Hoarding

I think I've blogged before on how I come for a long line of hoarders. For those of you who don't know...I come from a long line of hoarders. We all hoard in our own different ways, but we all call it collecting. For example, some of us collect wine, Longenberger baskets, cut glass, books, old papers, pets...you name and someone in my family has probably collected it. My paternal grandfather used to collect things he found on the side of the road. I'm sure Paul is ecstatic that I haven't gone that far and he barely tolerates my love of any of my collections. Seriously we may be one Longenberger basket away from divorce. lol Paul has some "collectors" in his family, too. He just has chosen to fight against that urge rather than embrace it.

I do realize though that with a baby on the way it is time to let go of some things to make room for new things.

Of course I can't nest like I want to right now what with the bedrest and all. So, last week my friend Jessica came over and offered to help me organize some things. Little did I know that Jessica is an organizer of the show Hoarders caliber. She is this tiny little thing from Texas with this sweet little accent and she is scary!

We decided to tackle the closet in the guest room and it sort of went like this:

Me sitting on the bed. Jessica prying open the closet doors. She begins pulling stuff out and we start going through it. So, I may have had 8 giant space bags of linens and several drawers in a dresser. We emptied every single space bag and I am proud to say I only kept 1 blanket, 1 extra sheets for the 2 guest beds, and 1 table cloth. We came up with an entire space bag of toys for toys for tots for this Christmas as well as 3 boxes full of stuff for Salvation Army/Airmen's Attic, a bag of books for the library, and 3 industrial size garbage bags of garbage.

Of course it's easy to get rid of things when someone is giving you the stank eye and asking you "Are you ever going to use this again? Do you need this?" And if you say yes, "Are you sure?" What I am sure of is that I wish I could send her down to my mother's house to help her go through her crap stuff. I had to take a nap when she left!

Paul sure was impressed when he got home! He even took some electronics from under the guest room bed to Best Buy last weekend to turn them in for recycling or at least he told me he did (they could be in our garbage can for all I know, but I choose to believe he recycled them).

Jessica is coming over tomorrow, but I don't think we'll be organizing anything. She made the mistake of offering to help me with things (words I am sure she will grow to regret) so tomorrow Beast goes to the vet to get his nails trimmed.

Thanks Jessica!