Today I Watched Hoarders.

Last week I read this post from Courageous Mother and so when I saw Hoarders offered on Instant View with our Netflix account, I added it to our queue and the Hubster and I watched several episodes today.

It is insane.  It is sad.  Both my husband and I each have a family member with this hoarding disorder.  It is a sickness and my heart truly goes out to these people. 

The scary thing is that I can see some of these tendencies in myself.  I'm not saying I've got piles of junk, garbage and other such nasty things laying around here because I don't.  I have babies so I must keep my house sanitary and safe.  And I would want to be clean regardless. 

But I do collect some things and I never really "saw" it until I watched this show and looked around my house.  Here's the confession of things I have a hard time letting go of:

- Baby clothes
-Books
-Magazines
-Catalogs
-Containers
-Clothes that have tears or stains that aren't wearable as they are
-Mailing packages

Why do I hold on to these items?  Well, I'm not done having babies, so the clothes could come in handy. Nevermind that I've got too many articles of clothing for an single child. 

I collect books because I love them.

I keep the magazines and catalogs because they are full of good ideas.

The containers (cleaned out) and well-worn clothing is kept for upcycling purposes (more than I could ever get to in this lifetime). 

And you never know when you might need an envelope for mailing. 

So - I need to let this stuff go, right?  I mean, I've got buckets upon buckets full of this stuff.  So, I'm storing waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than I need. So.  That's my goal for this week.  I'm not going to move this excess one more time.

And just to reiterate once again - I am not a gross housekeeper.  I'm not.  I am not a hoarder, but I may have some semi-hoarder tendancies and I'd like to nip them in the bud just in case there is a chance that they could explode into a sickness.  I mean, it's in the gene pool!  My husband assures me he will never allow that to happen, though.  **sigh of relief**

See, we've got our fair share of daily clutter.  But it eventually finds its way to its proper spot.  But, yeah, I've got several large storage containers that need to be emptied.

Anybody else understand?  Or have heplful hints?  Or a nice "You can do it!" is cool too.  :)  Because it's not going to be easy.