I’ll keep it real and admit that sometimes I feel like a phony.

Like my situation wasn’t awful enough to allow me the right to speak about hoarding. My house wasn’t condemned, my brother and I weren’t removed from our parents, there weren’t hundreds of cat skeletons hidden in the mess, so who the hell am I to talk about the suffering caused by hoarding?

Seriously, who am I?

I’m not Marie Kondo. I’m not a professionally trained organizer. I’m not a minimalist. (I’m a rococo minimalist at best.) My home isn’t spotless.

I don’t live in a translucent cube decorated only with air and pure white light. 

I’m still wading through many trunks of my own stuff as part of a years-long organizational project to once and for all get a handle on ALL of my things, know every single item that’s in my house, and consciously decide whether it should stay or go. 

At times, I convince myself that I shouldn’t write this blog, because [INSERT LAME REASON HERE]. It’s a weird blend of impostor syndrome and downward social comparison, except I don’t feel like an impostor because of a successful situation, and comparing myself to others who had it worse than me doesn’t make me feel better, just less credible as a voice talking about hoarding. 

That’s messed up, right? And yet that’s been on my mind a lot lately.

That I shouldn’t be speaking about my experiences because I didn’t suffer in the RIGHT way, the way that other people imagine a hoarder’s life should be, with bags of feces tucked into every corner. 

When others minimize the situation by saying, “Oh, your folks just loved a lot of things” or “They were collectors,” it reinforces that crappy impostor feeling and implies that I’m complaining about a normal situation because I’m an uptight bitch. 

Then the almighty warrior goddess “Fuck that shit, hoss!” part of me rises up and tells me there’s no way I can silence myself or allow the responses of others to invalidate how I experienced my own life.

I can’t be an impostor when I’m telling my own story.

When You Need More Than Marie Kondo

Marie Kondo is stupendous. She has affected millions of people in a positive way, including those who struggle with hoarding issues. She helps people get in touch with their joy, which is a beautiful thing to behold.

But sometimes you don’t have the simple emotional duality of feeling joy or feeling neutral about an object.

Sometimes you might believe everything is sparking joy when what’s really happening is that you feel such terror, anxiety, and overwhelm about letting something go, you consider the absence of those negative emotions to be “joy.” A hollow joy, yet it’s seemingly better than the alternative. Never mind that you still have too many things shrinking the space that you need to grow in order to expand your life.

So who am I again? 

I’m someone who takes all of this very seriously because hoarding is a serious issue that causes serious shame, embarrassment, anxiety, family rifts, and various other problems. 

That’s why I feel so responsible. That’s why I don’t want to mess this up or make light of it. I don’t want to give anyone bad advice or be uninformed or not give the most I possibly can to help anyone who happens to stumble upon this little blog and desperately needs the information it can provide at that very moment in their lives. 

Who Am I to NOT Talk About Hoarding? 

I speak not only as someone who grew up in a hoarded home and had certain aspects of her life shaped by it, but as someone who also has realized and fought with her own hoarding tendencies. 

I’ve done extensive reading on hoarding syndrome and potentially related disorders, mental illnesses, and tendencies so I could help myself and better help others. And my husband and I have worked over many years to research and create our own cleaning, organizing, and storage techniques to deal with the huge task of clearing out two hoarded houses and managing our own large collection of items.

This is extremely personal to me.

Hoarding is an area of great vulnerability and pain for me, mixed with some resulting stone-cold strength, all of which is wrapped in a pink, fluffy blanket of compassion and love as I gain more understanding. 

Do you need help with your own hoarding tendencies? Visit the Hoarding & Mental Health Resources page to find some helpful books, websites, and organizations. Post your questions in the comments below, get in touch with me through the Contact form, and share this blog with anyone whom you think it might help.

Hope and joy,

Rachel