A Very Hoardy Xmas

Well it was and it wasn’t.
Tensions usually arise in November for planning the Dragon Family festive celebrations.  Major Dragon hates leaving the Hoard house.  She treasures hopes that after a couple of days effort, Christmas can be had here.  The rest of the Dragons remember the previous years that involved either 3 months hard labour for me in a desperate effort to find the dining room or all Dragon visitors prepared to do a couple of hours panicky clean up while Major Dragon fetches Elderly Dragon.  A particular highlight was the year when MD had actually sorted ten binbags of clothes for charity.  I spent more than six months jumping over them in the hall as she found more and more reasons not to take them to the charity shop.  Finally on Christmas day, all the dragons lifted and threw them in the garage so we could all get freely in and out of the door. Five years or so later they are still there and the leaking garage probably has destined them for landfill sadly. 
After that Reformed Dragon began the campaign to just have Christmas at her house since it had been cleaned up. Took two years to achieve it by dint of much arguing but the last 3  or 4 have been held there.  We know it will be, MD knows it it will be but she still likes to dig her heels in and argue against making a decision till we are in the December Dash (feels like more of a 100m sprint by then) and RD swears hugely about getting the food in in time and everything that is needed for a family of mostly picky eaters.  And MD panics about driving over, what if it snows, rains, fogs? This year we added to the drama by instead of buying physical gifts for MD and ED (one to save the Hoard and second to save money since ED covets things, never uses them and will give them back to you about a week later) we booked a hotel room for them just down the road from RD. No driving home and MD would get the chance to sleep on a bed that isn’t half covered in boxes (she sleeps on about a third of it) and ED loves hotels and most importantly hotel breakfasts. She is getting to the age of not bothering to eat due to the effort it takes. MD panicked about getting lost, what if they didn’t let them in after ten, what if there was no staff over Christmas.  She panicked so much about that, that come Christmas Eve at 10pm she still wasn’t actually prepared for Christmas. No clean clothes (hadn’t handed them over for washing despite reminders all week) and she had lost everyone’s Christmas gifts.  Not that this is any surprise.  In general if there is somewhere we have to be the following day, party, family gathering, holiday, I resign myself to no sleep that night whatsoever. By the time I have aided MD and sorted myself out I usually get a couple of hours nap in the morning if I am lucky. I am so used to catching up on sleep on a journey the sound of train noise on one of those ambient sound apps knocks me out in about ten minutes.
But fear not Readers! Tiny Tim The Harassed Dragons had their Christmas. With gifts. And the dinner was only slightly cold and dried out after Major Dragon went on a small hotel hunting tour with Elderly Dragon.  Still, they were only an hour and half late.  Which is pretty good going.  I could tell you hair curling stories about the 8 hours for a 1 hour journey the last time I let them wander off by themselves. This grey hair is not due to age.
So what did we achieve in the Hoard since this post was mostly taken up with the Digging for Freedom we generally do to escape it temporarily?
WE HAD A RUBBISH UPLIFT.
Oh yes. And hopefully the first of many. I stride towards the new year, binbags in hand and a burning light in my eyes.  But the Saga of the Rubbish Uplift is a Homeric Hymn for another day as this post is quite long enough.
Our New Year Resolution is to have next Christmas back at the Hoard. (I promised this if MD agreed to Christmas at RD’s this year)
I hope that 2012 brings you everything you need and the appropriate storage place to put it.
I hope it brings me that too.

Dead Parrots

Part of my decision to really start dealing with the hoarding problem of this house was to start telling friends I trusted about it.  That has mostly been positive.  Well, kind of. A few have stepped round it. One or two try and cheer at the little bits of progress made.  My ex laughs his head off at the thought of me managing to get the place under control.  Which I suppose is fair, since he spent quite a few years sidling round the hamster runs when he wanted to see me. It didn’t help our relationship much, I will admit.   The hardest one to deal with is my closest friend who comes round and sees the carnage.  He has seen it get progressively worse over the years and part of the reason why I started to try and get a grip on it was his pointing out how bad it had actually become.  He wants me to leave. Just pack my bags and get the hell out.  Some days I do too.  But I am frightened that after living like this for so long that I would take it with me. She has a problem and I have caught it.  And I think it is going to take both of us digging to get the hell out of this.  I understand my friend and I know it is because he doesn’t want to leave me in here.  He wants to rescue me.  Before I lose any more of my life here. He doesn’t believe my mother can ever get to a non hoarding place.  A fairy tale land of carpets.  The trouble is that I can feel his anger. The slight edge of a angry blade that cuts through all the explanations he knows since he has done his own research, to the why are things like this? It seems so easily solved.  JUST PICK IT UP. Especially to an extremely tidy person who lives in a very controlled environment.  No matter how rational he tries to be about it, there is that tiny bit  of contempt that he can’t quite stamp down.  He tries because he loves us both but even my mother has stopped telling him things like “next time you visit the place will be so different” and all those hopeful things to make it seem like this state is just temporary.  We all know better and his face doesn’t hide it any more.

