Magic In The Mess.

Well that was a bit of a holiday for you all from me wasn’t it?  But fear not!  I have returned!  Fully medicated!
How did February go?  Well, to be brutally honest, a lot of it was on my face in my bed with a biscuit or ten gripped in my hand.  That was a fun week or two for all the Hoard inhabitants. Thank you to all who applied gentle and not so gentle verbal levers to my prone form. 
The thing I really had to choke down on in the past few weeks along with the biscuit crumbs was the shame.  And not just mine either. There was a reeling moment of “What the hell I am doing?”  “WHY the hell I am doing this?”   The initial shame of the Hoard and remembering this isn’t how I want to live and that I didn’t always live like this (that part can get far more easily lost than you think) also morphed into worry about forcing someone to living how you want them to.  Even an extra worry about this blog.  It forces Major Dragon’s life into the public domain.  I suddenly understood why so many children of hoarders chose to let it go and just empty a house after the hoarder has left it.  If they are not there then that is half the problem solved in terms of a hoard and your own problems can take the lead.  (And boy do children of hoarders come blessed with a plethora of problems.  But that is a post for another day.)   I had lengthy talks with friends that helped me so much but when I mentioned this to MD she was actually quite upset at the thought of me discussing her with them.   My needs vs. hers are a very fine tightrope to walk.  It is quite a hard decision.  Every time I choose to talk I choose to put myself first.  I am certainly no saint but that isn’t just a difficult decision that has been made, it has to be made every time.  It still does feel a bit selfish even if, ultimately, MD benefits.  I have to keep reminding myself that it does help us both in the end. And watch this a few times. (hat tip to Brené Brown for inspiring the name of the post. Her blog is over here if you are curious)
Anyway, the Hoard Status report:  Still Hoardy.  A good few of the verbal lever appliers reminded me that baby steps still count.  So I shall count it as a success that it might not be any better than a few weeks ago but it isn’t any worse.  Actually in a hoarding situation that requires a lot more work than people assume.  When you are in a guddle there doesn’t seem much point bothering with picking up after yourself.  After all it doesn’t make much a difference to your surroundings.  My walking on the hoarding spot policy is, even if none of the Hoard is undone, that a full bin WILL go out weekly.  Even if does mean standing at 7 in the morning shouting at MD for her to give me her rubbish bag out her bedroom.  And actually in a bid to fill the last of the bin there is a quick shoot about to gather up stuff to pitch which eventually should begin to show a difference.  I have stationed rolls of binbags everywhere so there is never a search for them (well in theory,)  moved the wheelie bins to the house door passed through and by most often.  I don’t know if that makes a difference but I feel all organised and stuff. Line up brain, bins and hopefully the body will follow.
And MARCH!
Next time on the Secret Dragon Hoard, Boxes and the Idiot Box. Unless I have a squirrel moment.

Cat Herding And The Magic Ten Minutes

Nothing is getting done and this time it is me. If I don't do things then Major Dragon won't do things and we end up having a good bellow at each other instead of a good binning. Not of each other I hasten to add. Though I suspect lately we have both been sorely tempted.

The winter months and the dark and cold of them are fairly splatting me miserably on the floor. Or as close as I can get to it in the current situation. I have misplaced my Prozac prescription while in a haze of tired blahs because I am a idiot (probably hiding it from myself) and seem to have lost a myriad of other things. All my time seems to be spent wandering about wondering where the hell I have put whatever this time. And truly, they could be anywhere in here. I caught myself peering hopefully in the fridge earlier in case I had put anything other than food in there.

