Mainstream Hoarding

So I was reading the MSN website today and noticed a headline entitled: Hoarding goes Mainstream. It made me think about just how public hoarding has become in recent years and how it is considered a disorder with a name and its own reality television shows. To be honest, I cannot sit through an entire episode of any of those shows. I become increasingly agitated and start to talk to the people on T.V. knowing they cannot hear me. My brother even brought up the idea of putting our parents on the A&E series, Hoarders, which I downright refused to do for many reasons. Number one: our parents are not a severe enough case for them to consider. Number two: It would humiliate our parents and Number three: I do not want to feed into the media hype that has latched onto this new "disorder" to exploit until it becomes old news.

What people do not understand is that adults who grew up in a house with a hoarder are very much accustomed to NOT talking about it for fear of being ridiculed and outcast. There were few to no visitors and having someone come into the house caused severe anxiety. I know it my own house, it caused weeks of distress as we desperately tried to clean up for my grandparents to visit at Christmas. If something in the house needed to be repaired, there was a panicked rush to clean what would be visible to the repair man. This meant moving the mess out of one room and into another, then closing every door.  Most of our neighbors, family, and friends probably knew there was something going on, but those who never made it past the front door could only assume. Our big family secret was that we lived in a "messy house". The name, "Hoarder" did not exist.

After almost 30 years of trying to close the doors on the family secret, I struggle with seeing it on television and in the media. I am glad it is being recognized as a mental disorder and that there are those trying to overcome their hoarding problem. What I cannot handle is the fact that hoarding is a very real and damaging disorder that is being viewed by the rest of the world on primetime television. Hoarding causes a lot of pain, anger, depression, and anxiety in the hoarder and exponentially moreso in the children of the hoarder. Having it displayed for the world to stare and point fingers like a circus freakshow is not helping to deal with the pain, it is bringing to life our greatest fear of being found out.

Returning to the Blog

It has been quite  a while since my last posting. I can only delve into the past in brief spurts, and a lot has happened recently. My husband and I bought a house of our own in May and have been spending time and money making it into a home. It is the first time I have been able to decorate the way I want and I have struggled with where to begin. We've started going room by room, which has made it easier. I was very concerned that moving into a house with a lot of space would be a cause for clutter, however, he and I have kept up with the housework together and I am proud to say our house looks great. I am even becoming accustomed to having friends and family over to visit without feeling anxious.

In addition to a new house, I am beginning a new job this month that I am extremely excited about. It is challenging and different from what I've been doing for the past five years, but I have so many ideas and plans, that I cannot wait to get started. So, needless to say, new house and new job have kept my thoughts occupied in the present, which keeps me moving forward in my healing from my past. I will post again to "Pathways" soon, so stay tuned!

The Weight of the World

When my mother would describe me to other people, she would always say I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. After thinking about it, I've realized how true of a statement that is, although it was not the weight of the world, but the weight of my family.

My sister was born when I was 4 going on 5 years old. Shortly thereafter, my mother encountered a bad case of postpartum depression, which was not the kind where she took things out on the new baby, but some very strange occurrences took place. She began having panic attacks and severe migrane headaches. I remember riding on the beltway (for those of you who are not familiar, the beltway  is 495 and a trecherous road that circles D.C.), and my mother pulling the car over to the side because she could not bring herself to get us home. I also remember my father calling 911 to come to the house because of a panic attack. From my earliest memories, this is when the house began to fall into significant disarray.

I don't remember exactly what age I started to do my own laundry, but I remember being picked on for wearing dirty clothes to school. The "laundry pile", as we so aptly named it, was born in the work room of our basement. When clothes were dirty, we would take them down and throw them in the dirty pile. When clothes came out of the dryer, we placed them in the clean pile. Eventually, the piles became so large, they melted together and it was nearly impossible to tell clean from dirty. After the clean clothes had been there long enough to grow moldy, not even the "smell test" would work.

I started to "play" with the washing machine when I could stand on the dirty pile and see down into the tub. Eventually, I started to work the knobs and was able to turn the water on. Mom saw me one day and decided to show me how, and ta-da! her laundry Oompa Loompa was trained and eager to work! If I had known all of the grief that curiosity would cause me, I would NEVER have touched that damn machine.

This new task brought about other responsibilities which included lining up the clothes for everyone the night before a school day. Since all of our clothing was hand-me-downs, there really wasn't the latest in fashion to choose from. My sister, being the little sister that she is, would often cringe at my selections, which resulted in arguments and tantrums. If this caused us to be late, and it often did, I would be in trouble. I was also responsible for my mother's work uniform, including socks, underwear, undershirt, and other accessories. If one or more of those pieces was missing, I was seriously in trouble.

