#low-key hoarding

[seekingsweetsimplicity]

The Portable Hoard

I recently sat down to clean out one of my purses.  

 I say “one of my purses” because I always have quite a few.  

 This purse was my “big” purse and it was one that I’d been carrying on “big trips” with me for a couple of years.  I noticed it sitting in the closet and I dragged it out during one of my cleaning cycles.  

 The bag was heavy and it was full.  I carried it on long trips because the purse was pretty much guaranteed to have everything you needed or wanted, and plenty of stuff that you didn’t even know you might need or want.  The funny thing was that it wasn’t my “everyday” purse because what I actually needed was a far smaller amount of stuff.  

 I emptied the thing out in the floor and determined to put away its contents.  

 First I threw away the three thousand ancient receipts that I’d been carrying around.  None of them had ever been needed, and even if I had needed them, I was unlikely to have found them.

 I put the pens and pencils I found into the cup in my office.

 I put the six or seven tubes of lipstick and chapstick with the rest of that particular “hoard” that I have.

 The tweezers went into the bathroom along with the nail clippers and nail file, so that I could actually find them and use them when I needed them.  

 Into my “work bag” went a few items that I’d actually use in my office.

 Into the trash went the old packs of gum that had been in there so long they’d started to crumble. Along with that, I tossed out some half-used rolls of antacids and some hard candy.  I also threw out two dried up “stain remover” pens and a broken keychain.

 You get the idea, right?

 My “big purse” was nothing more than a cumbersome, heavy, portable hoard.  I stuffed it full of everything I thought I might need so that I could have everything “just in case” while I was on the move.  The funny thing was, though, that I knew I didn’t need all of that.  At least, not most of the time.  My “small purse,” which held only the essentials, was proof that I could get by without it.  I simply felt that I needed my portable hoard like a security blanket.  

 I would survive if I didn’t have a pack of gum, a pair of tweezers, a nail file, and three tubes of chapstick every time I left the house.  

 So I cleaned out the purse. I tucked that one away, maybe to use again, and I decided to clean my purse out frequently.  I decided to be mindful of what went into my purse—just as I was being mindful of what came into my home—and I decided to make sure that everything that went into my purse went in there with a purpose.

 So far, so good.  I’ve kept the items in my everyday purse to a minimum.  I know what’s in my purse and I know why it’s in there.  I can find things quickly and easily in my purse and I’m enjoying that. I’m keeping control of my portable hoard.  

 I’m aware, now, of the fact that it can easily get out of control—and there’s just no need in it.  

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[seekingsweetsimplicity]

Over-rationalization is the Enemy

Excess is the enemy, right? I mean that’s what this whole blog is about, essentially.  

 But the excess of material things is not the only enemy that some (dare I say, most) of us face on a regular basis.  

 “Over” anything is bad.

 Overeating. Overthinking.  Overanalyzing.  Over-rationalizing.  

 Over-rationalizing.

 That’s a little something that strikes me most of the time when I’m trying to clean out some portion of my hoard.  I stop at an item and I over-rationalize why I should keep it.  

 I come up with a thousand possible scenarios in which I might need this item or want this item (that I’ve usually not needed or wanted since I acquired it in whatever way).  I over-rationalize how it could be important, useful, or necessary.  I almost purposefully place far more value on the item than it’s ever actually held before.

 This over-rationalization is the enemy of any hoard clean out.  At the end of it, if I’m convincing enough, I usually talk myself into keeping something that I was “this close” to getting rid of before.  Then, in six months or so, when I revisit that section of the hoard, the same item is still sitting there and it’s still practically untouched.

 I’m trying to stop myself from over-rationalizing these days before I even get started.

 If I’m not a hundred percent sure that I will use this item or that I love it for some reason, it has to go.  

 The over-rationalization doesn’t do me any good.  

 And the truth of the matter is that any object that is still being manufactured and sold can be acquired again if I find that I have made a horrible mistake in getting rid of it and I absolutely have to have it.  If I can’t live without it, which is almost certainly never the case, I can simply replace it.  

