Today I am unable to work. The coffee my husband made this morning is unacceptable. It's much too bitter and all the creamer in the world can't save that pot o' Joe. Unfortunately, my disabling need to hoard prevents me from throwing out an almost completely full pot of perfectly good coffee (even though it tastes like shit) when technically there's nothing wrong with it (even though it tastes like shit). I cannot work without coffee, and I cannot drink this coffee, and I cannot make better and new coffee because there's already a full pot of of nasty coffee that I'm physically unable to discard. Let's just take our losses today and hopefully tomorrow my husband will do right by us both with some decent damn coffee. Thanks for understanding my crazy.
Sincerely,
Your (hopefully still current) employee
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is truly a stupid story, right? Of course it is. But for me and every other secret hoarder out there (not ANY of you who've been dumb enough to show your hovels full of shit on A&E or TLC; you people are crazy ass bonkers), a teeny tiny part of that rings true. I do believe, given the opportunity, I would be a full-blown hoarder. But since I married a wannabe gay man (tidy, clean, decorating, just missing the desire to have sex with other men), there's no chance of my hoard ever getting completely out of control. But I do admit the gene is there, and trust me, there IS a gene. There's a depression gene, an anxiety gene, an alcoholic gene, a breast cancer gene, and a hoarding gene. I already have the major risk factors: I grew up white trash, I was a prolific dumpster diver as a child, my relatives had "areas" behind their houses that were nothing more than dumps, our garages have always held one less car than able because of stuff we can't get rid of (we being me not letting the other half of we get rid of it, but community property still makes it a we, not just me). I have a very hard time getting rid of stuff. For example:
1. I bought flaxseed on amazon because I read it was good to add to food. It was not. It tasted like I was eating bird seed. It wasn't much better after I ground it up, and by then I was bored with the whole concept. Unfortunately, it was bought in bulk, so I have four 1-pound bags of flaxseed taking up precious property space in my pantry.
2. We don't believe in garage sales. We think they're creepy and a lot of work. We take whatever we don't want to Goodwill. At least, Jay tries to take what we don't want to Goodwill. Usually, what we don't want gets put in his trunk, and before he manages to make that run, I've already pawed through it all and reclaimed much of it.
3. I must have an "unclean Carrie" fear deep down in my mind because I am absolutely, embarrassingly, horrifically addicted to Bath and Body Works. I have tried this entire year to refrain, and I'm really doing a good job because now I'm finally down to only 25 hand soaps and 50 pocket bac antibacterials, and about 30 body sprays, bubble baths, shower gels, and lotions.
4. I am a condiment junkie. At one point while we were waiting for a house to be built, we were crammed into a tiny apartment with a REALLY tiny fridge. I realized I had a problem when I brought over all my condiments and NOTHING else fit in there. NOT ONE THING ELSE. But on the rare mornings I have toast, I can't imagine NOT being able to choose between raspberry, lingonberry, apple butter, orange marmalade, apricot, or strawberry jelly. It's not possible. How can I have a salad at home once a month if I don't have ranch, Italian, blue cheese, Roquefort (yes, they ARE different!), chipotle, vinaigrette, or sesame ginger? What if someone comes over and wants French or Thousand Island (both gross, but a good host knows you gotta cover all your bases)? No one in my house wants anything but A1 on their steak, but everyone knows kids are fickle and what if the day comes where one of them decides to come out of the Heinz 57 closet instead? (Which I would fully and wholeheartedly accept because I believe there is absolutely nothing wrong with needing Heinz 57 if that's what you need, and it makes it easier for me to justify having more condiments).
5. My purse is a hoarder/doomsday prepper nightmare. It's basically a striped, fashionable backup plan for every possible contingency in the world. I have 14 lipsticks, 5 chapsticks, a comb, a bottle of hair spray, hair ties, hair clips, hair barrettes, tampons and pads (not for me, but for that slim chance of a desperate fellow female in an adjacent stall in a public bathroom in dire straits, gratefully accepting my generous womanly offering of smashed linty feminine sanitary products), wet wipes from a casino we went to years ago, toothpicks from a restaurant we went to on vacation 5 years ago (which actually came in handy when I was trying to recommend it to a friend going to that same place last year). I have an umbrella, gloves, spare glasses, coupons for every place we could possibly even THINK of going to. Good pens I steal from businesses and doctor's offices (which stay in my purse b/cuz otherwise my kids would thieve 'em). If I mistakenly put my phone in my purse instead of in the outside pocket, I may as well speed dial Verizon (from my home phone, of course) and order a new one 'cuz that puppy is gone, baby gone. I can't find anything because everything is in the way.
6. I keep all the free calendars people send me in the mail, but I only have one hung, so the others sit quietly and uselessly behind it, I guess hoping for the chance that all 12 pages of holes break and I'm gonna need a ready hotshot from the bench.
7. My bathtub has 5000 razors. I get them cheap when they have 1 or 2 refills, but then I never buy MORE refills because I can't figure out how $15 is a good price for razor refills. I end up keeping the razor (without the head) and just buying more new sets. I wish there was a donation site for poor people who want to shave but can't afford to so that I could donate all of my unused razorless razors to all of those hairy needy women.
8. I have all of Branden's glasses. ALL of them. He's worn them since he was 3. He's now 12. He's broken, twisted, smashed, cracked, or simply outgrown them, but I just can't escape that nagging worry that he needs backups (like the calendars) so I keep them all. I don't even think there are any that he could wear or fit or even have current prescriptions, but I can't let them go.
I know most readers are waiting for me to add cats, but I refuse to believe I'm an animal hoarder. That's an entirely different, ugly, filthy type of creepy keeper, and since my current animal quota is under 10, I feel I'm more of a misdemeanor than a felony. Plus, I am still secretly hoping for that zoning permit to have a backyard miniature animal zoo, and that's not hoarding, that's habitating, and I know in my heart the polar bears and alpacas and tortoises will thank me for it when the time comes.
I guess the true test will come when Jay finally succumbs to his old-age dementia (I assume he'll go first because he's so old already) and we'll have to see if I go completely out of control and bury him somewhere under a pile of garage sale dolls. (See? That's why we don't have garage sales. People sell creepy things, like dolls and old Avon products). He did promise in sickness and in health, though, so I guess he should keep his fingers crossed that he stays in health and my sickness remains hoarded away somewhere.
