It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be hopelessly devotedly sentimental about your cuddly toys, your comfort blankets, your dusty old nik-naks. It’s important to remember the things that are significant to us. But when your attic is about to burst through your ceiling and you lose your cat amongst all the clutter in your house, you know things are starting to get out of hand. Check out this list of 22 signs of hoarding behavior and find out if you have a problem…
1. When you open your wardrobe, an avalanche of clothes falls out onto the floor.
2. It takes you several days to find things that you know you own.
3. You often accidentally order things from Amazon that you already have.
4. You have toys and bedroom ornaments that are older than some of your friends and relatives. If they could, they’d be lowering each other out the window on ropes.
5. In the event of a fire, you wouldn’t rescue just the one thing (a photo album, perhaps) but would throw a whole drawer, or preferably a whole cupboard, out the window.
6. You don’t worry about mice in the attic because they wouldn’t be able to fit between all those boxes.
7. Your roommate/significant other sighs when you buy new things because they are wandering where on earth you will store them.
8. You ‘ooh’ and ‘ahhh’ at advertisements of seats that are hollow with lids for storage because you appreciate this genius practicality (you can store MORE things?!#$@ Winning!)
9. People have started buying you restaurant vouchers and gift experiences instead of presents for your birthday and at Christmas, because they don’t want to be responsible for encouraging you.
10. Your roommate/partner is left with half a wardrobe and one draw as your endless stuff takes over every other inch of space.
11. When you hear that scary creaking late at night, you don’t fear monsters or intruders like the rest of the world. You’re afraid that the floor is finally about to cave in from all the stuff that weighs it down.
12. You know that the pink marks on this yellowed piece of parchment were in fact butterflies in what is clearly a garden, painted by your former self many many many years ago.
13. You can name all the teddies and Beanie Babies boxed up in the attic and you remember where you got each one, who bought them and how old you were at the time, because you’re as soft as your toys are.
14. Yard sales give you the chills because you can’t understand how anyone could just sell things that they own (oh the humanity!)
15. You have considered moving to a bigger house just for the sake of your bulging closets.
16. But then again, moving house takes about fifty years and hours of gym prep because you have so so so much junk…
17. People quote you with phrases such as ‘you never know when it will come back into fashion’.
18. At Halloween, for those precious art projects, when clean clothes are running low and laundry is too much effort, people will flock to you for materials, clothing, props, because they know you will most likely have what they need.
19. You always have an empty jewelry box handy to use for birthday gifts.
20. Your bag of bags is like a living breathing monster – it’s so big it could fit the whole house in it (which solves the problem of moving).
21. You fill your suitcase and borrow a quarter of everyone else’s whenever you go on holiday.
22. No matter how tacky and retro a gift from your dear old Nan becomes, you leave it center stage on the windowsill because you, my friend, are a sentimental, foolish, tragic hoarder with too much love for your rickety items.
Featured photo credit: Snugg Le Pup via flickr.com