 When cleaning out, I’ve learned that moving quickly and going on my first instinct works best. If I don’t like it or know I don’t use it, then it goes.  If I give myself time to talk myself out of it, I’ll keep everything.  That comes from the low-key hoarding voice that lives inside of me.  If I move quickly, I’ll usually be honest with myself and keep only that which I truly use or which truly brings me some kind of joy.

 Over-rationalization is the enemy of any hoard clean-out.  

[seekingsweetsimplicity]

Buy Nothing For A Year Challenge

In my reading and perusing of other blogs about minimalism, I’ve seen a lot of projects and challenges. One of these that I’ve seen has been the “Don’t Buy Anything For A Year” Challenge.  Like most of these challenges, it’s pretty much what the name implies.  The person who is doing the challenge decides not to buy anything for a year (outside of absolute necessities like soap and toilet paper).  

 I thought about this one. I thought about it long and hard.

 I practically live like this most of the time.  This year, in fact, I’ve almost done this challenge just because of necessity, and not because of any great attempt at being a minimalist or reducing my carbon footprint.  

 I can pretty much list off what I’ve bought this whole year and it hasn’t been a great deal—not in comparison to what I might have bought if I’d had the money to do so.

 Then it struck me.  

 The best curb for spending is simply not having money.  I say this only in a partially joking and humorous manner.  It’s true.  If you don’t have the money to buy something, and you’re careful with your finances and don’t live beyond your means, the best curb for spending is simply to be broke.

 If you can’t afford it, you can’t/won’t buy it.  

 At least, I won’t.

 This year there have been a number of reasons that I’ve been really having to watch my money.  Every spare penny I have has gone into savings to take care of certain expenses.  I won’t go into detail about it, but suffice it to say that shopping certainly hasn’t been a priority for me.  On top of that, I’ve gone the route of asking for money for any situation where someone has wanted to give me a gift of some kind.  That means that for Christmas and my birthday, I wasn’t bringing in any new items.  Instead, I was bringing in money that I squirreled away in my savings.

 I haven’t added a great deal to my hoard this year because I haven’t bought anything and I haven’t had things bought for me.  

 But I can also say this—it isn’t always easy and it doesn’t always feel good.  Maybe that’s just because I’m a low-key hoarder and attach a certain amount of “happiness” to acquiring new things, but not buying anything for a year can be difficult emotionally.  Sometimes there are things you want that you simply can’t have (and yes, I know this is true for everyone) and sometimes you just want something, but you deny yourself because you’ve got to save the money.  At the end of the day, you save the money, but it’s a little emotionally “draining” to deny yourself every time you want something new.

 I honestly don’t think it’s something I’d want to do all the time.  Not if I could avoid it.  I’ve never been in a really great financial situation where I could simply have anything I wanted, but it’s nice to get something every now and again (even if it’s something small).  

 So, in short, challenging myself not to buy anything for a year is a great method for cutting down on material items.  It certainly saves money and keeps me from adding to my hoard.  But I don’t think it’s something I’d want to constantly do. I think you could buy some things without going overboard by simply making sure that the purchases you make are well thought out and are actually items that you want.  I also think, emotionally, it’s important to buy things sometimes.  

 But, truthfully, not being able to afford a great deal of excess is one of the best ways to cut down on your low-key hoarding (or at least on building your hoard).  

 What about you?  Would you try this challenge?  Do you ever feel some sense of “happiness” attached to acquiring new things?  Do you think that would make this challenge difficult for you?

[seekingsweetsimplicity]

Hoarding Vs. Collecting

I have been a “collector” of many things during my life.  Interestingly enough, most of the low-key hoarders that I’ve known have also been “collectors”.  This brought me to ponder a very obvious question.

 What’s the difference between hoarding and collecting?  

 And, furthermore, is collecting just a fancy name for hoarding?  Do we call it collecting because it sounds nicer?

 A little snooping around on Google told me that I certainly wasn’t the first person to question the relationship between these two things.  I read several blog posts about it, as well as one article from Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mess/201509/clutter-vs-hoarding-vs-collecting) that I found quite interesting.

 The greatest difference I found, identified in said article and in my other “research”, between hoarders and collectors is that collectors enjoy showing off their possessions while hoarders are embarrassed by what they have.  

