The Joyful Housewife

It’s been abut six months since I received my Clutterer’s Anonymous Starter Kit and I finally opened it up yesterday read through the materials, and put each page in a separate sheet protector in a new binder. I ordered the kit for $15 because there are no face-to-face meetings here in Denver and I thought I might start one myself. Hoarding has been in the news a lot lately, and we’ve been struggling with it personally, in my family. I’m trying to decide whether I have enough time to try to start a CLA group here in Denver before my husband and I move for his job. I’d like to spread the network of support. I think fellowship for people with similar problems has the potential to be very helpful.

After I went through the material, I called my mom and had a circuitous, roller-coaster-of-emotion conversation, that began and ended well. She is exhausted from our recent trip out there (in which we sorted through unbelievable amounts of stuff) and she is quite depressed. (I also suffer from bouts of depression and am suffering from my own mishap this week, in which I accidentally took my sleeping pill for two days instead of one of my antidepressants! Doh!)

The issue that made our phone conversation so difficult yesterday was as follows: Mom was able to accept the label of hoarder for a time, but now it makes her feel very bad. Strangely enough, it was she who first labeled herself as a hoarder! I remember speaking to her on the phone a couple of years ago when she pointed me towards a Compulsive Hoarding website and some articles.  But, it is difficult to find a balance between giving a problem a name so that you can treat it, and giving it a label which is counter productive. I think with all of the current publicity about hoarding, she doesn’t want to be seen, even in her own eyes, as being like those people on tv.

Don’t be mislead by my somber tone! I’m very excited about the possibility of starting a new CLA group in Denver and I am quite grateful for the time that we have been able to spend together working on mom’s storage units and talking about our hopes for her future. It’s just that the issue of dealing with hoarding, or with a recovering hoarder, is complicated for a family and it is a constant struggle for everyone in the family to reach common ground on this issue. There is no one right way to do it, and what is acceptable one day is not going to work on another day.

So I’m trying to move more in the direction of talking about chronic disorganization and excessive cluttering. Cluttering which is out of one’s control and has a negative affect on one’s life, possibly interfering with use of certain areas of the home. CLA is a 12 step program, modeled after AA, and is not for everyone. My mom does not find it helpful. I might give it a try though.

Oh, and as for the title of this post - I truly believe that Life is not a race!!! It may have taken me a long time to finish my education, to get married, to have kids (haven’t actually done that yet), to start a “career” (nor have I actually done that), to open the CLA packet, but what is the hurry? Life is the process, not the product. I like who I am and where I am right now. I don’t need to have “accomplished” more than I have, or to have reached any milestones quicker than I have.

This is especially true with getting control of chronic disorganization or compulsive hoarding. Some family members just want to throw out a lot of mom’s stuff without sorting through it, but if we race through the process, we won’t have lasting results. There needs to be an inner change as well as an outer one.

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In my last post I finally brought up my mother’s hoarding problem - which was the original raison d’etre of this blog (see my About Page). On our journey we have discovered two invaluable books that will help all of us work through the emotions and reasons behind the obsessive collecting. Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding, by Fugen Neziroglu, Ph.D., Jerome Bubrick, Ph. D., Ph. D., Jose A. Yaryura-Tobias, MD and Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding, by David F. Tolin, Randy O, Frost, and Gail Steketee.

They are both excellent resources for recovery from this particular affliction, and we are buying both books for mom and each of us sisters. 

They aren’t like your average, ubiquitous clutter-busting books, which talk about organizing and getting rid of stuff, but don’t really help the person with a bonafide compulsive hoarding problem. These books have proven techniques for getting to the root(s) of the problem: the emotional issues and erroneous beliefs that cause behaviors of acquiring and not throwing away to get out of hand.

We’ve also found a website - Clutterer’s Anonymous - which has lists for face-to-face suport groups as well as other resources. My sister and her good friend (whose mother we have recently discovered has the SAME PROBLEM!) took my mother to a meeting last Saturday and said that it was great. I’m so excited to hear what it was like and how it went!!!

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