August 23

9 comments

Hi My Name is Jen and I’m a Hoarder



I’ve been calling myself a hoarder for a while but today there is no denying it.  I’ve been getting rid of a lot of stuff so I thought that maybe I only had a mild case of hoarding.  Ha. That’s a joke.

My daughter brought down three plastic bins full of stuff from the storage room.  I did okay getting rid of a lot of it.  My goal was to get down to one bin.  I couldn’t do it.  The reason this has really upset me is because of what’s in the bins.  There isn’t anything at all that I need.  There’s a few things of the kids that hold good memories and that’s okay but what am I doing?

hoarder

I have a bunch of Beanie Babies.  I love Beanie Babies.  I don’t need Beanie Babies at all.  Maybe a few special ones like the one my daughter gave me while I was in the hospital on bed rest when I was pregnant with the twins or the Easter bunny ones that the twins got for Easter one year.  But do I really need a couple hundred of them?

There is a little more to the reason why we have so many of them and maybe it’s the real reason why I can’t let them go.  When my three older kids were little, before the twins arrived, I was only working part time.  When I wasn’t working, the three kids and I would go on Beanie Baby hunts.  We spent a whole summer in search of all the different animals.  We drove from city to city and mall to mall to find the rare and retired ones.  It was FUN!! So much fun!  I miss those days a lot.

Another thing filling up this bucket is Rescue Heroes.  My son loved his Rescue Heroes and it was another one of those things that we had to search out.  There’s many other things in these buckets like that as well.

I can’t get a grip on why it’s so hard for me to do this.  I am never going to play with Beanie Babies.  That would be weird.  I have no intention of ever displaying them.  Like I said, maybe a few special ones but probably less than 10 at any one time and even that seems like a lot.  I could give them to my kids for their future kids but I honestly don’t think that they would want them.  Only two of them seem to have the hoarder gene.

My next thought used to be, will they be worth some money someday?  I’ve decided that I really dislike selling things and would rather give the stuff away so I don’t think that’s it.  Plus, there’s so many Beanie Babies in the world that I don’t think there’s anyone who wants them anymore.  I could be wrong.  I mean look at Pokemon.  We kept most of the cards from when the kids were little and now it’s all the rage.

The point is, there’s no real reason for me to be keeping a lot of this stuff besides the fact that I’m a hoarder.  It’s just stuff and it’s making me miserable so whey keep it?  Because I can’t let it go.  That’s why.

For now, I will keep writing and keep trying to figure it out, even if I keep saying the same things over and over.  I’m getting there.  I see progress.  Even though it’s going much slower than I originally planned, full bags of stuff keep leaving the house.  The kids have been able to have their friends over this summer – finally!! I know that things like that will make it all worth it in the end so I must keep forging ahead!

 

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    • LOL! Yep, I have every one of them but I’m not going to hold my breath that I will ever make that much money (or any money really) from any of them! Actually, I don’t know if I ever found Snort. I looked for that one for a long time. I have the next version of it – Tabasco.

  • You have good memories wrapped up in these items and I understand the sentiments. Perhaps before you donate them or whatever, you should take pictures of the items and put them in some kind of scrap book. I have a feeling just seeing them brings back good memories. In this way you can still hang on to the memories, while reducing the clutter. The idea about donating them to a homeless shelter is awesome. There are lots of other good ways as well. Most hospitals, fire departments, and police departments will also accept toys for children. These toys are used to help children experiencing different types of trauma. Just call ahead to check on donation policies as some restrictions may apply. Also, churches are always good sources of information of where to donate. For example, currently my church is collecting all sorts of things, including small toys, which will be packed into shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. These toys and other care items will be sent to children who literally have nothing. Many churches are preparing care packages for people in Louisiana who lost everything in the floods. Even your local library may accept these types of donations for their children’s areas or to be used as prizes in some manner. There are many ways to donate and assure that these toys will be just as loved as when your own children played with them.

    • This has been so much harder than I thought it would be! I hadn’t thought about making a scrapbook with the pics but I’ll think about that one. These are some great donation ideas. I’ll have to check around my city to find the places that will make me feel good about donating to their causes – the places where the items actually end up in the hands of the recipients.

  • I used to volunteer serving dinner at a homeless shelter for families and one lady I knew donated a ton of new beanie babies she had been collecting & they were in great shape. We wrapped them up and have one to each child in the shelter and those kids were so excited!!! They loved it!

    • That’s an awesome idea! Even if I can’t get rid of all of them, I’m sure that I have duplicates and triplicates of a bunch of them! I could for sure thin out the collection 🙂

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