The major problem I notice people have with folk who live with a hoarder is they don’t understand how you can let it and them get like that.  That is definitely the thread that runs through most of my confessions to friends.  The best reactions and support actually comes from those who have never seen it.  Even my sister who has overcome her own hoarding problems doesn’t really get it any more.  But they don’t have to have to have the conversations.  If you have been in this situation you know those conversations. The “can we throw this out?” conversation.  In its many forms.   Some days you will cry trying to have the conversation.  Some days you will laugh.  Some days you will actually throw something on the floor and flamenco it into a state were the hoarder will have to admit that it has to be binned. (this is generally my sister’s method. I am not always so tough.  Mainly as the recriminations can last years if she clocks on to what has been done.  You have to be really determined also have ninja speeds to break and bin before you are spotted.)

And sometimes you have to be John Cleese trapped in a world with Michael Palin and a dead parrot.  I was looking through an old online diary and I found this entry from 2009.

I am listening right now to the fabulous sound of clothes drying. Oh how I love you new utterly massive tumble drier, even when you try to drown out my music. Ooh no, sorry, condenser. I have no idea how it works but it is magic. And helped me remove yet another piece of dodgy furniture out of here since I had to make room for it.
After the obligatory argument with Major Dragon on the phone.
SD: Ok, this cupboard is dead.
MD: No! It is fixable!
SD: the internal shelf kept falling down and we have had it leaning against the outside of it for about a year now.
MD: But I want it for my shoes!
SD: With no shelves and doors that aren't closing properly?
MD: You could mend that!
SD: Mother...I lifted it and the base and contents of the cupboard stayed on the floor. It is 3 pieces of chipboard and a couple of hinged bits trying to make a hingey break for freedom. IT IS NOT A CUPBOARD ANY MORE.
MD: But...
SD: THE CUPBOARD IS DEAD.
MD: ...Oh. OK... Well make sure it is gone by the time I get home. As long as I don't have to see it leave.
At this point I was picturing her doing a tormented hand to forehead at her office desk, bless her.
It is now hidden up the side of the house behind the dead tumble drier where she can't see it. This will hopefully prevent her staging a resurrection with prayers and a tube of No Nails...

She didn’t manage to get it back in the house but it did live on the driveway for some months as I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it without her noticing…

Explanations, Justifications Yadda Yadda

Well.
What is this blog?
A number of things really. This blog is an attempt by me to document my path to insanity. Or is it my return to sanity. Probably both simultaneously.
On a physical level it is my wake up and scream at where I am now.  And desperate scramble to be somewhere else.
Mid thirties.  Depressed.  Living with my mother (Major Dragon or MD for short.)  Who is a major hoarder. 
Let me say that again. A MAJOR HOARDER.  We pitter patter and sidle along hamster runs through it. It is not just a bit of clutter. Not even a big clutter. I am talking about a landfill site with doors and a roof.  I don’t think we were always this way.  But it appears grief and mental illness does funny things to a person with a QVC addiction.  And it is catching.  Or possibly genetic.  Either way I am panicking at a view of my life lived in a 3 x2 square and one day finding myself as a pensioner and sleeping in a stack of newspapers.  All too easy a vision these days.
This blog is here to document my attempts to CLEAN SHIT UP. And gently try and encourage my mother to try and do the same before we are buried in here.
Which is really easy to say and less easy to do.
I should maybe link to the further reading on this at this point. Apparently hoarders are more common than you would think.  And depressed dragons sitting on their loved ones hoards need all the support they can get.  So if you are puzzled, looking at your own piles of crap wondering where the hell you start or just plain wondering what the hell I am talking about try these.
Where all things start – Wikipedia
 Squalor Survivors
American TV  and Show recaps for Non-Americans.  Much easier than watching.
British TV - after this I scent a Brit Hoarders show in the clutter winds.
Children of Hoarders
Help For Hoarders - Brit site, finding this very useful right now.