This is when I remember most of the physical abuse happening, however I know there were other times. If an issue with the clothing could not swiftly and peacefully be resolved, my hair was pulled or I was spanked. On the worst days, I remember being held down in the laundry pile and choked. Once my mother had vented her frustration, I had to pull myself together, get dressed, and go to school like nothing had happened.

There was only one time I ever said anything to an adult at school (or anybody at all for that matter), and after I did, I felt foolish for complaining about it. Of course, I never told them about the physical abuse, only about my sister and her hissy fit about wearing a pink dress. They probably assumed it was a normal squabble between sisters and I never went back.

Until I left for college in the fall of 1999, I was in charge of the laundry and eventually, the dishes, bathrooms, some cooking, etc. I think I was the only one who cared after a certain point. When we had to be somewhere as a family, I made sure everyone was dressed, ready, and out the door on time. My parents always struggled with money so I got my first job at 14 as a busser at a restaurant. I saved money for school trips, my prom dresses, and anything else I needed. I would also give my parents money when my mother overdrew the account and we needed groceries or electricity.

Needless to say, when I went away to college (three hours away), I became a totally different person. It was the first time I felt the weight of the world lift from my shoulders and the first time I ever felt normal. I am having trouble deciding if my childhood was damaging or if it is the reason I am where I am today...or perhaps both?

Everybody Needs a Dollhouse... or Two... or Three?

My relationship with my mother greatly improved when I went away to college. There was a lot less tension and I was able to escape from the confines of our messy house. There were still a few occasions where Mom and I did not agree, and on one such occasion, I started to realize how our roles had reversed.

The winter breaks in college are insanely long and my first two years I lived in the dorm. Because of this and the fact that I was financially destitute, I HAD to spend the entire holiday at my parents' house. My mother and I started to develop a friendship, which was a drastic change to what life was like when I was in high school. We spent a lot of time running errands and shopping during our free time. Mom had stopped working at this point so she was always home during the day. I worried about her being cooped up all the time and so I would make a point to get her out of the house for at least an hour everyday while I was home, even if all we did was take a drive to the post office.

I was enjoying this newfound friendship and learning about my mom as more of a person instead of just "Mom". Unfortunately, we hit a huge roadblock on one fateful day as we were out running errands and shopping. This particular roadblock is one that manifested itself as a large, Victorian style, dollhouse.

On one of our afternoon outings, we ventured into a Ben Franklin craft store to look for some colored pencils. I became sidetracked by a shelf of picture frames and soon realized my mother had disappeared. I wandered past the shelves of paint, beads, yarn, and other standard craft supplies, hoping to find her, but to no avail. Instead of the usual places, my mother was over in the toy section staring up longingly at a row of two and three story Victorian doll houses. The image of a small child staring into a storefront window at Christmas time flashed into my mind, and, after glancing at the $180 price tag, I knew it was going to be a problem.

"Aren't they beautiful?"
"Yes... they're nice..."
"I really like the one with the blue roof. It looks like one I had as a kid. I think Mama and Daddy bought it for me for my birthday."
"That's great, Mom. They're really kind of pricey aren't they?"
"Yeah, your daddy would kill me."
"Yes, he would."
"Well, I don't really have to tell him..."
"Mom, bottom line is, you don't have the money."
"I'll write a check. Hopefully they won't cash it until Friday."

The conversation continued for a few more minutes. I tried to dissuade my mother from buying the dollhouse using the logic of finances and the fact that if she bought it, we wouldn't have money for groceries. At one point, she stuck out her bottom lip in a pout and crossed her arms. She then sharply added that she was not about to have her child tell her what she could and could not buy. I walked out to the car and she followed. When we got home, she got in her own car and drove back to Ben Franklin and came home with the Victorian dollhouse with the blue roof.

Later in the month she proceeded to purchase three more dollhouses from the internet. All of them are sitting in my old bedroom with their roofs peeking out from beneath piles of clothing, papers, and dust...

Hand Me Downs and The Spare Bedroom

The house I grew up in was a split foyer, four bedroom, two and a half bath single family home in a nice neighborhood. There were three bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs next to the laundry room. From as far back as I can remember, the downstairs bedroom was more often referred to as "the spare bedroom". A more appropriate name for it would probably be: Basement Attic because this bedroom was not used for anything other than storing old furniture, electronics, and other random items that did not belong anywhere else in the house.

