Throughout my life, I have accumulated a great deal of stuff that, honestly, I can never really hope to use. Sometimes it's stuff I'm done using, but I don't want to throw or give it away because it might be useful again someday. Sometimes I can't bear to throw things away because they remind me of places I've been or things I have experienced. Sometimes it is stuff that was on sale and such a great deal, or it is just so cool I cannot resist it, or a friend was going to throw it away and asked me if I wanted it first; "Oh sure, thank you!" In these ways and more, I have accumulated a great deal of physical cruft, and every day I feel more and more that it is weighing me down; somehow I even feel trapped by my own belongings.
I used to think I was not a hoarder because I saw the people on those television shows and I saw how they lived and that was not me. I do not have stacks of rubbish up to my ceiling and my entire home is not completely inaccessible save for one tiny path from the bedroom to the kitchen. I think, though, that it does not have to be that extreme for it to be a problem.
Recently, I had to rip apart my entire collection of things and stuff in order to look for something extremely important, and on a tight schedule, too. My heart was pounding as I tore everything apart, desperately looking and just getting absolutely lost. I ended up finding it in time. However, while doing this I realised just how disorganised I am. How could I ever hope to find anything I am looking for when I have piles and boxes of things I have saved for no reason?
I've had a sort of introspective epiphany: there are multiple reasons I hoard things. I don't have the best memory in the world and have often thought I might have some sort of early-onset dementia, so I do keep a lot of things because of their sentimental value. Throughout the years I have used this as a justification for hoarding everything, no matter what the reason.
I realised, though, that these sentimental things are usually quite small. Tickets and papers and receipts and little knickknacks here and there. There is nothing about a secondhand half-broken paper shredder that has sentimental value to me. It is worthless junk. It is not worth my time to fix. What do I even need a paper shredder for? As technologically-inclined as I am, I hardly ever use paper for anything; as paranoid as I am, if I should find some scribbled scrap of paper in need of destruction, I set fire to the sucker. I don't play around.
The uncomfortable truth is, I don't only hoard things because of my memory problems. I hoard things because of my hoarding problem; because for some reason I am hard-wired to collect as many things as I possibly can and never let any of them go. I don't know why I am like this, but looking back, I have been, all my life; even as a child.
I have been trying for years to organise and catalogue my things and I always end up overwhelmed in the end and give up, because there is just too much. I want to stop worrying about whether I will someday need something like this thing, because what use will it be when that day comes and I can't find it among all the other stuff? Actually, I'll probably have forgotten I ever even had it in the first place!
I started writing this post before the New Year and am just now finding it in my drafts and finishing it. I suppose it is a bit too late to make a New Year's resolution now, but that is fine. It might be a cliché to say I don't believe in them, but it's true, because if you plan it in advance as so many people do, it puts off fixing a problem you recognise and acknowledge. I see it as a form of procrastination, which I get enough of already in my life (see: taking several months to finish up and publish this post).
As January closes, I find that I have the ambition and the drive to make this change now, and that is what counts. So, from now on I am going to try, as much as I can manage, to learn to say: "No; I will never use this thing." Slowly but surely, maybe I can teach myself the art of letting go. 🍋