I have not slept tonight. I had planned on a day out tomorrow of various domestic things like food shopping etc. but now wondering if I can get out of it. MD has a free day but has done her usual GRAND PLAN which seems to have layered on to the day a list of things that would ordinarily take us 3 days to achieve. I don't know if this is a hoarding thing or just something especially MD in its pure lunacy. She has no concept of task length and time. It has taken years to convince her that the Hoard can't be sorted out fully in a week. She still treasures hopes. In her head she is 27, with a youthful turn of speed that can achieve all. In minutes. Then she assumes that well if she isn't? Then I am half her age and it should be no problem for me. She remembers the 20-something who springcleaned the house madly in about a week annually while MD was away on holiday (oh the days of free rubbish uplifts. And the youthful lack of respect that let me flip things in the bin with nary a guilty qualm.) It doesn't seem to totally register that that was ten years, good health and over half a hoard ago. The only thing I can do at any speed these days is drink a cup of tea. Actually, thinking on it, this would be another way MD halts herself from Hoard cleaning. All jobs should only take ten minutes. She starts something, gets miserable that it is taking too long, gets disheartened, gets thirsty, gets hungry, stops for a rest and ooh look what is on the tv and doesn't get started again. And neither do I since her chair is bang in the middle of the house bang in a hamster run and usually in my way. Also then she becomes a back seat cleaner and generally risks having a carrier bag stuffed in her mouth as I grow more and more irritated with comments from the gallery.

Anyway. The Grand Day Out. Kicking myself since I KNOW this happens and if my brain had been a bit more present I could have been all glowing girl scout prepared. So trying to herd a few cats, er, task preparations that I can airily drop in MD's lap for her to do while on my way back to bed. Well I say bed but in a mad Puritan moment, in a bid to try and make me do something before my mood went down, I struck my bed and have been sleeping on the floor. Sometimes this works. The general discomfort usually gets me up and vaguely productive. And indeed it did initially. Enough that I have managed to pull my own room apart into equally as disastrous area as the rest of the house. Oops. So the current net result of this strategy is a sore hip, extra tired grumpiness and a distinct feeling of failure. Balls.

I think I am going to give up on the stick and try a bit of carrot for a while. As long as the carrot is chocolate.

Mighty Mental Oaks

May be grown from confessional acorns.
Either way I feel like I ran into a tree. (I didn’t. Though I have headbutted the new jumbo ironing board that still lurks in a box in the hall still more than once.  Not on purpose. Mostly.)
It has been a stop and talk time at Casa De Dragon Hoard. Well actually it has been a stop and talk time OUTSIDE the Hoard.
Major Dragon spent some time with her siblings recently.  I hadn’t really thought anything of it till my aunt started discussing MD’s hoarding with me a few days later.  As an actual problem.  I was so startled I am sure I was standing there like a concussed owl.  Turned out MD had actually told her sister she may have a bit of a problem. 
To put this confession into a OMG YOU DID WHAT scale for you - I thought MD actually admitting to anyone that she had a hoarding problem (without me standing behind her poking her with a large stick) less likely than the current British Government suddenly standing up and shrieking “BUGGER AUSTERITY CUTS!” then hanging out of the windows of Westminster lobbing 50 pound notes at the people below. To actually admit she has a problem and talk about it independently is right off that scale.  Never mind going all the way to 11, you can safely add zeros to that number.  Even more amazing considering that before Christmas location arguments I was told to stop mentioning MD’s hoarding problem in front of her.  She sulkily told me I was crowing about it since I kept mentioning it.  I thought she was working up to the 5 steps back I have been expecting since the step forward when she first grudgingly admitted she had a problem.  I may have Channel Four’s Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder programme to thank for that.  Right about at the point I could have expected a major wobbly about how I am bullying her and it is her house and my god she has done that so often I could actually type out the full rant, she saw this on tv and it put, as my granny used to say, her gas at a peep. Well, for now anyway. There will always be another Table Saga to clip my clutter cleaning wings. The day there isn’t I will have to coaxed out from under the Jumbo Ironing Board with cake and reassures that the sky isn’t about to fall.
I probably won’t believe you but I do like cake.
So where does that leave the Hoard this week?  Standing on fertile ground it seems.  And not just where that stuff got dropped on the carpet.  Aunt clearly had done her research.  She offered to pick up stuff for the dump any time particularly when MD is out at work and can’t sneak it back in the house.  Just bag it and pop it on the doorstop, give her a ring and it is away.  I am caught between guilt at making her do an hour round trip if I take her up on her offer and kissing her shoes.  The offers of aid lately are a bit stunning.  There is wild, crazy talk of a skip party in the spring but that is wild and crazy talk for another post. (not actually in a skip but the skip would be there and we theoretically would be flinging stuff in it. That isn’t Major Dragon. Maybe... Bad Secret Dragon, that is no way to solve your problems. Tut.  You know this is why I started a blog, I was totally starting to talk to myself.  And the cardboard boxes. Can I blame the mental walking into trees?) 
Starting to wonder if I should be handing out badges to them. “I fought a Clutter Dragon! (and it didn’t win)” with singed edges. Or “I have the moves like Jagger a glacier” Mine will read “Have acorn, still searching for sanity”
It is a start though. Hi 2012, are we finally ready?

