Rebel and Liberate July

[Harmony]

I also watched that episode. That particular woman really had an awful attitude. I'm struck more and more that people like this use this awful habit to control others. Sometimes I wonder why. They give other reasons for this, like feeling safe and protected behind their stuff, but I see a huge controlling component to it. They effectively keep their families at bay with their hoardes, lose marriages and children to it. I find it an extremely selfish behavior. Quite often there is serious mental health issues, but I don't think all the time. I've noticed also a lot of people have grief of a loved one dying issues that they've never been able to deal with. I am not better than these people because I don't have these problems, but I am blessed to be more "normal" whatever that is.

[Harriet]

I think that's true of a lot who end up on shows because the problem is their families have to call for help or give up. That was certainly true of this woman - her daughter was in trouble. Remember her daughter crying and saying she didn't know what had happened, but this was not who her mother used to be. HRH pointed out that they did find drug stuff in the clean-up and wondered if a hidden problem with harder drugs played a part in a personality change. I was kinda shocked when at one point she threatened if anyone else upset her, "I'll throw you away". But a lot worse has been said on these shows.

Interestingly, the only real hoarder I've ever known in real life was the most sweet-natured among 5 sisters. She was much more accepting and non-judgemental than her siblings. I never heard her criticize others (though they sure criticized her) or even raise her voice, and she treated her son and husband with patience and kindness. Who knows. But then, her son would never have called this show, would he, because his mother was actually very easy to get along with. She tried to make him happy, she just "had" to have the stuff, too.

[Nancy]

They re-ran that same show again in the middle or the week.

I got two plastic baskets of toys sorted to de-clutter or put in the empty toy box down stairs. Feels great to be able to decide about that I was asking dgd if she needed this or that some things she said "no" and others she said "yes" and took those right then to play with. It took some of the decision making off me and that felt great.

[BookSaver]

Repeating from PWYC thread:
Documenting time spent decluttering in a storage room.
- Took out a small bag to toss (things that were immediate decisions to trash).
- Consolidated stacks to make room so it will be easier to hit the space in 10-15 minute bursts.
- 4 boxes of books to library for book sale.
(2 days late on this goal but the big storm & lack of electricity on Monday caused delay. The book sale starts tomorrow morning at 8, so delivery this afternoon is still in plenty of time.)

[Nancy]

Dropped of some donations that were in the car trunk today.

[Nancy]

Caught a bit of the hoarders while flipping channels, the son was at a loss to communicate how much he could care less about a tupperware strainer that his mom had kept just in case "someone might need this someday" like it was part of her hope chest or something! Ack! So today I put away some containers on the counter and was glad I'd decluttered some others in the last trip down town.

[Harmony]

I knew one hoarder in real life. She was a lovely person, but I understand her DH was so frustrated he'd talked of moving out. I heard the stories of the huge cleanup after she was gone.

Getting our 1 phone line canceled and hunting an ear phone for cell had us looking through our big cardboard box of rejects, and I threw away 3 tape recorders, some ear pieces that had disintegrated foam, and a few old phones. Old white ones that were so old they'd turned yellow. We will have some more phones to get rid of soon when we move then around and take up the ones on the line that no longer works.

DH was in a tossing mood in his part of the office tonight. He got rid of big huge binders of stuff, an awful lot of old papers, note pads, and rolls and rolls of blueprints. I asked him if something happened to make him do this, did he see a bad home on his work outings with the teens, and he said no. I guess he was just in the mood! I wish he was in this mood more often.

[Nancy]

Today my goal is to get the empty cereal boxes and other cardboard empty boxes that are under the kitchen sink out of here.

[Harriet]

Watched the Hoarders episode lucylee mentioned yesterday, in parts as I had time on the 'puter. After 1st 20 mins I was already questioning why the producers decided to document these 2 stories.

The arcade man honestly wasn't a hoarder in my opinion. He just had an immense quantity of arcade machines in a building that wasn't zoned for it and he had to move them to one that was zoned for it in order to make money on the business. That's not someone who needs "Hoarders", that's someone who needs a moving company. He collected valuable things to make money off their use. His story could have been on "American Pickers", with Mike and Frank salivating over his antique pinball machines.

On the second, the dumpster-diving woman, I changed my mind in the 2nd 20 minutes. I had thought her explanation of "I hoard because a parent died" was just the same as many, many others. Yes, grieving your parent by neglecting their grandchildren does run up red flags for mental health, but how many times can you have this same type of hoarding explanation on the show. However, with the complete, violent collapse of the producers' attempts to offer help, I realized it was actually courageous of them to go ahead and show such a terrible failure on their part. Sometimes, you can't help at all, and I guess that's part of their stories, too. Ultimately, they may have put the son at risk, because when they arrived DSS would have taken him out of the home, but they (mostly the daughter) managed to do just enough work that he could stay, and he might have been better off away from there. Of course, at the end they said the woman and her husband were divorcing, so the son might have gone with father or big sister, or to the boarding school he wanted.

[Nancy]

I tossed the bags today glad to have those out of here yea!