I think I might be a hoarder. I mean, how many twisty-ties does one woman need?
Let’s assume that the optimum number of twisty-ties needed for effective living might be ten: one to put on the bread bag when the little tabby thing breaks, one to close the bag of corn in the freezer, one or two to keep the TV cords under control and a couple extras just in case something comes apart and you can’t find your duct tape. Ten twisty-ties, max. I have more than ten. Way more. I’m not going to count them, because I have other things to do in the next two and a half hours, but I would guess that we’re looking at a three-digit number here. They’re running amok in the junk drawer in the kitchen.
That’s just the twisty-ties. I don’t even want to tell you about the mound of plastic grocery bags shoved into the cupboard in the garage. I do use them for all kinds of things, at home and at school, so I can make a case for their existence. No chance that I’ll ever run out, though.
That’s what motivates a hoarder: the fear of running out. What would I do if I had to pick up trash in my yard and I had no plastic grocery bag to put it in? Or if I had to leave my bag of bagels open on the kitchen counter for lack of a twisty-tie. Horrors!
I come by these tendencies naturally. I was raised in a house of hoarders. When I was a kid, the big thing was the margarine tubs. We bought soft margarine that came in plastic tubs with resealable lids—perfect for storing leftovers in. With a family of six, we probably bought two to three tubs of margarine a month, and we never threw away a tub. You do the math. That’s a lot of leftovers! This was back in the day when Tupperware parties were all the rage. My family owned one bona fide Tupperware container, and the rest of our leftovers were relegated to the margarine tubs. Our refrigerator housed one fashionable container of leftovers among all the other scavenged tubs. It’s not like the leftovers themselves were anything special. We ate Velveeta cheese and iceberg lettuce, white Wonder bread and canned beans. Nothing worthy of an authentic Tupperware tub.
The other motivation of the hoarder, besides the fear of running out, is the ever-present possibility that an item might come in handy some day. The hoarder hates to throw anything away, just in case it might become useful. My house is full of things that have no current use whatsoever, but I might want to use them someday. I have stacks of previously-used manila envelopes to organize the clutter in, buttons clipped off of old worn-out shirts and carefully saved in a box with my sewing stuff and fabric scraps from every garment I have ever made. Maybe someday I’ll make a quilt, decorated with buttons. Yeah, right.
Heck, I even save the duplicate game pieces for the Safeway Monopoly game contest. It only takes one of each number to add up to the whole. If I have one V594D, that’s all I need, right? I have 8. Or it might be 13 by now. The contest started three weeks ago and runs through May. I’ll be wallpapering my kitchen with all the game pieces I’ll collect by then.
Collect them all! Is it significant that I collected things as a child? I had a china animal collection that sat on windowsills and dresser tops and collected dust. Essentially, I had a dust collection. I collected stamps, and spent hours soaking them off their envelopes, pressing them flat under heavy books, and sticking them into albums using special stamp tongs. To this day I cannot throw away an envelope without ripping off the stamp to stash in a manila envelope in my desk drawer, where it sits for all eternity. Did my childhood love of collecting set me up for a life of hoarding as an adult?
I might be a hoarder. Is that so wrong? I try to keep my piles to myself, hidden in garage cupboards, bedroom closets and the long-suffering kitchen junk drawer. I am working on it. Yesterday I threw away the rubber band that was wrapped around the mail. No worries, I have plenty more. I’ll never run out.
• Peggy McKee Barnhill is a wife, mother and aspiring author who lives in Juneau. She likes to look at the bright side of life.
