Pack rats of the world, take heart. Hoarding, a newly diagnosed subtype of obsessive compulsive disorder was discovered by scientists from brain scans performed on various patients with OCD, only some of whom were compelled to save decades’ worth of old newspapers. Yikes! That strikes too close to home.
The scans of those demented hoarders showed a marked decrease in metabolic activity in one part of the brain, a phenomenon not found in regular OCD patients. One man, whose house was about to be designated a Superfund sight, was given a prescription for Paxil and basically told to clean up his act. With the help of a friend, he did, although he still couldn’t part with the cardboard shipping cartons for every electronic device he owned just in case he had to return them for repair.
I don’t find this a manifestation of mental illness. My garage always has at least 10 such boxes, some of which hold broken computer monitors, keyboards and black and white TV sets from the ’60s. Nobody wants them even if they could be made to work again, but we’re forbidden to dispose of them except at annual hazardous waste roundups. I break down all cardboard cartons to recycle except the few I just have to keep for sending things to my daughter in Montana or my niece in France. Just yesterday I needed to retrieve one so the folks who bought two puppies from my son could get them home without turning their Mercedes into a hazardous waste site. I admit I blanched when they asked for newspapers to line the box. What if I need to look up something in them someday? I took a big breath and forked over the classified and sports sections from a June 1992 L.A. Times. And no, I didn’t ask for them back, all covered in puppy poop, as they would be.
Still, I don’t consider myself a compulsive hoarder. Once a year, I rid my closets of those things I haven’t worn for, oh, at least two seasons, packing them up for charity thrift shops. But when I deliver them, I try not to go inside, just in case I feel compelled to rescue some bargains that would take up the space of the ones I’m donating. After all, I’m still wearing the fully lined gray wool slacks I bought 10 years ago from the Artifac Tree for $8.
When I first moved to the country, I was astonished at the amount of rusting junk ranchers collect in old barns and sheds. Hoes, rakes, pitchforks, axes, all with broken handles; coffee cans full of nuts, bolts, washers, screws and bent nails. I thought my husband saved all that junk because he grew up in the Depression and never had money to replace anything. Trouble was when he needed nails or screws or electrical gadgets, he never looked through the shed, he just went to the hardware store and bought new. By the time he died, we had a 40 by 40 foot tin barn crammed to the rafters with rickety furniture, discarded tricycles, blown out hoses, rusted harrows and bent chain-link gates. The kids tried to clean up but couldn’t deal with it. It was like throwing away part of their childhood, I guess. Finally, one of my sons-in-law, who had no emotional attachment to any of it, just hauled it all to the dump.
There’s no emotional component to my hoarding except the memories of suddenly needing the very thing that was discarded the week before by someone else bent on clearing the garage or the pantry or the refrigerator. If you want to know about obsessive-compulsive hoarding, check out a person’s refrigerator. My sister’s modest size fridge is so neatly organized it makes market coolers look messy. Mine looks like it was struck by a 6.5 temblor. Maybe the Northridge one. My daughter discards nothing. Cheese with blue dots, chocolate pudding in full retreat from the bowl sides, a dozen bottles of French, ranch and balsamic dressing less than a quarter inch from the bottom. The remains of a week’s worth of dinners are carefully saved for a family that disdains leftovers. I usually wind up sharing them with the Border collie. We’re not proud.
Anyway, it’s spring and time to muck out the whole place again: fridge, pantry, closets, garage, garden shed. Where to start: newspapers, magazines, shredded tax receipts and canceled checks. Off to the recycle bins. Nobody’s going to call me an obsessive-compulsive hoarder. Of course, the paint cans, batteries and electronic stuff will have to wait for the next hazardous waste roundup. Glad I saved all those cartons.
And then, I think I better save the photo boxes for last. There’s always an emotional component to out-of-focus snaps of children and dogs and horses no longer with us.
Pass the Paxil, please.