Hi! My name is Elizabeth and I am a....

hoarder.

Hoarders have such a horrible image. You hear story after story about messy homes, dead bodies under piles of trash, dead cats behind couches, etc. Hoarders have little control over it and they are not generally tidy people (if they are tidy people it must mean they are also compulsive organizers).

At a family get together tonight we were discussing how I am, by nature, a hoarder. I hate throwing things away that I could "possibly use one day." My mom told this story about how she was helping me clean out my room and found a stash of fruit in my closet that I probably hid because "I might want it one day." My brother talked about how I wouldn't share my Halloween candy and it would just sit in my room until the next Halloween. I wouldn't eat it. Nobody was allowed to eat it. "One day I will eat those reese's. One day I will want them." (I wasn't entirely selfish. I gave up some candy. But it was usually the candy I hated or I was getting tootsie rolls in exchange. So maybe I was still being selfish.)  When Jon married me, I shared with him the fact that I had about 3 bins just full of papers. Probably 50% of all papers I had ever gotten in my life were in those bins.

I wasn't totally aweful though. I did throw things away. I was good about cleaning. Nobody would know I was a hoarder just by walking into my room. They would practically have to live with me for a while to figure it out.

The good news though is that I have gotten better. Much better. Especially after marrying Jon. I only have 1 bin of papers left. I throw away a lot of things now or put them in give away bags. I throw most papers away unless they are important. I tend to buy snack food too much and keep it for a long time but I don't know if I would say I really hoard food anymore. I just always think I will eat something because it sounds good while I am grocery shopping but then I never want it again.

I do promise you will never find a dead body underneath any pile of garbage in my house.