Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Time to clean house


There’s a television show on the A&E network called "Hoarders." It delves into the lives of folks who have a compulsion that leads them to save anything and everything. Some of these sad folks specialize. One fellow collected stuff that he bought at hardware stores because he was convinced he would need it someday for household projects, which mostly never got done. There also was a lady who had grown up poor and now hoards food. Unfortunately, her house was full of rotting produce, canned goods that carried expiration dates from years ago and a refrigerator filled with unidentifiable materials in various states of decomposition. I have to plead guilty to a little hoarding of my own. It's not like the affliction of the people on the TV show. While I have no problem with common filth (just ask my wife), I hate clutter (except in my car). My weakness was for old e-mails. My Yahoo! account had something on the order of 5,000 old e-mails in it. Some of it was just neglect in not killing out junk. But some of it resulted from e-mails that I thought might contain a snippet of information, or an e-mail address, that I might need again someday. On Monday, I made the decision to clean it out, once and for all. I thought about a deliberate foray through all those old e-mails, trying to preserve those that really did have some nugget of import, but that would have taken hours and hours. So, finally, I killed them all in one fell swoop, with no regard for their content. And since then, as soon as I open an e-mail and read its contents, I kill it out of the system. Now it's time to grad a trash bag and head for the Lebaron.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous x anonymous said...

There is a city code that says if your neighbor is a hoarder, it's your duty to find a match! Or you could be subjected to a fine.

October 7, 2009 at 2:03 PM  
Blogger Lori said...

I really enjoy personal messages. If I could just stop the "forwarders" from thinking I can't live without the cute video or the I picked 10 people to forward this to and I picked you kind of people. My in box would look less worn and abused.
BTY, I have known a few hoarders. Mostly from the depression era. No mayonnaise jar or butter tub should be thrown away. I wonder how many have been rescued by Recycling? We have an extensive recycling program here on the island. More communities should have them.

October 8, 2009 at 1:24 PM  

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