 But I’m not entirely sure that I think that’s true.  

 Mind you, I’m not trying to argue with science, I’m simply giving my opinion on things—or even pulling from my own experiences.

 The people I’ve known in my life that I’m identifying as low-key hoarders were proud of their hoards. They might not necessarily like how out-of-control things sometimes got, but they were happy to have large masses of things that they’d acquired.  It felt like accomplishing something.  It was proof that they had something.

 For the remainder of this post, I’m going to be speaking from my own experiences and not from science or from anyone else’s perspective.  This is my take on the hoarding vs. collecting question.  

 I see them as essentially the same thing.  The biggest difference that I might personally identify between the two is that collecting (true collecting) requires being selective about the items that are added to the collection.  A collection has a purpose and the items need to be of a certain quality to really fit the bill.  Even if the quality isn’t necessarily great, they must meet certain criteria.

 And there’s the key word: criteria.

 Hoarding doesn’t have much of a criteria to it.  It’s acquiring and amassing “more”.  The key word to hoarding is just that: more.  

 I have had several “collections” in my life, but I’ll talk about two of them that I had when I was younger and compare those two collections to one that I have now—one that’s been governed by my attempts to control my low-key hoarding.

 When I was young I had two collections.  One was a collection of cows and the other was a collection of decorative candles.

 I loved cows.  I had a stuffed cow (a beany baby, actually) that started my obsession with the animal.  When I started collecting cows, my collection was basic.  I started with some kitchen items that had cows on them or were shaped like cows.  From there, I added some cute and decorative cow figurines.  But then that’s where things quickly started to get out of control. Once people knew that I collected cows, I began to receive everything cow-related that you can imagine as Christmas and birthday gifts.  People would gift me “cow” things simply because they had cows on them.  Many of the items I had were items that I wasn’t in love with, but they were added to the cow collection because, technically, they were cow related.

 The collection quickly started to spin out of control.  

 Years later, when I did the great attic clean out, I came face to face with the boxes of “collectibles” that I’d amassed.  Because I was being brutally honest with myself, I cleaned out the “collection”. Basically, I did then what I should have done in the beginning—I became selective about what it was I wanted to keep and what it was I was simply holding onto because the items built up the number of things in my collection.  I downsized that collection greatly by the time I was done.  I’m sure, in the future, I’ll downsize it even more, but the important thing was that I was sure to keep only those items which I really liked—not just anything that vaguely met the criteria of my collection by being somewhat cow related.

 The second collection I had when I was younger was a decorative candle collection.  That whole collection was, believe it or not, born of accident.  I got a candle that I really liked once and I wanted more of them.  How many more, I’m not really sure, but I’m certain that it wasn’t meant to develop into what it turned into.  Like the cow collection, things quickly started to get out of hand.  Candles aren’t very expensive and they’re easy to come by.  Learning that I liked them, they became a quick and easy staple for gifts. Soon I was swimming in candles that were, honestly, somewhat random.  

 I can honestly say that the candle collection didn’t last as long as the cow collection (since I still like many of the items in my cow collection) and it didn’t get as out of control as it could have.  When I changed my room upon graduating from college, the candles were something I decided to part with.  I burned quite a number of them, actually using them for their originally intended purpose, gave others away, and did away with those that nobody wanted.  

 These days I have one collection that’s somewhat ever-growing.  It’s my “fandom” collection.  My approach to it—which includes knick-knacks, figurines, and other assorted items—is very different than my early approaches to collecting things. I’m very selective about what I purchase (or ask for) for the collection.  I don’t feel the need to simply have “everything” fandom related.  Instead, it has to be something that I really want. It has to be something that really speaks to me in one way or another.  If it isn’t, it simply doesn’t get added to the collection.  

 I would say, honestly, that it’s a collection.  It’s controlled.  I’m selective about the things that I add to it.  I don’t add things to it simply because they exist.  Rather, they have to bring me joy and increase the (personally given by me) value of my collection.

