You know, my mom was like that. Seriously. We spent the last ten years ferreting stuff out of the house when she wasn't looking, and if she didn't see it leave she never missed it.

DH's mom ran as an 18-year-old bride from the communists straight into Hitler's Germany, spent the war and gave birth to DH in a Displaced Persons Camp, emigrated to the US with a husband, a four-year-old, one suitcase, a wooden box of handmade cobbler's tools and no English. Her house has always been preternaturally neat and clean, almost Spartan in decoration and furniture alignment. But not static. And as soon as something new comes into the house, something old goes to a neighbor, a co-worker, or a charity.

I'd think because of her background she'd cling to possessions, but she emphatically does not. I guess giving things up voluntarily before they can be taken from her is her form of control.

When are you back on roller skates?

In the Fall, probably. Depends on money. I can't be both in a gym and pay the rink fees, and I really needed the weight-training and pilates classes and all that gym stuff.

Ay. I just got a work email. About some acronymic meeting I do not yet know about. For a project I have just started on and do not know anything about yet. Saying that they have these twice a month meetings, and to accomodate the five people in China/Taiwan/Australia they've been having TWO meetings, one at 8AM and one at 8PM. But since there's been some reoganization, and none of the [people wiht my job title] has attended the last two 8PM meetings, they are canceling those as a waste of resources, and everyone will hereafter be attending the 8AM ones. And China/Australia should just send notes ahead of time. And email if you don't have the meeting on your calendar.

And so I email, all "I don't have this on my calendar, cause I'm new. And also, is that FIVE AM PACIFIC? Do you, er...send out meeting minutes??"

Cause I know I"m three hours off of the headquarters, and I know I work from home and have even bloody offered to attend a 7AM PDT teleconference....but FIVE AM? Regularly? The fuck I will.

I'm watching Clean House. The homeowner on this episode seems to have real psychological problems with stuff -- like, she doesn't want them to sell anything because she just can bear to let any of it out of her sight. Usually on this show, people have a ridiculous amount of stuff, but they can admit that and they want help with figuring out how to get rid of it. This woman is hugging a pillow of an old ratty couch because she "loves" it and doesn't want to sell it. It's really uncomfortable to watch.

It's like the women on WNTW with long ratty hair that cry when the hairdresser suggests cutting it.

Wow. They painted and put wallpaper on some wooden dressers in this woman's daughter's room, and she's so upset about them being different than before that she can't even look at them.

My grandfather had trouble getting rid of stuff. We've got just boxes and boxes of things that he kept -- a bunch of broken Super-8 cameras that he meant to fix, a box of music box parts, and pretty much every letter he ever received, plus carbon copies of most of the ones he sent. And now that his father kept it for fifty years, my dad can't bring himself to get rid of any of it.

This woman burst into tears saying that it's all horrible and she wants it back the way it was. It really wasn't a great design given her preferences -- she likes old-fashioned and flowered stuff, and they gave her green walls and an orange sofa -- but still just really painful to watch. This woman needs something more than a decorating TV show.

My grandfather had trouble getting rid of stuff. We've got just boxes and boxes of things that he kept -- a bunch of broken Super-8 cameras that he meant to fix, a box of music box parts, and pretty much every letter he ever received, plus carbon copies of most of the ones he sent. And now that his father kept it for fifty years, my dad can't bring himself to get rid of any of it.

My mother had to spend several years sorting through all the many, many assortments of things her parents saved, and she is now in the middle of a furious binge of stuff-tossing; she so badly wants to spare us the same ordeal she went through.

Several times when I've been home, I've picked a box to go through, organized what I though ought to be kept, and then made a pile of "I think this stuff can be thrown out. Do you agree?" for my dad to go through when he got home. Seemed to work out pretty well -- he was spared having to go through all of it, and it was easier for him to throw stuff out once someone else had already said that it should be thrown away.

she so badly wants to spare us the same ordeal she went through.

Yeah, I kind of fear that, after a few painful rounds of "what was he thinking, keeping all this stuff?"

Mostly, I fear that we'll just never get around to tossing things that we have no attachment to whatsoever, and then leaving whoever's stuck with the archeology to worry that there might have been some reason we were holding on to it when in fact we were just lazy.

I think it is actually a disorder, maybe hoarding [link]

One of the issues sometimes is that a hoarder sort of anthropomorphizing the objects, and ascribes them feelings. I actually do this to a small degree and end up with a lot of dishes from the Salvation Army because they seem lonely there, and maybe they will get thrown away or go to some one who doesn't love them the way I do. I can usually control myself, but it sounds a little like what the woman was doing with the pillow.