As we (the children) got older, clothing became something that was desperately needed, however it was rarely ever purchased. Instead, our house became the neighborhood "Good Will" as our neighbors would bring over all of the clothing their children did not want or could not fit into anymore. We would see a steady influx of clothing throughout the year, with an increase usually happening at the end of fall and in the mid spring as the seasons changed. Since we lived in a subdivision with lots of kids our age, we had at least three familys dropping off donations on a regular basis.

The clothes would come to us in trash bags, filled to the top and bulging. There was rarely a time when only one bag came in. The largest loads arrived in thick, black trash bags, the kind usually used for storing yard waste. Everytime a drop off was made, we would hear the obligatory, "Feel free to throw away anything you can't use!" but we always knew that would never happen. I still wonder if our neighbors are aware of what happened to all of their used clothes or if they even cared.

Anytime a batch of clothes came into the house, my sister and I would take the bags downstairs and root through them in front of the T.V. Most of the time, there were decent clothes to be found and we would  always argue the most over the bags that came from the more fashionably conscious girls who lived next door and across the street. Once we were finished picking out what we wanted to keep, the rest of the clothes were put back into the bags and placed in the Spare Bedroom. One might think that the leftover clothes would go to the real Salvation Army or Good Will, however they were tossed onto the floor and left there.

As the years went on, the Spare Bedroom became a sea of stuffed trashbags. There were bags, upon bags, upon bags, all of clothes, none of which were ever going to be worn. Sometimes, we would get the idea that there might be pieces of clothing we might actually want to wear, and would go into the room and tear the bags open, allowing the contents of the bags to spill out into the pile or onto the floor. Eventually, the room was completely taken over by the bags and the floor completely disappeared.

Cluttered Beginnings

I know there was a time when I did not live in a cluttered house. I often view pictures from my early childhood and there is not that huge pile of papers, clothes, boxes, etc. in the background. The memory of those days is hard to recall, especially with the many years of having to live in such a chaotic disarray. I cannot remember exactly when it started, but I can go back and sort through the bits and pieces I remember. I believe the hoarding really started out as collecting. It really did not matter what it was, as long as it was possible to purchase more than one, it came into our house.

 I know the mess made its way slowly into our lives. I remember my mother was always a "saver" and a "collector". She had hundreds of dolls all varying in shape, size, and style. There was a large curio cabinet that sat in the middle of our living room, and it was filled with various ceramic, porcelain, vinyl, or cloth dolls. As the years went on, the cabinet seemed to fill itself until varous items were pushed to the back, creating row upon row of assorted "collectibles." Eventually the cabinet became too full and subsequent items were stored in the closet in my parents' bedroom.

Whenever there was a doll or figurine that was considered "rare" or "limited edition", my mother would make a point to purchase the item. I never understood what the point was of having these particular items, especially the dolls that so closely resembeled my toys. To me, what good was a doll if it could not be played with? I remember seeing beautiful tell tale pink boxes obscured beneath the translucent bags from Toys R Us, and knowing those Barbie dolls would go into that closet, and never be seen again. My mother told me that the value of the dolls went down the minute the box was opened. The funny thing is, she was never planning to sell the dolls.  

My grandmother and my mother shared the hobby of collecting Hummels, which are ceramic figurines from Germany. They would keep track of those they had and made sure not to double up on any one piece as it was understood my mother would inherit those from my grandmother when she passed away. Morbid, but practical? As time went on, the Hummels would seem to multiply around the house. While some made their homes in the oversized curio, the rest were scattered throughout the living room. Eventually, another smaller curio took up residency in the corner and that particular cabinet became the Hummel Hotel, with new occupants arriving every month or so. When the Hummel Hotel eventually reached maximum capacity, any subsuquent Hummel was placed in the closet, alongside the Barbies and other items not finding a home in the cabinet.

To me, this was the way life was. I did not think to ask why we needed all of these things or what their real purpose was. Collecting was a part of life, whether or not the space or money was available. As I sit and reflect on the past twenty eight years, I can name the various collections that helped add to the clutter.
-Hummels
-Barbies
-Cherished Teddies
-Beyers Choice
-Smoking Men
-Nutcrackers
-China head dolls
-Marie Osmond dolls
-Precious Moments
-Lladro
-Charming Tails
-Kindels
-Plates
-Mrs. Albee figurines
-Cabbage Patch Dolls
-Madame Alexander Dolls
-Beanie Babies
-Doll Housese

Introduction

As I am growing older, I am trying to come to terms with growing up the daughter of a hoarder. There are so many mixed feelings I am slowly uncovering, and I felt it might help to write it all down.