Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I Know It's Somewhere in the House . . .

Thanks to msnbc.com, I have discovered that I have a newly-defined psychiatric disorder, and so does Kaye: hoarding. Apparently, it’s genetic, which makes sense, knowing Memaw and Kaye’s father. We haven’t approached their level of “but this might be useful someday,” but I’m loathe to throw things out (except when I go on a purge and inevitably wind up throwing away something I have to buy again later). Kaye is more likely just to bring home some “perfectly good” something that’s being thrown out. Well, it may not be “perfectly good,” but it’s certainly functional and a waste to throw it out. “Kaye!” I say. “We are two people! We don’t need seventeen office chairs!” Well, I guess we’ll both have to be medicated and counseled into the neatness of Mom and Chris. I don’t know whether anyone on her side of the family can keep house, having only been to her brother’s house once, in 1985, and our place was neat then. I am relieved that we have not been able to pass this gene on to any children. I do take solace in that.

3 comments:

Qalmlea said...

I wasn't aware that this was a "new" disorder. I know I've seen it listed as a symptom of various things (OCD comes to mind). I fight against the same tendency, but I periodically go through purges to get rid of stuff, too.

Snark said...

I find it interesting that, bit by bit, we're excusing our bad behavior behind medical conditions. (I do it very well!)

Anonymous said...

We're awful for hoarding too. Mum's in the process of rehoming about four black bin bags of Forever Friends bears, and I've been going through a folder full of fractals and other computer designs... I keep everything I make, no matter how awful it is, but I made myself throw out one (I hated the colours) along with a clutch of space-gobbling PNGs (I didn't need the original Photoshop files AND the PNGs). Sigh.