Future Hoarder

I'm addicted to hoarding shows on TV. Right now, there are 4 that I know of, "Hoarders," "Hoarding: Buried Alive," "Clean House," and the newest, "Stuffocation." Watching these shows always makes me feel a little better about the rooms in our house no one sees that are full of random stuff, that are necessary but have no "home." Sounds just like a hoarder, ha! The guest bedroom/office/music room/storage room bursting at the seams, and the area next to Nich's side of the bed that is full of boxes with random junk we haven't gotten around to sorting through since I was on bedrest and half of it is stuff that helped entertain me while stuck on the couch for 3 months. Now it's so much that we've decided this weekend we're going to go through it and hopefully TRASH a bunch of it! I LOVE trashing stuff, it's so cleansing! AND I love these shows, late at night, with a virgin Bloody Mary in hand because it gets me ready to clean again the next day, and maybe even reorganize something a little differently.

But Nich loves to tease me about the copies of bills, bank statements, and duplicate checks from a decade ago to now. I'm pretty sure I have just about EVERY SINGLE ONE. Thankfully they are all organized in binders and fit on one shelf and the old check books only take up one desk drawer. They are completely unnecessary, but I can't get rid of them because, well, you never know when you might need them! I know the IRS doesn't look past 7 years MAX, and just about all those bills are for things I don't own anymore and to addresses I haven't lived at in years. My excuse is I need a shredder, but I still haven't gotten around to getting one in 10 years :)

I'm pretty sure everyone is a secret hoarder of SOMETHING, but most of us don't use our entire house to store it all. I know my parents are definitely pack-rats, and most of their kids are too. But, I was watching "Stuffocation" the other night and saw the future me on there. A mom, dad, and 12 year old son lived in a chaotic mess, but only the boy's room was clean. Now, they had tons of issues that aren't the future me, but the ONE thing I saw that made me go, "Uh oh" was when it came to cleaning and organizing the son's room. The mom wouldn't let him throw away any stuffed animals even though he couldn't stand having the 80+ lining his room. Upon digging a little deeper into her reasoning she found that her attachment to the stuffed animals represented a time in her boy's life that she could never have back. The crab they bought at Disney Land, the teddy bear for his 1st birthday and on and on. There was a special story and huge sentimental significance attached to all of them. In that moment I realized, MY boy is growing up so fast, and while I have pictures, I know I want to keep everything that ever touches him and the toys he loves to play with. Uh oh. I had already planned on making a quilt out of the clothes I love on him best, and that will surely help with a lot of the extra stuff. But seriously, what do I do with stuffed animals and toys? He sleeps with a Snoopy every night, and what if he decides to get rid of it at some point? Eeek!

I went through a similar issue when Nich and I moved into our first house together. I had a closet FULL of gifts from kids from all the years I taught. With hundreds of kids going through my classroom every year, I had a LOT of stuff. The things I liked I had out and used, the other stuff went into the closet. I felt awful about throwing any of it away because I knew each kid, their family, their situations, and knew someone in that family had taken the time to find and purchase something for me, the art teacher. We had a garage sale the summer we moved in, and it was tough, but I let ALL of it go. It wasn't so hard after about the first 3 items, so maybe I'll have a similar experience. I don't know. I just know kids I saw once a week for 45 minutes versus the beautiful boy I raise every single day to adulthood are two very different things.

I think I will always keep the Snoopy though, and keep it with Nich's childhood Snoopy if his parents let us take it...and I'll get Oliver's future child a Snoopy, and so on. Then future Beer generations will have a house of Snoopy's no one can throw away, and it will be great! Seriously, how awesome would it be to have Snoopy's from that many generations? What a great idea! Uh oh.