Note to self: find new word for "problem" or you will be typing it forever on this blog.

Any Old Irons?

Ah the iron. That weighty clothes smoothing object. Which I do not use. I really don't. I was a proper scruffy student and then in the following years I had jobs with children and all the mess that would suggest. That led to buying simple, soft fabric clothes that are as wash and wear (and tumbledry) as you can get. The job is gone yet the clothes remain. And also the inner scruffy student that says "ach body heat will makes the creases drop out"

I tell you all this to underline my lack of ironing interest. It does make life easier. Particularly in a hoarded house. Clothes don't do well in a hoarded house. They get lost, crumpled, caught on things and are a pain to drag in any amount through hamster runs to wash and dry. I am willing to do that for me. And for Major Dragon. It is one of the last bastions of personhood? Pride? Against a hoard. One that Major Dragon might lose if she were on her own. Well, I don't think she would lose entirely since she holds down a job and is seen in public so there is a point where she will decide she needs clean clothes. But there was a time in the last 5 or so years where I decided I was taking over the laundry since she would keep putting it off then would have to go to work in a dirty blouse and a cloud of febreeze on a Monday morning. There are many things I let slide in the Secret Hoard for the sake of my sanity. Major Dragon leaving the house without a fresh blouse and clean underwear is not one of them. Even if I do spend a whole week yelling up the stairs for her to gather the dirty laundry.

I do not iron though. There she is on her own. A lack of ironing is also easier in a hoarded house. You may have had a "damn, where will I put up the ironing board" moment. But only hoarders and possibly people living in London bedsits wonder where they can put up an ironing board and be able to stand next to it. Without zebra striping their midriff.

This, interestingly enough, is where Major Dragon will not give way. She has to have ironed clothes. (she has recently destroyed a crinkle fabric blouse by continually insisting on ironing it despite my protests) I am not actually sure how many irons she owns. I can see two from where I am sitting. I am willing to bet there is at least another two in here. Even after I gave one away without MD noticing and I managed to throw away a broken one she had initially refused to part with on account of hating the new one. She didn't use the old one but getting rid of it would have ranked the new inferior iron as acceptable. I think she didn't want it to get delusions of adequacy. The new one was only a temporary measure anyway since the new very expensive iron (the one from the side quest over here. Remember?) still hasn't been found. We thought we had found it once. But it turned out to be a steam cleaner that she didn't remember buying. And we don't know if she bought it thinking it was the iron or they sent the wrong thing because she never opened the box as she didn't want it "spoiled". Or if the steamer is an entirely separate item and there is still a mystery iron living as a soldier of fortune travelling the Hoard and fighting for domestic appliance rights.

Then the ironing board broke. And left in the Great Rubbish Pick Up of 2011.

Just before the festive holidays and an overdose of shopping channels for a happy Major Dragon.

Yes, she bought a new huge and expensive iron. And a jumbo ironing board. Which doesn't fit in the space left by the previous not jumbo one. So are still in their boxes and left languishing behind the front door catching the elbows and hips of anyone passing by, desperately begging for human attention. While Major Dragon irons with Unacceptable Iron on her bed (the third of it not covered by boxes).

This is becoming the plot of a bizarre French film in my mind. With unrequited love and demented suffering. Don't let me get started on the Tale of Tin Openers. It would probably go all Lars Von Trier and I am not sure any of us would recover.

