Are you a Borderline HOARDER???

Like many people, I have too much stuff. Am I a HOARDER?
Maybe a little. It's not like I have stuff piled to the ceilings in my rooms, or dead cats flattened under boxes of unidentified stuff.
But neither is there a place for everything in my home, and everything in its place.
Like many people, I have too much stuff. And if I'm not careful, I could become a hoarder.
What will save me is that, unlike many people, I'm tired of the stuff, and I've begun getting rid of it.
Also, it should be noted that hoarding is actually a mental illness in the obsessive/compulsive family. We joke about hoarding, but in truth, a lot of hoarders have slowly slipped into their situations, and can't help it. They need professional help.
But back to me and my excess stuff.
Some of it has been or will be donated to thrift stores; some has been or will be tossed out; some has or will be sold either online or in garage sales.
I think my motivation comes from the fact I've recently started dreaming about moving in a few years into a much smaller space; a tiny house, of 400 square feet or less.
That isn't a lot of room compared to the average American house of a couple thousand square feet. And I've lived in even larger spaces. When we downsized a few years ago from a 4000+ sq. ft. house into an 1800 sq. ft. house, we got rid of about half our things. But the rest came with us, and honestly, it doesn't fit. In the big house, there was room to store everything, which allowed us to accumulate a lot of STUFF! Stuff that we don't want or need now.
As the kids grow up and move out, they'll take their special things with them, along with some furniture.
I'll select what I want to keep, and the rest, as they say, will be history.
Some of what we have was handed down to us by relatives who have passed on. My mom. My grandmother. My mother-in-law. The kids' dad. And that is hard to give away or sell.
I mean, how do you toss out your Mom's china? Or your grandma's chair? Or an entire carton of the kid's father's novel?
Well, a friend once told me she doesn't need all that stuff; the memories aren't in the china or the chair. They're in your head and heart.
So when you think about it like that, it's not so hard to get rid of stuff.
Of course, I'd like it if someone I care about would take, use and enjoy the stuff. But I've reached the point where, if no one does, I can get rid of it anyway. Turning it into cash, or giving it away for others to enjoy are both positive things to do.
Another thing people are starting to do is to question whether they need to keep all the photos and scrap books they've made or inherited over the years.
At one time, I maintained a large safe-deposit box in a bank filled with duplicate photos and negatives, in case something happened to the ones in the house.
Eventually, I realized that was nuts. But I still have many albums filled with pictures; albums that used to mean a great deal to me, but somehow don't any more.
I don't need endless photos of my children at every age and stage. I rarely look at them.
I remember with amusement when my oldest child was a baby, dressing her in every outfit she owned and taking pictures of her so I'd never forget  how cute she was in each.
That makes me shake my head now. . . how silly I was!
What lots of people are doing now is photographing their photos and documents, and keeping them on their computers or storing them in "the cloud." They are there for the looking . . . and I'll look at them more on my computer than up on a high shelf in my closet.
So I've decided to haul them down and let my kids take whatever they want, and maybe I'll find the strength to toss the rest!
Sacrilege! But necessary.
Then there's that box of stuff from back when I was in school.
You see the problem. I've been a borderline hoarder for my entire life! And my mother was before me, so I come by it honestly.
So, if you're worried you may be a borderline hoarder, just one dead cat away from being featured on the hit television series, "Hoarders, Buried Alive!"get rid of the stuff you don't love, need and use.
Then take the money you earn selling some of that stuff and buy something you really want -- like a cruise! And leave the souvenir coconut monkey cup on board. You don't need it!