 So, in my personal experience, I’d say that collection and hoarding are pretty much the same thing. The biggest difference between the two, for me, is that when someone is collecting something, they’re selective about what they acquire.  Something has to fit the collection and bring value to it (even if it’s just a value given by the owner of the collection) in order for it to be acquired and added to the collection.  Hoarding, however, is a numbers game.  The more items in the hoard, the better the hoard, regardless of whether or not the items are valued or of good quality.  

 Personally, I’m never going to give up collecting things, but that’s what I want to do from here out. I want to “collect” them, meaning that it isn’t about the amount of items I have, rather it’s about the quality of the items that I have in my collections.  

 And there’s really no shame, honestly, in only having a small collection.  Not if I enjoy everything that’s part of that collection.

[seekingsweetsimplicity]

Reusable Bags

Before I started using reusable shopping bags at the grocery store, I had a few questions about them. This was mostly because I’d never actually seen a single soul use reusable shopping bags at the grocery store.  Among my list of questions were the following:

 How much does it cost to buy enough shopping bags?

How do you know how many bags are enough?

Where do you store all the bags?

How do you carry them with you?

Isn’t it an inconvenience?

Will the checkout people hate me?

 Now that I’m a beginning user of the reusable shopping bag, however, I have answers to those questions.

 I don’t know how much it would cost for someone who was buying their reusable bags, but I’m assuming it’s not that expensive to get started.  I happened to have a number of cloth totes in my hoard already, so now they’re getting use.  It’s a double win for me.  It didn’t cost me anything and it put something that I already had to good use instead of letting them just sit around and take up space.

 I have about six, I think, and I’ve never not had enough.  If you buy more groceries than I do, or you do a great deal of shopping, six might not be enough.  But if they aren’t enough, you could always use plastic for the rest.  Even though you’re not going completely plastic-free, because you don’t have enough bags, at least you’re cutting down a little. That’s a win, right?  Anything is better than nothing.  I’ve also noticed that having the bags has actually helped me cut down on my over-purchasing in the grocery store.  I have no real explanation for this other than knowing I have a limited number of bags makes me more aware of what I’m buying and it makes me less likely to grab things I don’t need off the shelves.  Another phenomenon that I don’t have an explanation for is that the bags seem to make me make better food choices.  I already have a certain high when I go in the store—of being proud of myself for making some move to save the environment—and that high makes me more aware of what I’m purchasing and putting into my body.  As long as I’m being “natural” and saving the environment, I might as well try to be a little more “natural” in my food selections and save my body as well.

 The mind can be an amazing thing.  

 I store the bags in the back of my car.  This is easy and super convenient.  Whenever I go shopping, the bags are already there.  I just get them out the back of the car when I go to the store.  They live by the door for the night (after I’ve unloaded them) and I take them out to the car the next morning when I’m getting ready to leave for work.  This keeps them out of the closet and keeps them from causing clutter.  If I was especially bothered by their cluttering up the “out the door” space of my apartment, I could always take them back to the car immediately after unpacking them.

 As far as carrying them with me, I simply carry them in my arms to the store and immediately put them in the buggy (shopping cart) when I get inside.  Then I just push them around until I need them to bag up my purchases. It’s really not inconvenient at all. It’s certainly not as inconvenient as I had convinced myself it would be.  

 I don’t know if the checkout people hate me for my reusable bags or not.  I have noticed, though, that it really doesn’t add too much more to their work.  The bags go in the shopping bag area and they can load them up with more food than they could with the plastic bags.  The greatest source of inconvenience, I would say, is that it’s difficult for them to figure out how to load them at first.  I’ve learned that I can combat that by quickly showing them how to loop the handles over the “bag holder” bars so that they stay in place.  Perhaps they curse me after I leave, but I can’t be sure of that.  Furthermore, I can’t really worry about it.  I always try to be overly kind to everyone who works in such a position (I’ve had that job too), so I hope they aren’t too bothered by me and my bags. In fact, I’ve even had a few compliment me on my bags and say that they wished they could find some that were of such good quality because a lot of the ones sold don’t seem as durable.

 All in all, I’d say that using my own bags at the store has been a positive experience and it’s one that’s likely to stick.  I enjoy it. It puts bags to use that weren’t being used, cuts down on the plastic bags that I hoard in my home, helps the environment just a little, and does something to boost my mood.  

 I can’t really find the downside, so I’ll continue on with this practice.  

[seekingsweetsimplicity]

Food Hoarding

With these posts, a lot of what I want to say about one thing leads me to simply have more to say about it.  Thinking about one aspect of low-key hoarding leads me to another thought, another story, and another realization.  And though they might not seem related at first, I slowly come to realize that they are.  It’s all related.

 This brings me to an item that I’ve mentioned hoarding before, but didn’t really get into discussing in detail: food.

 Yes.  You read that right.  I’m going to spend a little time talking about hoarding food.  And, believe it or not, I may have to revisit this topic again in the future.  Maybe more than once.  We’ll see what happens.  

 When it comes to hoarding food, and breaking that habit, I would say that (as a low-key hoarder) you have to be realistic about how much you really need of something and when you can acquire more.  

 Growing up, my grandmother hoarded food.  She had indoor and outdoor pantries.  There was food stored in places where it couldn’t possibly be “good” any longer. At the time of her passing, the food was cleaned out.  Some of it had expired before I’d even been born.  

 Fast forward, and my mother was a food hoarder.  We have very deep kitchen cabinets and I’ve only ventured into the back of them once or twice in my life.  While I was back there, though, I found some pretty interesting items.  Several of them had shocking expiration dates as well. What was really shocking about their expiration dates, though, was that we had moved since they’d been purchased. Expired food moved with us.

 Among the items that my mother hoarded, though, was mayonnaise.  There’s a reason to this.  My father had an obsession with mayonnaise.  I suppose that he still has it, but I haven’t lived with him for a long time and I don’t go through his cabinets regularly.  When I was growing up, though, and he was a part of the household that I shared with my mother, I know that he had an obsession with it. Because of that, my mother kept jars of it in “storage” for when he would next need them.  There were always, among lots of other canned goods, four or five jars of mayonnaise in the cabinets.

 Then let’s fast forward a little more to me.

 Throughout several periods of my life—“eras” if you will—I’ve been in situations where getting to the grocery store was highly inconvenient to say the least.  During all those eras, I typically bought masses of food on each shopping trip since I only went about once a month.  For the first week or so after my shopping trip, I would eat “fresh” food.  This would be the fruits and vegetables that I bought and had to consume before they went bad.  For the remainder of the month, I lived mostly off of frozen food and anything that could come out of a box or a can.

 Because of these “eras” in my life, I started somewhat hoarding food.  Granted, everything I bought got consumed, but there were always periods when there would be a great deal of food cluttering up my apartment because I was going to slowly eat my way through it until things got so desperate that I was forced to figure out when I could get to the grocery store again.

 If you take the fact that it was difficult for me to regularly acquire food, and you add onto that the fact that food is sometimes a security blanket/comfort for me, then you’ll understand how it was that I was the girl who, during a particularly difficult time in her life, once ended up sitting on the floor of her kitchen and sobbing about the fact that she’d run out of peanut butter.  (I really love peanut butter.)

 I now ALWAYS have a backup jar of peanut butter in the cabinet.

 I also ALWAYS have the things that I consider can’t-do-without items like coffee creamer, coffee, and Diet Coke.  

 Given those four items, I could manage to live (relatively happily, even) until I could acquire more food.

 So this information brings me to present day.  

 I now live in a town where I can easily go to the grocery store.  There’s a store between my house and work, even, that I have to pass by twice every single day.  There are two, actually, in that short stretch.  That doesn’t even count the numerous pharmacies, convenience stores, or discount stores where I could acquire food if needed.

 I have absolutely no need to hoard food.  The longest I might have to go without something would be a weekend, but going without it then would be a choice since I could go to the store and buy more.

 I.  Do.  Not. Need.  To.  Hoard. Food.

 I also don’t need to buy in bulk.  

 I do my shopping about once a week.  During this time, I buy everything that I need for the week (assuming that I don’t forget things) and I buy a little “extra” “just in case”.  

 Technically I don’t need the little extra, but I buy it anyway.  

