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.

New episode of Clean House. The husband, I swear, is Mitch from A Mighty Wind. It's hysterical.

STBX is having to go through a bunch of boxes we brought home from his father's after he had passed. These boxes have been in the back of the garage and untouched for over 6 years.

We definitely have trouble getting rid of stuff at our place, which everyone that has helped us move has been quick to make note of. TCG has boxes and boxes of who knows what, and I have a zillion books, teacups, and various other things. I always make up boxes of stuff to send to charity before we move, but we're still always left with too much stuff.

~ma to alls what needs it.

I'm supposed to go to Glen Ivy spa tomorrow with Mom and my nieces for their 21st birthday present. The girls have not been keeping in touch with their grandma about plans. At this point I dunno if it's going to happen and I'm thinking I'd be happier if it doesn't. I had planned on getting a massage but the cheapest one (besides a foot massage) is $125!

With my grandparents' stuff, we've got a few things that might be valuable. Several boxes of German and Hebrew books from the 1800s. What we need to do is find someone to appraise them, but right now, they're just sitting in cardboard boxes in the flood-prone basement.