Start As You Really Don’t Mean To Go On

2012 is getting off to a slow start. A very slow start. I think a glacier just overtook us. Also glaciers do a better job of picking up shit and moving it. Gah.
Major Dragon was on festive holiday. This means she spent a lot of time at home in front of the tv.  Fatal for a shopping channel addict let me tell you, FATAL.  (don’t even ask. Well do, I will likely tell that tale in the next post)
We did end 2011 well.  There were plans and the MAJOR RUBBISH UPLIFT.  I lifted my eyes to the skies and could have sworn I heard clutter cleaning angels singing.  I am a bit capslocky in my emotion here. For we got rid of the Table.
The story of the Table. (you knew there was going to be one) Major Dragon came home one day with it.  A workmate was throwing it out and naturally MD couldn’t turn it down. A metal picnic table. Rusting and manky. I shrieked in horror but no, MD had a plan. (you knew there was going to be one of those too) She was going to put this table up in our narrow hoarded kitchen and put things on it while she sorted them. This naturally didn’t go well. In a hoarded house any surface is a storage space. Cans went out of date in the actual kitchen storage behind the table.  You cooked at the hob leaning in over the table from the centre of the kitchen.  We had a table argument every year FOR YEARS. I would clear it off and fold it down and go away for a few days or something and whoops, the table would magically pop up again in all its rusty glory, smugly greeting me as I returned to the kitchen and gritted my teeth at the sight of it covered in yet more hoarded stuff.   2011 was where I hit my kitchen limit. I started to clear it out. Not at speed. I just quietly started putting things in the bin. An extra binbag a week in the autumn. Finally a couple of months later I was starting to see a kitchen again. The bin started to get too full too fast.  And I got ill again as I always seem to in winter.  The darkness and the chaos start to get to me then little bugs grow into more and more horrific things as I get depressed and then run down.  I think I might actually be solar powered.  My battery strength definitely lessens in the winter months.  The kitchen started to sink back into the mire. 
The trouble with undoing hoarding is things are resting on things which are resting on things which are stacked on top of something else.  You start moving, well you better move fast.  It isn’t tidying.  It is fighting.  You are fighting a room for supremacy. You are fighting goddamn gravity.  You stop without preparation and you will have a landslide.  When you clear you clear using every part of your body.  Sometimes the only thing between you and concussion is a swift elbow.  You can of course just let stuff collapse to the floor and sort from there but really that is the final phase if you can possibly manage it.  Working on your hands and knees is depressing.  It hurts. Particularly when doing an entire room. Sure you can sit on the floor but that is for considered sorting.  And to be honest, I find I slow when I sit on the floor.  I get cranky with pins and needles from crossed legs, I start sneezing from dust.  And if the exhaustion overtakes me, I have discovered I will nap on anything while down there.   Even filled binbags.   So to ensure dignity and actual clearing I stay away from the floor till strictly necessary.  Which isn’t difficult considering what we have in here. 
So there I was, my ninja clearing becoming slower and slower.  Before it ground to a complete halt I rang Reformed Dragon in desperation.  A week later, she arrived. With a steely eyed Break and Bin expression on.  10+ bin bags later she advanced on the table. Out the back door it went while I cheered and danced.  And there it stayed for a couple of weeks, stacked against the bags of rubbish that wouldn’t fit in the bin.  All was peaceful. MD had managed to part with some sentimental things, like a jumbo sized rice steamer that had belonged to her mother and was nearly as old as I am, with surprisingly little heartburning.  I should have realised we may have won the table battle that day but we had not won the war.  I had to go away for a weekend.  I left MD filled with zeal about how she was going to continue the kitchen clear. 
I forgot her original plan.  And also the fact she gets overwhelmed easily without someone holding her to the sticking point.  I thought at the very worst she just wouldn’t have done anything.
I was wrong.

OF COURSE SHE RESCUED THE BUCKLED AND RUSTY TABLE FROM THE RUBBISH PILE TO TRAIL CRAP OVER THE CLEAN KITCHEN FLOOR. OF COURSE.
And here is where we all remember that hoarding is a mental illness. 
Well I did after I did this.

