Hoarder

Confession

I have a confession to make. 

I am hoarder. 

Not as in the show “Hoarders” sort of sense.  As in I love to craft, and make stuff, reuse, and recycle stuff sort of sense. 

Now let me clarify this first and foremost, my house is not completely wall to wall.  Some of my storage areas are filling up, but not wall to wall. 

I like to think of myself as a somewhat organized hoarder.  And it is only certain things, or depending on what social media trend I have fallen into. 

You see, I am always wanting to make things.  I want to try things I see on the internet to see if I can do it or not.  You will find a whole section under the Did it Work part of the blog.

Sometimes my stuff looks like theirs, sometimes it looks better, and other times it looks like a two year old attempted to do it. 

I get random wild hairs up my ass and want to make random things, and that is not always good.

As for throwing things away, I just have a very difficult time letting things go. I simply do not like to throw anything away that may look like it has potentional for something wonderful.

Logic

I do have a logical reason for this though. As soon as I get rid of something, I need it for something. 

Here is a prime example.  About 6 years ago I was at my heaviest, 220 lbs.  I dropped 70 pounds.  Needless to say, I did not have anything that would fit. But I do have 2 small, beautiful girls. My girls clothes came in handy because I took all of their hand me ups. 

But I never got rid of my fat girl clothes.  I said I would not get rid of them because as soon as I do I would put the weight back on. I speak from experience in this teeter totter weight problem I have alway had.

After keeping the weight off for a couple of years, I felt like it was a huge accomplishment. I thought if I could keep it off this long, I would keep it off forever. I finally decided to have a garage sale and get rid of almost all of my fat girl clothes except a few pairs of jeans that I had bought in the middle of losing that weight. 

6 months later I had a massive heart attack, PLUS had to have surgery and stents put into my aorta.  Within another 6 months, almost all of that weight was back, and it was not going anywhere.  Crazy huh?  Lose a shit ton of weight, have a heart attack and pack it back on?  “You need to lose weight,” they said. “You’re cholesteral will go down,” they said. “You will feel like another person and be so much healthier,” they said.

B.S. is what I said.

Well, now I had absolutely no clothes and could not afford to buy new ones.  This is exactly why I hoard shit.

One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

So what types of things do I hoard exactly? 

I hoard clothes, ribbon, yarn, blankets, pillows, random knick knack things, wood (we will discuss this further in another episode), boxes, jars, litter pails (the Tidy Cat ones that 40 lbs of litter comes in), buckets, wire, toilet paper rolls (believe me, there are a ton of things you can do with these), metal things, and sometimes feed bags.  My list is long and random.  And I may find something else along the way to hoard. 

You see, I have lots of pillow talk nights where visions of random crafts dance through my head. 

Lately, I have been thinking about embroidery, and reverse applique.  I have never done that before, but before Christmas I decided to give it a go thanks to that damn devil social media. 

I have a ton of material at my house in my crap room, but did I like any of the material that I already had at my house?  Of course not. 

Temu to the rescue (another obsession I have).  So I bought more, because you can never have too much right?

I began working on them and they turned out pretty good for someone who doesn’t know how to do that stuff.

And unfortunately for my family and friends, at Christmas, they always seem to get all my prototypes.  I’ve accomplished learning a little bit of embroidery and plan on continuing to learn more. But for now it is time to move on to bigger type sewing things.

And the material I did not use, will be saved. Even the little pieces of scraps will get saved because through all my searching through social media, I have seen lots of really cute projects make with scrap material.

The Result

But all of my hoarding has paid off in multiple occasions.  Decorating for showers and parties, needing something to make a quick gift, needing a costume for dress up week at work, decorating my office at work, and even changing the décor in my house (that doesn’t really happen very often because I like it the way it is right now). 

I do feel sorry for my girls when something happens to me.  I don’t know what they are going to do with all this shit.

Once way I am not like MY mom, is my mom is always cleaning stuff out and throwing things away. She has learned to do this without me around because your trash is my treasure. 

She tells us she is doing us a favor because one of these days we won’t have to do it. 

Unfortunately my girls are not going to be that lucky.  My poor girls will be filled with visions of me in all my crap for years.  I don’t want them to get away from me that easily. 

I’ve decided I am doing them a favor by having to sift through my shit for years, so visions of their wonderful mother will dance through their heads at night during their very own pillow talk sessions.  Mawhahahahahah.