Diary of a Hoarder

Did a boat load of dishes this morning. Didn’t get them all, but need to let the ones I did air-dry in the broken dishwasher. Will do the rest in a bit. Need towels and clothes, and the sheets need cleaning as well. The kids’ rooms are total sties. Would love to get to work on those as well, but now I’m feeling overwhelmed.

I’ll focus on the dishes and a couple loads of laundry. That’s manageable. Doesn’t help that it’s a beautiful day outside. Kids could stand to burn off some energy, and I could stand to burn off a bit if fat…

I’m so unbelievably frustrated right now. And overwhelmed. I don’t know if I’m a hoarder or not, but the house is ridiculous. The dishwasher is broken so there are piles of dishes in the sink. Any time I need a spoon or a cup or a anything, I have to wash it.

Then there’s the crap all over the floor. It’s everywhere. There’s no place to put anything, so it’s hard to get the kids to put anything away. Every closet is full of crap, badly organized. We can tidy up for guests, but it’s never really organized, and it doesn’t take much for crap to get everywhere.

Then when we do take the time to clean up, it’s a real project. And we rest on our laurels and figure we can let it go a bit. After all, we deserve a break, we just put in all that work to keep it clean, right? But really, we need to do work every day.

It’s really bugging me, quite frankly, that my wife doesn’t seem to be as concerned about this as I am. It’s not that I expect her to do all the cleaning. Not at all. I do most of the cooking, food shopping, laundry. I often do the dishes, and always do the dishes that she won’t do, like pots and pans and big knives and the like. I always give the kids their baths. I don’t want to give the impression that I expect her to do all the house work.

I do go to work, and she’s at home and manages the kids’ schedules and the like. It bugs me for two reasons. One, I feel like I do the lion’s share of the work and I’d like some help, but I get that it’s a tough day with the kids. Two, she spends a lot of time here. Just about all day. Doesn’t she want to enjoy a clean space? Can’t she help to teach the kids to clean up after themselves?

I’m losing my shit here. Something has to be done. Think it’s getting time to get a dumpster.

I so totally got a comment on the site. And it’s a good one! Not one of those comment spammers, but like a real comment. Pink Sneakers Productions is apparently casting for an episode of a new TLC documentary show. The particular episode they mentioned to me deals with hoarding and how if affects hoarders and their loved ones. If you’re a hoarder, or are affected by one and want to participate, go to the Pink Sneakers website and click on the “our casting” button/tab thingy. Look for “life chronicles” and find their contact info there. (I redacted their email address from their comment on my site as I don’t want to be responsible for any spam they may receive). If it’s not there, well, maybe they already did the show and you’re reading this like two years too late or something.

I will say I find it a bit amusing that they contacted me as 1) I have, like, no readers and 2) my first post was titled “F*@%ing TLC…” I really don’t have anything against TLC at all and I dig their programming. I trust it was noted that I blame them for my initial recognition of my hoarding tendencies. So, really, I should be thanking them.

Let me know if you do apply, and again if you get on the show. I’m looking forward to watching it.

BTW – The title of my first post was actually a subtle reference to a line from a movie. It’s the only thing I really remember from that movie. Can you name it?

I’ve made virtually no progress on my house cleanup. The eBay yard sale I was talking about? Didn’t happen; not yet anyway. And I still need the cash. And yet, here I sit, late on a Saturday night, watching How it’s Made and blogging about my inability to take action on selling these damned DVDs.

It’s not that the DVDs are causing my house to be trashed. But I seem to be unable to get over some kind of mental block here. Am I too lazy to sell them, or am I scared of selling them? “Scared” might be too strong of a word. Maybe “fretful” is better. Here’s the paralyizing thought process:

How do I know that I’m going to get the best price for them? I don’t know from eBay, but I do know there are better times to post them, resulting in better auction closing times where people are actively watching the auctions. Should I make them ‘no reserve?” How should I handle shipping? Should I buy that Video Professor DVD about selling on eBay? But wait, that’s probably a scam. Maybe I should take them to a used CD/DVD shop. But then I’m only getting buck or two for each. Why should I get half from a middle man, when I can get better by going directly to the end consumer? Well, there’s the shipping thing again. If I’m doubling the cost of the DVD by trying to ship with proof of delivery and insurance, I might as well just sell to the middle man.

(How It’s Made is talking about making luxury chocolates…. OK. That looked good. Back to my mental paralysis.)

