I briefly wrote about my family’s predilection to being pack-rats in February 2008. As a child I don’t remember stuff being everywhere, with the exception of one “storage” room. I don’t remember the house ever being dirty, because as kids we were always vacuuming and cleaning as part of our weekly chores. But I started noticing on visits after I moved away that it was becoming both increasingly cluttered and dirty.

Thanks to Netflix, over the last few weeks I’ve watched every episode of TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive”, A&E’s “Hoarders”, and Animal Planet’s “Confessions: Animal Hoarding”. Watching the shows I definitely think there’s a difference between hoarders: some can’t let go of things for some mental reason, some just seem to be lazy, and some hoarders are a combination of both.

I definitely wouldn’t say either of my parental unit’s are lazy. My father owns and runs his own business, and is always working on equipment for it or making deliveries. My mom would be the classic “homemaker”. She’s always taken care of people. Us kids growing up. Then she took care of her and my father’s parents in the last years of their lives. Now she helps watch my sibling’s children at their respective homes.

I’m sure my father would actually call himself a “collector” and I do admit he definitely does collect some specific—and very nice—things. But there’s so many of them that they’ve taken over almost every wall of their house.

Then there’s my mom. Oy! There are paper bags full of mail, magazines, and who knows what else all over the house. Things my mom keeps saying she’ll go through one day. As new things come in each day. She’s also saved all sorts of who knows what “to put in scrapbooks for us” to have. All our childhood crafts and clothing. Piles of stuff.

I’m really not looking forward to that day where I will have to go through their stuff after they die. I guess it will all be just a little bit of history repeating….

I could easily be a hoarder. And I probably have been from time to time in a small way. Mentally I have a difficult time letting objects go. The thought “I need to keep this because I could use it later” goes through my brain a lot. I’m not sure where that thought that continually lingers in the back of my brain comes from either. But it’s there, and I deal with it.

I’d say I have gotten better about it than I used to be. Or at least I hope I have. I’m not sure what the Husbear would say about it, but I’m hoping he would agree. Luckily I have him to help remind me of this when I struggle from time to time.

After re-reading the draft of this post over and over, it’s really not my intent to call my parental units out with this. Nor would I consider this “airing dirty laundry”. But for as much as I am unwillingly turning into my parental units, I don’t want this to happen to me.

I guess I should at least be happy they haven’t hoarded animals.