 The little extra, actually, is a vast improvement over what I was buying when I first moved here. When I first moved here, I was doing the shopping very much like I’d done in the locations when it was difficult to get to the grocery store.  I was buying in bulk and every trip to the store looked like I was setting myself up for a long and hard winter.  I realized that what was happening was purely psychological.  I knew that I didn’t need all the things that I was buying.  I knew that I could easily acquire more food and that I would shop again in a week.  I knew that I couldn’t possibly consume all that I purchased in a week.  

 But I bought it anyway.

 My mind had become used to the idea that I had to prepare for imminent starvation every time I went to the grocery store.  I had to buy enough food to last me because there was no telling when I’d get the opportunity to buy more.  

 Buying in bulk had become default to me.

 So I started changing this.

 I started changing it by making a list.  A very strict one.  And then I forced myself to stick to it.  If I wanted something that wasn’t on the list, I had to really rationalize it to myself. I had to explain to myself why I had to have that item.  

 It couldn’t be simply “just in case”.  It had to be better than that.  

 Slowly, I’ve reduced what I buy each week more and more.  Slowly I’ve managed to become more honest about what I really use each week and how much food I really require.  

 I’ve started actually seeing the refrigerator clearing out a little before I shop.  I’ve started actually seeing myself run out of things (as scary as that can be) by the time I have to go to the store.  

 I’ve started taking control.

 And I’m spending less, and I’m throwing less away.  These, for me, are two big wins.

 Of course, I still keep “extra” coffee, coffee creamer, Diet Coke, and peanut butter on hand.  After all, I’m not perfect and some things are necessary for peace of mind.  

[seekingsweetsimplicity]

A Prize A Month

I began implementing the “prize a month” method for a few reasons.  

 I wanted to control impulse purchases.  I didn’t want to buy things that I didn’t need (or didn’t even really want) just because I thought I wanted them at the time.  Controlling impulse purchases would keep me from accumulating too much stuff (especially of the unwanted and unused variety) and it would also save me some money.  It’s a winning situation no matter how you look at it.  

 However, I’m a shopper. Acquiring new things makes me feel happy.  I enjoy new things.  I get some joy out of them.  It’s a rush, even.

 The things that I acquire don’t have to be expensive.  In fact, I prefer if they’re not.  They don’t have to be amazing to anyone else.  Trinkets and doo-dahs suit me just fine as long as they appeal to me.  They don’t have to be large, either.  I can be as excited over a new pack of pencils (true story) as I am over something much larger.

 The one thing I cannot seem to do, though, is give up buying myself “prizes” entirely.  I’ve tried it, but I’ve learned that it makes me very (and I’m sure irrationally) unhappy.  Going through life and only buying the things I *need* gets dull and sad.

 So I implemented the “prize a month” method.

 It’s simple, so I hope you weren’t expecting something amazing with a thousand different rules and scenarios.  The prize a month method is just what the name implies—I allow myself a prize every month.  Now, that doesn’t mean that I never acquire more than one thing in a month—some months I splurge—but it means that I know I can have some kind of prize every month.

 But here’s the really interesting part.  Since I implemented this?  I’ve realized that many months go by when I don’t buy anything.  In the interest of saving money (and right now I’m really in a money-crunch), I forego buying things for myself.  If I’m not really dying to have it, I just don’t buy it.  I “save” it for another month.  And, oddly enough, I find that I don’t really get as bothered by not buying things as I have in the past when I’ve simply put a ban on shopping.  Knowing that I can have it, if I choose to have it, seems to alleviate some of the feelings of never having the opportunity to acquire anything new. Choosing to forego buying something new because it’s a good idea is just that—my choice.  

 Keeping my “want list” (as mentioned in a previous post) has helped a lot with my purchasing as well. When I do decide that I will make a purchase, I try to buy something that’s on my want list.  Then I know that it’s something I really do want.  It’s something that I’ve thought about.  It’s something I’ve revisited a few times to find that my feelings haven’t changed (because, if they had, I would have taken it off the list).  It’s a “safe” purchase because it’s very unlikely that it will be something I regret buying.  

