I heard a news story today that stirred up a lot of feelings in me. I’m still trying to sort them out… but this post is what I got so far.
The story was about a 67-year-old woman who disappeared 4 months ago, and was found under a pile of junk in her own home.
Her husband reported her missing, and was living in that house the whole time. Neither he nor the search dogs (which came looking for her THREE times) could identify the smell of her corpse over the smell of all the other crap she was trapped under. And these were the kind of dogs they used to recover people out of the 911 debris!
Why did this story stir me up? I still really don’t know… but you wanna hear what’s messed up about this whole thing? The first thought that came to mind when I heard the story was “I wish I got one month to clean up that house, and leave it in complete order.”
You see, there are certain little things that get to me and they are very hard for me to let go of. Call it borderline OCD if you like, but it’s a character trait that makes me the anal person I call “me.” My hubby Brian has tried to make me see that it’s OK to let some things go, but not very successfully.
One of my friends has mastered the art of living in a pile of clothes. She doesn’t hoard STUFF, she mostly just can’t organize clothes to save her life. She quite literally cannot see her own bedroom floor. I offered to help, and we got as far as identifying which clothes she would keep and which clothes she would give away. We never made it past that point. We scheduled a couple of appointments, but she always ended up canceling. It’s a frightening prospect to have to go through all of that stuff. It would be overwhelming for anyone… but simply and inexplicably exciting for someone like me.
I have often thought of starting my own organizing business. If any of you watched the latest episode of My Boys (TBS sitcom), you know that Kenny wanted to start a closet-organizing business. I loved how easily he set up his next step: “I’ll just set up a website and see what happens.” He organized one of his friends’ closet for before and after pictures, and he just went for it. It was that simple. I drooled the entire episode. What a dream.
Could I do it? I don’t know… maybe I’m just afraid of the confrontation aspect of the job. After all, you’ll have to get people to let go of things. It takes convincing and a lot of negotiations with the clients. I’m not sure I like that part of it.
If I decided to do it, when would I find the time? Maybe I could start taking small clients and do it on weekends… I don’t know… I’m afraid! I tend to jump into things way too quickly. Maybe I’ll put a pin on it and think about it some more.
It’s exciting to dream, isn’t it?
ina
Comments
One response to “Help the Hoarders”