Natalie Whatley

Leave it to me to have something as simple as a furniture delivery causing me to question the status of my mental health. I can’t help it.

Psychology is fascinating and studying it is a demented little hobby of mine. If I do the mental gymnastics required to wrap my mind around possible reincarnation, I realize that I could’ve possibly been Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung in a previous life. Or, at the very least, occupy a twig on their family tree.

That wouldn’t be a problem except that the more I learn the crazier I become. Psychology courses always start with the caveat, “Don’t diagnose yourself.” One can only read so much in the DSM IV —Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—before seeing bits and pieces of their own being in this psychosis or that neurosis.  However, it was actually a couple of television shows that alerted me to my potential disorder.

Disclaimer: This soul would never, in this lifetime or possibly others, poke fun at those with bona fide, certifiable “issues”. The following will simply be the inner ramblings of my really-does-have-bigger-things-to-worry-about conflicted mind.

My daughter was the lucky recipient of the new furnishings. The impending delivery date (we had a “back, back, back order slip”) gave us ample time to clean out and prepare for the big rearrangement of her room. She’s headed to junior high next year and that fact put her in just the right frame of mind to get rid of many things.

In the bittersweet end, we had cleared the room. It was a great feeling . . . until I realized just how much didn’t make the “donate” pile and had shifted to my bedroom for storage.

In an exhausted state, it hit me that I was going to have to clean out my closet to make room for a few things. And that, my friends, is where my troubles began.

I am the offspring of people who like to keep things – seemingly for sentimental reasons. And over the years as my parents cleaned out their homes they sent boxes to mine. The contents of said boxes were mostly unknown. A quick glance let me know the items were once prized possessions, but I didn’t fully inspect.  I kept it all because . . . well, that’s what I was supposed to do, right?

Having watched one too many episodes of Hoarders on A&E and TLC’s Hoarding: Buried Alive,—series that deal with the compulsive accumulation of too much stuff — I knew that holding on to things could generate massive problems over time.

Here’s what worries me: I had not a single worry standing over a rather large trash can and throwing away a good percentage of my closet contents.

Days later and completely unbothered I watched my “memories” loaded onto the garbage truck.  Then I wondered if the opposite of a hoarder is a cold, heartless, unsentimental shrew. No. The fact that I couldn’t possibly keep a lifetime of memories in my home doesn’t mean I can’t hoard memorable sentiments in my heart. There’s plenty of room in there, and the portability can’t be beat.

© 2010 Natalie Whatley

Tags: cleaning out closets, hoarding