Last week, we met fellow Organization Quester Marie, whose main struggle is how to find the time to organize between working two jobs and raising kids.
This week, I'd like to introduce another Quester: Gina. Gina has a life a lot of people would like: she has three cute-as-can-be kids, a highly-skilled job where she is well-liked and respected, a house in the country, and an adorable, fire-fighter husband. At times when Gina throws herself in creating the order she longs for, however, it does rather seem that Matt's adorable quotient is in adverse proportion to the sheer quantity of his stuff. Matt, you see, is a pack rat.
The whole issue of hoarding is one I have neatly side-stepped since starting this blog. I have, however, had perhaps a dozen conversations which all start when an acquaintance seeks me out and says: "My husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/son/daughter/roommate is such PACK RAT! You have NO IDEA what it's like trying to organize with a PACK RAT in the house!" At which point I usually manage to stutter: "Wow, yes, oh boy, sounds terrible!" And before they can ask how an organized person like me would deal with a pack rat, I turn tail and get the hell out of there.
Because you see fellow Questers, I am a pack rat; I guarantee that anyone who has ever lived with me has suffered. I have no doubt that a dozen or so family members, former roommates, and ex-boyfriends would eagerly explain just how terrible it was to live with my newspapers, magazines, catalogs, clothes, shoes, belts, scarves, books, files, make-up, albums, CDs, tapes both audio and video, containers, cooking gear, linens, and knick-knacks, to say nothing of the boxes upon boxes of old bills and receipts, pamphlets, user manuals, junk mail, school assignments, advertisements, flyers, recipes, to-do lists, and journal entries. In spite of this, for years I had a hard time actually admitting I was a pack rat; it seemed so . . . . unseamly. When forced into into a (cluttered) corner, I might concede I had a problem, but I'd also point out that it wasn't as if I was a child-beating, crack-dealing, knife-wielding cannibal specializing in the organs of toddlers. So I'm a bit of a receipt-keeper, I'd say. So what?
That the sheer volume of my stuff adversely affected not just me and my life but those of everyone with whom I have ever lived, I just couldn't face. But around 18 years ago or so, I did begin to loosen the reins on the horde, starting with a garage sale before taking off to live in europe for a year. When I returned, I found I wasn't really interested in the furniture I had stored at various relatives' homes, and gave much of it away.
It's been like that, on and off, on and off; some periods I make astonishing progress; at other times, I backslide. I've made more progress since starting this blog than I have in the past four years combined, and within a week or so I expect to be at a point in which I'll be able to say that the living area in every room has pretty been much cleared. That's not to say that my closets aren't full-to-bursting and there aren't plenty of boxes I still need to go through, or that my Quest will be, in effect, over; rather, I'm looking forward to a new phase of the Quest in which I'll finally be able to concentrate on improving my stroke now that I'll no longer be drowning.
Tomorrow I hope to offer some insight into the pack rat phenomenon, and perhaps offers some suggestions on how Gina might help Matt change the relationship he has with stuff that really doesn't serve him, but gets in the way of so many things, not the least of which is a high score on the adorable husband scale.