 The success of this, though, I attribute to not having a ban.  Not being “allowed” to purchase anything feels restrictive.  It feels like I’m being denied to an extreme (again, I’m not arguing for the rationality of this, I’m just stating the feelings I have), and therefore it’s easy to simply lose control in one way or another. Either I end up feeling sad and depressed because I work and still can’t afford little luxuries, or else I go the opposite and end up going on some kind of “binge” and buying multiple things at once that I don’t want or need because I can’t seem to control myself.  By giving myself “permission” to buy at least one frivolous treat a month, I don’t feel quite as denied.  It’s not as urgent and pressing.  It’s not something that seems sad and restrictive.  In fact, I’m even able to say “I don’t need anything” and not feel like it’s only coming from a place of “knowing I can’t have it”.

 It might not work for everyone, but it seems to be working for me.  At least for now.  

[seekingsweetsimplicity]

Hoard Relay

My mother and I have played a game sort of like “Hoard Tennis” for years.

 The game goes something like this:  

 I will clean out some portion of my hoard.  My mother, upon seeing the cleaned out items, will declare that she would use them, needs them, etc.  So the items move from my hoard to hers.  

 Then my mother will clean out some portion of her hoard.  Upon seeing the items that she intends to discard, I will pick through them and decide that I could probably use some of what she no longer wants. Those items will move from her hoard to mine.

 Sometimes the newly acquired items actually get used.  Other times, however, they do not.  

 We go back and forth like this almost constantly.  At least two times a year there’s a hoard exchange between us.  Anything you can imagine might get caught up in this exchange. In fact, there have actually been times in my life when we’ve exchanged the same items back to one another.  

 It’s absolute hoard-shifting madness, but it is who we are.

 There’s another element to this game, though, and that’s the “hold onto it” factor.

 The hold onto it factor takes place when there will be a time lapse between the cleaning out and the exchanging of hoards.  It’s the point where someone declares they’re cleaning something out, asks the other if they want it, and then the other person declares that they should “hold onto it” until an exchange can take place or a decision can be made.

 Basically, at that point, you’re hoarding your hoard-rejections.

 And, in some ways, you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole that you probably never imagined might happen.

 I’m solving this in a couple of different ways.

 The first way is to simply not tell my mother about all my hoard clean outs.  If I’m doing some low-key cleaning to my low-key hoard, I won’t necessarily tell her about it in more than vague terms.  I’ll get rid of that which needs to move out of my house and that’ll be the end of it until years later when she, perhaps, asks me about something that’s long gone.  

 The second way is to be honest about what I think she’ll genuinely use.  If it’s something that I know holds some sentimental value (or potentially holds some sentimental value), then I’ll hold onto it for her. I’ll let her make a decision.  If it’s something that I think won’t really matter, then I don’t even bring it up to her.  Chances are the item in question would just end up being passed back to me in this strange hoard-relay that we have going.

 The third way is simply to insist that I’m not holding onto it any longer than is absolutely necessary. It’s going away.  If she wants to keep it, then she must take it to her hoard (as soon as the situation allows) because it needs to leave mine.  

 And, as for myself, I’m trying to be brutally honest when I’m picking through her things.  

 If it’s something I genuinely think that I will like and use, then I’ll take it or I’ll put it in my attic (at her house) for later.  If it’s something that I don’t love, though, and really won’t use?  I’m letting it go.  Unless it’s really special, unique, or immediately necessary, there’s no need to hold onto it.  Whatever it is, more than likely, can be replaced if I should ever find that I absolutely cannot live without X, Y, or Z in my life.  

 When two or more hoarders are gathered together, it’s easy to find yourself exchanging items.  It’s natural to want to do it, as well.  The person giving up the items gets the satisfaction of cleaning out.  They also get the satisfaction of giving someone something.  And, lastly, they are able to avoid the guilt of getting rid of something.  The person gaining something gets “something” that they didn’t have before (which can be a rush to any low-key hoarder), and they get the knowledge that the item was free. It was a great deal.  They acquired stuff at rock bottom prices.  

 The problem is that, with some exceptions, it doesn’t really help either of them.  They’re just enabling each other.  

 If you’re serious about clearing out clutter and harnessing your hoard, you’ve got to let go of things. And you’ve got to avoid the temptation to simply replace the things that you let go of with things that someone else is letting go of.  If you don’t? It’ll just keep going on forever.