The soul of a hoarder

Today I was thinking about things I preserve and are completely useless. I am a hoarder, I am very untidy – I would dare say chaotic – and I almost never find what I am looking for in my chaos. Moreover, the few things I would find are hidden by my mother somewhere, owing to the fact that she constantly tries to put some order in my life. Well, if she didn’t make such attempts at ruling my life all the time, maybe I would have better control over it. 

There was a time, years ago, in which I had a flat on my own, in Basel. I was not really able to keep it tidy and clean. I was not even able to sort out my mail and do my payments. I was helped – if this can be called "help" – by a oh so brilliant social worker, handsomely paid for it, who used to come to me once a week to help me go through my mail and have a look at my flat. The fact is that at the time I moved back to my parents, we found tons of unread letters and my flat looked like a pigsty. This is the problem whenever someone needs external help, you get what you find. On the spur of the moment, my parents wanted to report the social worker to her boss, then they dropped this idea. With hindsight, they should have gone for it. If we tolerate everything, there will always be a next unlucky poor devil who will find himself in the same situation.

Anyway, at the time I lived alone I gathered everything possible. Not only unread mail. At the very moment of moving, we found tons of lighters, books (unread books), every sort of make-up, pencils, men’s clothes (they belonged to my ex boyfriend and I never sent them back to him nor threw them away), every sort of clothes (my clothes this time, but different kind of clothes according to the phase I was going through: punk, gothic, "normal", emo, etc.). The problem is that I was not willingly gathering all those things, I was unable to put some order in the space surrounding me and they just accumulate in big heaps here and there in my flat. I remember that my parents devoted one week to help me move, and we worked all the time intensely to sort out what to throw away and what to keep – I don’t know how many  garbage bags we filled with rubbish I had just hoarded up in one year of loneliness and instability. I also remember feeling very ashamed of showing all this to my parents, because the way someone keeps the space he/she lives in speaks volumes about his/her state of mind. It was evident that I needed help, and at that time I was not even on the medication which gave me a dignified life back. 

As I moved back home to my parents, my flat – better: what would have become my flat – was under construction. I lived for some time in the attic, where I had my room and a bathroom. My furniture were stored and I managed to lead an almost normal life there. Let’s say it was not really "my" space: I just lived there as a sort of guest. I did not manage to keep this little space clean though, and if it were not for my mother, the hoarding of useless objects would have started again. My father helped me go through my mail and do my payments. A couple of months later, I was hospitalized in The Castle (it was in 2009) and then, my life changed. 

Once in The Castle, my therapist completely changed my medication, and gave me a medicine which has many negative side effects but works wonders on people with my illness. I started reading again, I started writing regularly again, and I managed to keep some more order in my things. After this hospitalization, I came back home and some time later my flat was ready. At the very beginning I had some difficulties in keeping it clean, but after a while I took the habit of dusting it thoroughly and vacuum it once a week. I still do so. 

Despite the fact that I am quite "disciplined" nowadays, I still have the soul of a hoarder and I am still rather chaotic. I suppose this might also be a reaction to my mother’s perfection and obsession with cleanliness. You have to know that my mother gets up every day at 6 am to start cleaning, and she goes on with almost no break until about 2 pm. We don’t live in a house, we live in a museum. I always saw her doing nothing else but cleaning when we were at home. At the time I was a child, she used to work with my father in his surgery, but since her well deserved retirement, she developed an obsession for keeping the house clean and tidy. We do have a cleaning woman, but my mother works with her shoulder to shoulder. Usually, the purpose of having someone doing the cleaning for you should be not having to do it yourself. But this does not apply to my mother, who exhausts herself working every day instead of enjoying some free time. Sometimes I don’t know how to react to all this, because keeping the house clean is a necessity, but too much is too much. 

Talking about the soul of a hoarder, my father, although more orderly than me, is not any better as far as keeping useless things is concerned. In a different way, he does the same. My father has a lot of old documents and files he could get rid of after half a year, but he hoarded up for years. Things like the greengrocer’s bills of two or three years ago, to give an example. I just know that in the attic, in the room which once was my room, we have cupboards full of old documents like the one I mentioned before, or old butcher’s bills, phone bills of ten years ago, and so on. My mother sometimes jokingly threatens with divorce if those documents don’t get thrown away; sometimes the discussions my parents have about this "problem" take a more serious tone; fact is, the documents always remained where they are. 

Well, I would say that nowadays, as far as I am concerned, I don’t preserve useless things anymore, but sometimes still have troubles in putting order in things I should preserve. No more heaps of clothes in a corner of my room, no more visible chaos in my flat, but I confess that to find what I’m looking for I often have to treasure hunt for it. Which is not something I take pride in.<span style=

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