder.
“Of course you are,” she said. “I’ve always known that.”
So much for being crafty about everything.