So let’s figure out this shipping thing. I’ve got to be prepared to sell these things for, say, a buck (although I’d like for that to be more like $5 each, but that’s unrealistic for a used DVD, right?). So if I’m selling for a buck, I’m not donating anything on shipping. “Shipping and handling” should include the envelope and the postage, and any additional shipping options I should include.

(That ductile iron pipe segment on How It’s Made was pretty damned cool.)

Envelopes. Should I use padded? I went to Office Depot, and the best price I could find on padded envelopes that would fit a DVD are just under a buck or so. Do the DVDs really need a padded envelope? I could go unpadded for a lot less per envelope, but I’ve got to buy them in packages of like 100 or something, so now my total envelope cost is about the same, less per envelope, but I’ve got to buy more than I need, and I don’t just want to absorb the cost of wasted envelopes. So I don’t know what to do there.

Shipping. I should just send these things first class via USPS. How much is that going to cost? Wait. Do I really need to know the zip of the person I’m sending this to? I’ll enter that I’m sending from California to Washington, DC. Seems like that should cover about any distance (unless it’s going to Alaska or Hawaii. Wait. What about international sales?) Why does the calculator need to know what time I’m sending this thing? I think I’m picking “large envelope.” Is that right?

So then shipping is $2.02 each. Should I offer proof of delivery? What if I don’t get that and the buyer says they never got my package? Then I’ve got to refund them, and I’m out the shipping. Ya. I know, it’s only two dollars, but that would mean I just spent two bucks to get rid of a DVD, and that’s the wrong direction. Maybe I should get insurance too. I could say the DVD is worth 20 bucks, and hey, I’ve got an idea, wait, no, that’s probably a felony. Never mind. Confirmation of delivery is $2.70. Screw that. How about a certificate of mailing. That’s $1.10. So that makes shipping $3.02, plus whatever I come up with for the envelope. That’s like $4 for shipping and handling. No one’s going to pay that plus anything decent for a used DVD.

So I’m stuck with going to Amoeba or something and getting a buck a piece. And some of these are decent movies. Damn. But wait. What if I want to actually watch them again? Then I have to rent them for at least $2. Might as well just keep them.

That whole process was kind of mentally exhausting. Writing that out helped me to realize that eBay isn’t really the best option here. Or am I missing something like media mail? Maybe I should just donate them and get the tax write-off instead.

The real problem here is that I go through this for everything I want to get rid of, and I wind up not getting rid of anything. I have some notion of what the crap I have is worth, but when I start thinking about how to get that price for it, I realize that that it’s not worth that much to anyone else. So I have a pile of junk that I’m afraid to get rid of for less than what I think it’s worth. But if no one else thinks it’s worth the same that I do, I wind up keeping it.

So, ya. I need to get over it. The stress of the mess in the house is overbearing. I need to start to understand that getting rid of that stress is worth more than whatever money I might get for a particular DVD. But it’s kind of hard to let go.

It’s been quite some time  now. Can’t believe I’ve ignored this site for as long as I have. Now things are not so good. The house is as much of a shambles as it ever has been, and we’re in a need for some cash. Things have gotten expensive, and we’ve fallen a bit behind. Now, we’re just trying to catch up. 

One of the things I’ve come to realize with the hoarding is that we’ve kept things thinking they had some value. “I’m not going to throw that away. I’m sure I could sell it for something.” In looking at all the crap we have, it’s really not worth that much, if anything at all. 

Think I’m going to organize some kind of eBay yard sale and try to sell everything off that can bring in even a buck. I’ll total it up and post the sales here. Let’s see how underwhelming that total is.

So we get back from night out to celebrate my birthday, and after I put the kids to bed, I come into the living room and my wife is watching a show on TLC: Help! I’m a hoarder!. I thought it was kind of funny, watching the crazy lady with the halls filled with shelves laden with labeled boxes of, well, crap. Then I realized something: At least she’s organized about it.

So here I am. I’m a hoarder. My home is a mess. I can never find anything. There’s no place to put anything away as all the closets and cabinets are packed. With crap. Disorganized and unlabeled.

So I bought this domain, and decided I have to do something about it. Will I? Dunno. Hope so. I’ve got thoughts on what I’m hoarding, why I do it, what I can do about it, and I hope to flush them out here. If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I’m avoiding the problem, and that’s not a good sign. I’ve got a ton of unrelated work to do tonight, so I have to go, but I hope I’m back soon.