Hoarders

Rachel's facebook status today mentioned the television show Hoarders, which I had never heard of, so Josh and I watched the first episode. My thoughts on the show:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I never, ever, EVER want to be like those people! One woman on the show had rotting food for years just all over her house. This other woman had laundry carpeting her stairs all the way down to the basement.

I'm a little bit of a clutter-freak anyway, so this show really struck a nerve. I don't need my living space to be spotless--continuously disinfected, swept, mopped, and dusted--per se, but I DO need it to be open and uncluttered. Everything needs to have a place and if it doesn't have a place, it needs to be thrown away. If I can't wear the clothes or shoes, they're given to DI. If I can't fit the clothes or shoes into the closet, I give more clothes to DI. I don't like books just sitting on the table or papers cluttering up the counter--they need to be put away or thrown away so I can have that open, uncluttered apartment. It's especially important to me to have "unclutteredness" (or as I like to call it: "Utter Bliss") because our apartment is already so small. It's easy to let things pile up and around us when there's very little room to fit it all, but we don't let it because it's evil and wants to destroy all happiness. Also, clutter likes to eat small children. And it invites Dementors into your home.

After the show ended, Josh was so spooked that he said he wanted to get rid of some of his old t-shirts. Works for me--we're cleaning out our closet today to make a DI run. Also, we took a tentative and very apprehensive peek into our fridge--very sparse and clean. No rotting vegetables from 4-24 months ago. *whew*

Seriously, I don't think we're at risk for the kinds of hoarding behavior shown in that awful episode from hell, but even so, we're gonna get rid of a few things. No sense wasting the lesson and that feeling of rising panic and utter terror.