I was up late last week watching Hoarders.
I’d flipped past it three times before I finally stopped on it.
You know the show. A&E. The slow camera pan, the cleanup crew in masks, the family member on the lawn trying to explain how the house got like this.
I’ve watched enough of these to know how they usually go. There’s almost always a daughter standing in the yard. There’s almost always a back room nobody’s allowed in.
Somewhere in the middle of this episode, I caught myself thinking about my own kitchen drawer.
The one with the rubber bands.
And the twist ties.
And the little plastic bread tabs.
And the dental floss containers I’d been saving for some reason I couldn’t quite remember.
I asked myself the question that, if you’re being honest, you’ve probably asked yourself too.
Am I a hoarder?
I sat with that question for a few days. It’s a heavier question than it sounds.
Most of us aren’t really asking am I a hoarder. What we’re really asking is am I becoming the kind of woman whose house my children will be cleaning out for years after I’m gone?
When I went looking for an honest answer, almost every article I found wanted to tell me yes or no.
But the real answer has three options, not two.
You might be a resourceful saver. You might be a pack rat. Or, in some cases, you might genuinely be a hoarder.
These three things look the same from the outside.
They’re not the same thing.
And the difference between them might be the difference between okay-actually and please-talk-to-somebody.
So I sat down with a cup of coffee one Saturday morning and went through the questions for myself.
This is what I learned.