And texted the table pic to RD so she could have a good swear at it. “PUT IT BACK OUT! JUST PUT IT BACK OUT!”  she yelled.  With a lot more bad language.  
By now I was completely done reasoning with MD.  Nothing on that kitchen was going on that table. I didn’t care if she found a new lifeform in the back of the fridge, it was not going on that damn table, it would catch something.  I lifted it straight out the back door again when MD was out.  When she asked where it had gone I told her it was weighting down the rubbish bags we still hadn’t gotten rid of in the winter’s strong winds.  Then bless the skies for they snowed on it and finished off buckling it nicely.   When the winds died down I organised the mighty rubbish angels of the council to come and take away our bagged former kitchen hoard.  (they still sing to me)  We dragged the rubbish bags on the table to the street for the uplift and MD only tried a small argument about the table.  I regarded it as a tiny verbal hoarding hiccup of an argument.
THEN I REJOICED FOR THE SAGA OF THE TABLE, IT WAS OVER!
Oh.  Well no it wasn’t.
Unfortunately for me a Hoarder never forgets.  MD can’t remember what she had for dinner yesterday, what I said to her five minutes ago, where she left her favourite pair of trousers that were just in her hand…but she will never forget that table.  And when she is allowed into the kitchen unsupervised she remembers.  A month later and she is still bringing up the table when she is out of sorts and remembering her kitchen plan.  She hasn’t done anything in the kitchen because she can’t. Because I ruined the plan.  If the table was in the kitchen then it would happen.  Interestingly she forgets the table was there for four years or so waiting for this plan. Pointing out there are other tables in the house is also not a winner since Surface = Storage Space if you remember.  And apparently they would be ruined by a sojourn in the kitchen. (I have no idea.) Hiccups always come back, don’t they? Sigh.
So what have I learned from the Great Table Saga of 2011?
Well only that, when my tutor at university asked us if tables change our perception of reality…? I should have maybe taken him a tiny bit more seriously.

