you know you might be a hoarder when.....

These things come to me in my sleep, I swear.  I don't sleep deeply very often, but when I do....when the covers are heavy and warm, on a Sunday afternoon........, it just comes.....tumbling, like Niagara Falls.  An idea for my blog.  I slowly awaken, and for a minute or two, as the ideas rush forth, I try to remember each one mentally, until I hit that threshold of "more than three", where I know it is too much, and I spring from my bed, race down the slippery hardword floors to the laptop in the dining room, plop down on our $3 yard sale metal office chair with the vintage green vinyl seat, scramble for a pencil in the desk drawer, and grab some really important document lying there, flip it over, and start emptying my brain onto the paper as quickly as possible.  I always lose some, but most of it gets written, in some kind of shorthand that even I, the author, have trouble deciphering. 

Right now Frank is peacefully asleep.....not even a snore to be heard.....it is so quiet, except for the ticking of my many clocks.  That is all......tick, tock, ticktock, tickticktock-tock, tickity-tock-tick......  I think maybe this tendency toward collecting, which people call hoarding (I kinda hate that word), at least for me....started with the clocks.  I like clocks, and one day decided to start collecting them to put on the mantle.  I have found a few at yard sales and thrift stores.  But too many ticks, all a millioneth of a second off from each other....oh my gosh.....the nonsynchronous cacophony drove everyone crazy I guess. I started finding my clocks with the batteries taken out, lying listlessly beside them.  If you ever spent the night at our house before the clocks were dismantled....I apologize.  It took me awhile to realize it was a problem. I only have 3 or 4 now, spread out around the house.   And now, I have another, bigger problem.  I think I am a.... hoarder.  In the early stages.
But so is my husband.  

You know you might be a hoarder couple when...

1.  You are spring cleaning and think you have put all of your husband's all-occasion, all-size skis neatly away for winter under your king-size bed, only to keep finding other pairs hidden other places about every 5 minutes thereafter.....another....and, what??? ANOTHER!!!  Not to mention all of the ski boots, gloves, masks.....and broken skis, boots, etc (for parts).  Note:  This collection all started with one simple statement from him:  I think I'll take up skiiing again!" ....... Anyway, you email him at work, with a subject line of "WTH?" (what the heck), a picture of the skis you found AFTER you thought you had stored them all, and the words,  "Not counting what is under the bed, I do believe we have a hoarder in the house!" And right on its heels, another one that said, "and Em just told me there are two more pairs in Utah???

You instantly receive back his huffy retort:  "....Ok...lets start talking about the Etsy crap?!? It's ok...you'll "get to it".  Note:  Almost every time you buy something at a yard sale or thrift shop, you say it's for ETSY....an online store where you sell vintage or handmade items.  It takes some time to list it (take a photo, write a description, etc.) And someday, you will get to that.
 
Anyway, to diffuse this righteous anger, you reply with, "Touché.... It takes a hoarder to know a hoarder, and we even produced a hoarder child (Allison)."  Wow.  You  just admitted that not only might your husband a hoarder, but so might YOU be.....and even your firstborn daughter.  You know that admitting it is the first step to recovery.  That's as far as you've  gotten though, you're afraid.
 
2.  As you and your husband are leaving Goodwill on Fair Oaks Boulevard, the clerk says, "Thanks for spending so much money with us today."  What?  You only spent $40......I guess that's a lot for one day, and your cart was full.  The problem is, you had hit about 5 shops before that one.  You had a carload.....all great stuff, rest assured, including some pretty awesome Christmas presents.  You even got home before dark!
 
3.  You never bring in your carload of thrift store finds until after dark, so that your neighbors don't see you do it.  They might discover that you might be becoming a hoarder.  That is your policy.
 
4.  You read a book called "A Homemade Life"....a very good book by the way, a memoir that includes recipes, and read a quote in it that says something like, "Don't bring anything into your home unless you find it beautiful or useful." You decide to rid your home of everything not beautiful and useful.....and come up with very little.  You believe that there is hardly a single thing you  have bought that you don't find beautiful or useful in some way. (You find ways to make things useful....it's called "repurposeing")
 
5.  When you find out that there are TV shows about hoarders, you actually consider for a split second seeing if your daughter can be the star of an episode.  When you mention it, her boyfriend thinks you are kidding at first....but you keep bringing it up.  She'd be perfect!  Really.....Just kidding around.......they probably don't pay that great.  But if they DID......hmmmmm.....
 
