Some Say Hoarder, I Prefer Memory Keeper

I come from a long line of hoarders, ahem, memory keepers. I attach sentimental value to everything. Yes, it gets tiresome and yes, it gets old. I wouldn’t say I am ready to apply for the TLC show Hoarders, Buried Alive but, I have a bunch of stuff. Some of it, I could probably get rid of it. Some of it, I will never get rid of.

Attic

Thankfully, I have a bunch of attic space, but I am already thinking that I need to rearrange and reorganize my attic space so that I might get some more stuff up there.

This is a shot of my attic in its current condition. Yes, there are Christmas treeS up there and a rack of clothes that may or may not see the light of day again. And then there is a box of my Moma’s cookbooks. In reality, that’s just a small sample of her collection that she unloaded on me! And then there is a really big pile of just stuff. That pile of stuff and those cookbook are exhibits A and B of me being the memory keeper for my family. I just couldn’t let my mom get rid of her cookbooks, so she brought them to me. And there are things in that pile that my dad didn’t want to keep himself, but he couldn’t throw out either- so, they are in my attic.

My Daddy has this same problem with not being able to throw things out too. He saves things and it sometimes drives my stepmother batty. My grandmother was the same way. I have lots and lots of her stuff. In some ways, I am very glad she kept things. I have about 50 or so letters that my grandfather wrote her when she was at Auburn University. And I have my Dad and his younger brother’s baby books not to mention a handful of both their report cards. And I have buckets of photos.

Faithful Reader, you may have started to catch on that I have always kept my camera handy. I went digital 5 or 6 six years ago… I have boxes and boxes of my own photos from before I went digital. And I have memory boxes full of priceless mementos from my life and now from Bub and Baby Bub’s lives. Bub kinda makes fun of my memory boxes, but over the years he has asked me to put things in the memory box.

But lately, the walls of my house are starting to crowd me a bit. And my best friend most recently had an intervention and laid it out on the line that I am a hoader… now, I am not ready to own that but, I am ready to own the fact that I need to do some re-assessing and some cleaning out!

I want to clean out and reorganize my attic and also, my holiday closet. Oh yeah, I have a pretty big closet of nothing but holiday decorations.

Holiday Closet

I mean, I have a little something to decorate for most holidays and a lot for Halloween and a ton for Christmas (not to mention the 3 Christmas Trees in the other attic!) I have pulled everything thing out of this closet twice and yet, I still couldn’t manage to part with anything- even the stuff I haven’t decorated with- yet. I inherited 80% of it from my grandmother. Some of it I keep because I know it meant so much to her before me and some of it I keep because I really like it.

And then I have a room downstairs that is a catch-all. My house is full. I absolutely cannot buy another piece of furniture without getting rid of something. I do not have the room for one more piece of furniture. And I have waaaaay too many knick-knacks. I mean, I am just covered up with them. Like I said, the walls are starting to crowd me and I have got to go through and get rid of some of these.

But, my style is cluttered. I find organization and compartmentalization in just a bit of clutter but, too much clutter is too much clutter! And I am getting pretty close to that point. So, this is the beginning in hopefully a rapidly unfolding series of me de-cluttering my house. This would be the acknowledging and admission post.

So, I acknowledge and openly admit I have a clutter problem and have got to do something about it- quick- or I am going to go slowly insane. I am open to any suggestion on how to organize and regroup with all this stuff.

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Coralie

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