Ding Dong Avon Hoarding

Major Dragon is an Avon Lady.  Not your hoof the streets, ringing doorbells one, just selling to workmates and friends. So every three weeks or so another couple of boxes of stuff arrive in The Dragon Hoard.  You know where this is going don’t you? That is right. MD gets a sale book and gets spending.  She used to have dreams of a sale or an Avon party when she sold it all off.  Only it turns out when she tried to sell sale items, of course, there had been a reason they were cheap.  And of course, no party.  (Well maybe little elves could have one in the microwave. I would like some elves in here)  Very little was sold. And most of that wasn’t particularly sold at a profit as the folk she was trying to sell to regarded something for a pound as not cheap enough. So in a box it went. Then another box. 5 years later… well I am not brave enough to count it up.  I just stacked the boxes so I could get past them and carried on. It got to the stage that MD had no idea how much stuff she owned. She still doesn’t.
My sister (she should really have a dragon name like the rest of us shouldn’t she? Reformed Dragon? RD?) on one of her break and bin missions to the Dragon Hoard turned to Major Dragon while she was running through the excuses, about to shout, stopped and started to think. She went home and rang back. “Right. I am going to get my boyfriend to give me a lift over in a week. You have the Avon stuff ready to go and I will take it away and sell it on ebay”  This is a pretty big thing to offer since RD IS really a reformed hoarder.  Unfortunately she had to have a bit of a breakdown to do it.  Taking boxes of extra stuff into her home is no easy thing for her. MD gratefully accepted. But nothing happened. Gentle prodding got nowhere. I rang RD and said “maybe you should leave it this week.  There is nothing ready to go.”
And we waited.
A fortnight later RD lost patience and started shouting at MD on the phone who was all defensive and pointed out RD hadn’t been over anyway. This dragon hid in the kitchen till they finished snipping at each other.  A day was finally set. RD was going to get her boyfriend to drive her over after his work to collect stuff.  MD had another week to put together some Avon boxes to leave.
And we waited.
Two days before RD was due to turn up nothing had been done.  I was really torn.  It really isn’t my stuff.  It has value.  She buys it as xmas gifts and that is bearing down on us at great speed.  She really buys a lot of it for herself.  I wanted her to sort it in to vague price ranges. Say like 5 quid or under, £5 – £10 and £10+.  Three boxes and just lob each item in one according to value till you needed a new box.  In hindsight this was a serious mistake.
See, part of hoarding is being stymied by where to start to fix it. MD has a thing that she can’t begin something till she has made space for it.  Something that, with the current state of the Hoard is completely impossible. So she makes a grand plan. Then gets discouraged as her mind will not head to the really crucial bit of the grand plan, the actual point of it.  Which is probably somewhere round number 3 or even 5 on the list.
How did MD stop herself this time?
MD’s Grand Plan
1) Clear dining room (a room that is currently completely out of commission) this was to -
2) Clear living room (a room reduced to a single hamster track through and one free seat.) so MD could -
3) Empty out the sets of storage drawers filled with Avon.
4) Then sort it.
5) Then stack it up for RD to collect.
She of course, had added in a load of side “quests” like finding the expensive iron she has lost, possibly in the dining room. She put it somewhere as she hadn’t wanted to use it till the Hoard was cleared. About 3 or 4 years ago. Then her iron broke this year. So she bought another cheap one as the expensive one has wandered off.  But she hates it.  Most of the Hoard discussion is never really focused on since if you talk about clearing an area she sits wondering out loud if that is where the expensive iron is.  By the time we find that damn thing I will have to restrain myself from breaking and binning it so I can stop being haunted by the ghost of it drifting above the Hoard on little puffs of steam.
So we have an argument.  Where I point out it would be a hell of a lot simpler if she just tipped the drawers into boxes or bags and never mind 1) and 2) since WTF is she doing etc etc. (note: wrong thing to do. Great for a good yell, pointless for progress)  And she went into teenager mode of how much we bully her and her stuff and she can make her own decisions and WHERE IS SHE SUPPOSED TO PUT THE SORTED STUFF THEN.  Since sidling around it for a couple of days is far more traumatic than setting off a stuff avalanche across the whole of our ground floor and getting nowhere.  Ye gods and little fishes.
One day left. Still nothing. RD phones and I try not to sound like I want to shut MD in a storage drawer and running screaming into the night. RD shouts a bit. By 2am MD has lifted out two the aforementioned storage drawers filled with Avon and stacked them on the floor.  Right.
Avon Leaving Day dawns. While MD is out at work I head for a stack of Avon boxes used as a table in the upstairs hall. And find one whole box full of nothing but Avon books from about four or five years ago.  Ooookay. I have no idea why but she finds it impossible to recycle them.  I keep digging and sorting and compress the contents of the boxes into one large box for RD. 
MD calls to say she is leaving work.  I remind her that she has an hour till RD and boyfriend show up.  An hour and a half later RD and her man arrive, having been slowed by bad weather, just as I am dragging jumbo box down the stairs.  And then I fall.  Thankfully only two steps from the bottom but ow.  No sign of MD.  Has it all become too much for her and she has ran away from home?  Has she had an accident?  No answer from her phone (I may have left a swearie message or two)  Half an hour later there is still no sign. RD and I are both ranting angrily and apologising to each other for shouting when we aren’t angry at each other while her boyfriend watches with lowering brow as he hasn’t had his dinner yet.  Never leave a man unfed. I thought he was going to start chewing the Avon in desperation.  Actually with the stress I nearly was myself.  They were just on the verge of taking the box and two drawer contents and leaving when lo, in drifts MD full of righteous excuse “I work you know!” which would have worked slightly better if she hadn’t phoned when leaving work nearly two hours earlier. Harrumph. 
However it did work out in a crazy way.  Faced with three very angry people MD was suddenly filled with Avon ridding zeal and about 15 minutes later the car left with about 6 boxes worth.
We did promise MD that there would be a final decision made on the stuff and discussions of value etc over Facetime or Skype before it gets put on ebay.  But now the stuff has left we all feel that we don’t need to have it back.  And the gods know we could use any money made from it. 
A long long story of the last month at The Dragon Hoard. And a longer road travelled than most trying to part company with bottles of shower gel. 
But for us here at the Hoard, well, the end to this story? *looks at number of emptied drawers*  You might call that our very own Christmas miracle.
Of course if there are any elves maybe with time on their hands and people in dire need of eyeliner and moisturiser, please feel free to give us some further festive miracles.

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.