6.  You get thrift-shop request lists from your daughters and sons-in-law.....giving you even more excuses to go than you would otherwise....and you know that the best days to thrift shop are Tuesdays (People donate on the weekends, and it is all usually priced and put out by Tuesday morning)  and the day after a holiday.  Score!  You wonder if this yard sale/thrift store obsession had its roots in the day you left your four small daughters to man your yard sale so that you could go yard saling.....true story.   
Moving on...
 
 
 
You know you might have a hoarder child when...
 
1.  She calls you and says she is feeling a lot of anxiety, feeling swallowed up by her "stuff".  She tells you that she cut out (with a saw) 97 boards to put her fabric collection on....only to discover that she needed to cut out 97 more.  Also, that she moved all of her "stuff" into her roommate's bedroom (who was gone for a long vacation) temporarily so she could see the light of day.....and then paints everything in her room with Ace Hardware "Almond" spray paint.  Trying to "neutralize" the situation, I suppose.  She's taking steps, and I'm so proud of her.  It takes strength to "just say no"  to another yard of cool polyester vintage fabric with owls on it!
 

2.  You and your husband plan a "Hoarder Holiday" for your firstborn daughter and her hoarder-in-training boyfriend Steve on Black Friday where you hit nearly every thrift shop in the Sacramento Metropolitan Area before heading down to Napa, hitting a few along the way, spending the night, and hitting all of them in Napa until closing time the next day.  You know the four of you  will have a blast, and you do. Here we are fueling up for the trip (I must be taking the picture...)  When you get home from the Hoarder Holiday, each of you makes a display of your items and take turns showing each one, telling where you got it and for how much....

Allison was a little mortified at the height and weight and depth and breadth of her display, but very happy with her finds.  Our hoarder high was at its highest.  Who needs drugs? It's like a treasure hunt.  The boyfriend Steve even films it all, puts it to music with special effects, and your daughter puts it on Facebook and YouTube. 
Check it out at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXiHNeY6H18

Here is a photo of me wearing the vintage fur hat Allison secretly bought me in Napa at the Wildcat Thrift Store.....our last stop at night during the Christmas Parade on Main Street you saw in the video, if you watched it.   She surprised me with it at Christmas and I suprised her back by wearing it on the plane when I visited her last weekend.....so brave of me...wearing a fur hat and scarf to Huntington Beach where it was 78 degrees! I looked like I was going to the North Pole! We had such a great time....and yes, visited a few thrift shops in Ventura and Santa Barbara, and showed some pretty fine restraint, actually! We are making a good solid effort to scale down.


So now you know, if you didn't know already.  It's out in the open....we are out of the closet....mainly because there is no room for us in there anymore.
 
Seriously, though, we have it under control.  We may be borderline hoarders, but organized ones. We would never qualify to be on one of those shows!

And on the plus side, Frank and I are all set to go cross-country skiing together soon....Emily is completely outfitted for downhill skiing now and loves her new sport....Frank just went on a couple of weekend snowshoeing trips.....Allison may have a lot of fabric, but I'm so proud of her learning to sew and making such awesome things with that fabric.  We have been able to save so much money on things we and the kids needed, that would have cost so much more in a regular store.  Christmas was filled with some great, unique, inexpensive gifts.  We have had so much fun finding treasures and decorating the house with them, using them in unique ways,  and saving money in the process....but know that our real treasures are our four daughters, their spouses, and little Claire and Noble.  It's family.  I wonder if Frank and I have unconsciously been filling up the house with "things"to fill the void of all of our girls being gone from home.  We miss them so much!

One of these days you will see our ETSY store suddenly filled with items for sale, and we will have the biggest and best yard sale ever to hit Rocklin.  We have a common hobby, and it's fun......and probably just a phase that we'll grow out of.  But for now, we are hanging onto those 50% off thrift store coupons and are planning our next Hoarder Holiday!