The hoarding story, as promised

I am a blogging fool this week. Also, that phrase just made me want to punch myself. I am leaving it so that you all also want to punch me.

Tonight was operation guest room. And here is where the hoarding story comes in. The guest room is kind of a black hole in our house. (Because we never have guests. AHEM. COME VISIT ME.) If we don't know what to do with something, it ends up in the guest room closet. If I get a gift that I hate, it ends up in the re-gift pile, in the guest room closet. If I have a pile of mail that is taller than me on the kitchen counter and someone is coming over for dinner, it goes in the guest room closet.

The only thing remaining in the guest room closet are the board games we want to keep (we got rid of about 25) and clothes. There was a point in time where that closet would barely close. And I was always terrified guests would open it and in turn hate me for my closet (ha! see what I did there) hoarding.

Out of it...we got an entire car trunk full of stuff for my dad's church garage sale, an entire city issued trash can full of trash, and about 4 boxes of stuff to actually keep. Oh, and all of our bookshelves are in that room as well, which is SEVENTEEN boxes of books. I love books. I really, really love books. (hoarding books)

But, the real hoarding tragedy is the mail. I have lived in this condo for 11 years. That is a long time. In that 11 years, I have never thrown away a single piece of mail. At first this was because I didn't have a shredder. (YES I REALIZE I COULD HAVE THROWN AWAY THE RANDOM CATALOGS, LEAVE ME ALONE.) Then I bought a shredder and it was too much. This is a thing of mine. If I get really overwhelmed by a project, I sort of abandon it. I do not do well when overwhelmed because I just don't know where to start and then I see something shiny and I am like, ooh, shiny and the project is forgotten. There is probably a therapist somewhere sensing dollar signs, but I prefer to just not think about that and find something shiny. Please don't diagnose me.

I went through EVERY SINGLE piece of mail in this house. I sorted them out into trash and shred, shredded them and this was the result:

Yes, that is in fact TWO 50 gallon trash bags of shredded mail. And three trash bags of junk mail.

My name is erratic. I am a hoarder. Please still love me.