Shananagins: Hoarding

So, now that I have regular channels on my TV and a DVR, it's a whole new world for me. I get to watch all kinds of stuff now. I share my sattelite access with my landlord. They get to be the boss of what channel package they want to have. Previously they chose the family package. Translation: 500 channels of Disney and Nickeloden and not much else except for local channels. So for the past 22 months, I've spent a lot of time watching the Food Network and National Geographic channels. They happen to come with the family package. There were also several days when the sattelite didn't work at all and so I had nothing. While it may not seem like crappy and/or no TV isn't the end of the world, it really kind of is. I live alone and if it's super-quiet I feel lonely and I get depressed. Then I start to get anxious and basically go bonkers. I've tried the radio but it isn't the same. TV makes me feel like someone is home besides me. Radio doesn't because nobody goes around singing all the time unless they happen to be in a musical. I would really like it if we were in a musical all the time.

That was a very long explaination to get to the point of my blog. The point is that there are a lot of shows I didn't even know existed before. One of those said shows is called "Hoarders." It's about people who, well, hoard. Only not just a little bit. Sometimes after it is all cleaned out the floors have rotted out, leaving a hole, and a condemed house. I am absolutely fascinated by this whole thing. Even though it makes me anxious to see it, I can't look away. It's like trying not to look at a train wreck as you drive by. Impossible. So to add to my current psycho depression and anxiety, I've got hoarding to worry about. How whacked out is it to be anxious about getting an anxiety disorder?

Yesterday I was looking in my closet and decided that it was getting way too squishy. I hardly ever wear a bunch of those clothes. Plus, I bet I have 20 pairs of shoes I need to be done with. Why am I keeping them around? Then I thought about "Hoarders." I bet they only started with something like clothes they couldn't say good bye to. Then it moved on to this:

After that thought it only took me about two seconds to decide to start tossing stuff. I plan on going home after school and start chucking stuff in other rooms. I figure that for my sanity it is better to take the risk that I'll toss something I may need later, than to develop hoarding disease. Which, by the way, is a real illness. They make therapists come on the show and everything so that the hoarding people don't freak out. Plus, also, even when I have thrown things away that I wanted later, while a minor inconvenience, I'm pretty sure I survived without it.

Here's all the stuff I decided that I could live without:

Only maybe not the slippers or Hank. He just likes that chair. This is only the D.I. crap. There was much more that I just chucked. While it doesn't look too much like that other scary photo, I feel better just knowing that I've not started down that slippery hoarding disease slope.

I went through every cubbard, drawer, closet, and storage box in my house. One of the hugie boxes I has was full of photos from the past 20 years. You know, the box that you always say that you will go through all the photos and only keep the ones you really want? I actually went through that box. What I discovered is that the amount of photos I actually need and want is this: