Save Yourselves!!!

Came across this little picture today whilst surfing and let out a scream! It's not just me! This is irrefutable proof that National Geographics are evil! Evil evil EVIL!! See how they menace nearly the entire state of Ohio and parts of Michigan and Ontario too!?!?!



Run for your lives, Ohio and Michigan and Ontario!

Well we did our part yesterday. Tara took another several piles of the things, which had been in the upstairs garage, home with her to sort and/or toss. We also went through some books in the garage proper, which are loaded up again in the back of Larry, and which hopefully tomorrow I will be able to drop off at the dump, er, recycling center. Tara took before-and-after shots with her phone, since I don't have a camera. Boy it sure would be nice to see some pictures, wouldn't it? (Hint, hint, hint.)

Gone

They went away! I can breathe easier now. I don't mean that metaphorically, either.

Today Tara took most of the National Geographics away to her house, to see about integrating them with her own collection. I personally think that's crazy, but, well, that's her business (and her house). My mother took the remaining three piles of duplicates out to her art studio, where they can sit on a shelf out there for years if she likes, since that is her space and it does not affect me, unlike the house. At any rate they are no longer in here, sitting around being dusty and moldy and contributing to the allergies I 'mysteriously' developed a couple years ago.

I'm sorry I didn't get any before and after shots; my camera is rather on the fritz. Lately it's been taking pictures that look like this:



As you can see, not very helpful. (Luckily it's a known problem with one of the chips in it, and the maker will repair it for free, though it's long since out of warranty. They even sent me a pre-paid UPS label to put on it, so I don't have to pay postage.) You'll just have to take my word for it that there is now an empty space on the living room floor, an empty spot on top of one of the bookcases in the living room, and three large empty shelves in one of the bookcases in the piano room.

And I already know, despite my worries about what to do with them, that I won't miss them for an instant.

Now on to the actual books.

Yellow Nemesis

I don't know why I should hate them so. They've never really done anything to me. And they are (potentially) more interesting, certainly, than the piles and piles and piles of crap books my father hoarded—books on WWII, the Nazis, airplanes, trains, Lindburgh, photography, &c. which are still safely inhabiting the bookshelves of the house.

And yet, just knowing they were there, obliviously sunny in their happy shiny bright yellow, well, it was like they were mocking me.

So, even though I still don't know what I plan to do with them, and even though my mother is probably going to fight it, tonight I gathered up all the National Geographics I could immediately lay my hands on, and dumped the lot in the middle of the living room floor. Though I pulled them from the hallway, piano room, and living room bookcases (and floor), alas, that's not all of them, for I'm almost positive there is also a substantial cache of the damned things in the upstairs garage.

Then I put on some prog-rock as soundtrack, plunked myself down on the floor, and started sorting.

I made a rule, first, though: absolutely no reading them. I don't know, honestly, if I have some of the hoarding gene myself. I do know that I get easily distracted and overwhelmed when cleaning and attempting to sort things; but this could equally be the fault of growing up in a hoarding house and being taught that you absolutely must go through everything in excruciating detail before you are allowed to throw anything away (in the hopes, of course, that the job will be as lengthy and aggravating, and therefore as inefficient, as possible, with the end result being that the least amount of stuff is thrown away), or, it could be that I am simply a very visual person by nature (I am an artist, after all). So, I made myself not look at them, except to check the dates.

I sorted them into piles by decade. The 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, the 1960s, and to my surprise, the 1950s. After a few minutes of sorting, though, I added, unbelievably, the 1940s pile. When my mother came by a little while later I showed her the piles, expressing my surprise at the ones from the '50s and '40s. She said, "But they're still good!" and my heart just sank. There are few things a child of a hoarder hates to hear more than the phrase "It's GOOD!" Trust me on that one.

Eventually I had weeded out all the duplicates, rather more than I had thought there were going to be. And I'd found out that there were still plenty missing. It's far from a complete set, though there are certainly lots of them.

Five hundred and fourteen of them, to be exact, assuming my math is correct.

Holy fuck.

When my mother came through again I showed her the three tall stacks of duplicates. "Oh," she said, "I can cut them up then." And she made to grab them, to put in her room.

Now, my mother is not the hoarder; however, we've all been trained to it by years of living with my father. None of us, really, have any idea what is normal. We are, I'm quite sure, exponentially more trigger-happy than my father was when it comes to throwing things away, but who's to say that our standards still aren't skewed towards hoarding? So I don't know.

I managed to shoo her away from them, by telling her, "NO" quite sternly.

But I don't know. When I was done sorting them, I did look through one, one that had an article on the Minoans. Now, I'm a big ancient history buff and have been on a Minoan kick lately; I have several books on them. But this article had good and unusual photos in it, ones I didn't have in any of my books (like some of the little house facade tiles from Knossos, of which I've only seen drawings in Evans's The Palace of Minos, Crete), or which I didn't have that clearly or that big (like the pictures of the Theran miniature ship-frescoes). There was another that had an article specifically on the excavation at Aphrodisias in Turkey, which is not really something you are going to find, in that detail, in any book. And I wondered if it was worth it to go through them and cut out the articles I actually might use.

Now I know that there is plenty available on the internet. I am also lucky in that I have access to JSTOR (the academic journal database); but that tends to not have a lot of pictures. I just don't know if it's worth it, to go through all that trouble. But it might be.

In some ways this whole process is like a microcosm of the issues I face in dealing with this house and the hoarding. What is valuable? What has worth? What is more important, the things or my time and energy?

Although, there is also this: I am sniffling and sneezing now. Not only were they dusty old things, but they were a bit moldy, too, that sort of dry but sticky mold that in this house is just taken as normal for books. I had to wash my hands repeatedly, and remember to under no circumstances touch my eyes as I was sorting. I plan on taking a bath, at least to rinse off, before I go to bed. For that reason alone they should probably all just go.

Issues

My father's hoarding was not of course merely confined to the yard. Sure, the yard is probably the worst (as hoarded junk cars sure do take up a lot of space); but that doesn't mean the house itself escaped, oh ho no. It was all his to fill up, by rights, after all. The rest of us didn't have any right to the space at all, in his personality-disordered brain. Any room we claimed we had to fight for.

He's not here now, and hasn't been here for more than four years; still, though we've made plenty of progress cleaning up inside the house, there are still things that either slip under the radar (because we are just so used to looking at them) or things we just haven't had the energy (emotional, mental, or physical) to deal with. This is one of those things.

Now, I am not myself a hoarder, though neither am I a neat freak (oh no not by any stretch of the imagination! Honestly, my tastes run to detail, color, and richness of a Victorian sort); but here's a problem I'm not sure how to solve. Or not sure, anyway, which to choose among the many options available.

This is the problem:







As you can see, it's that favorite magazine of hoarders, the one so seductively laid out with articles of genuine value and unique information, usually with stunning pictures to go along with it, the magazine so worthy of saving that even non-hoarders hoard the damned things: the infamous National Geographic.

I think part of its allure is that it didn't used to be available on the newsstand; back in the day you could only get it through subscription. This, I think, has added to its mystique, or its exclusivity, or the feeling that these magazines (and by extension, you, the subscriber) are special. And, I guess, part of my confusion over what to do with them is in large part due to this special mystique. They aren't just any magazines.

But. That's a lot of them, pretty pictures or no (the cases alone hold a good nine years worth!); but I don't know what to do with them, and this worries me a bit. Has my natural, Gods-given, inborn, birthright ability to throw things away been so crippled by living with a hoarder for several decades that I can't even face it? Can I be fixed? I don't know. Because when I look at them, my mouth hangs open and my eyes glaze over.

Pull yourself together, woman! (Insert movie slap-across-the-face to snap me out of it here!)

All right. Let's try to define down some options. I could:

1. Keep them all and leave them just where they are (that's three separate stashes, two in the living room, and one the piano room); this is the option of denial. Easy, and seductive, and oh-so-familiar.

2. I could sort through them and figure out which ones are duplicates, then just keep one set (rather a long process that I'm not sure I have the patience for), after which I could:

2a. Throw the extras out (satisfying, but guilt-inducing)

2b. Donate the things to Goodwill (nice, but kind of a pain in the ass, and all it does is enable some other hoarder)

2c. Let Tara pick through them and see if she's got any gaps in her collection she'd like to fill (sounds nice but it'll take her a while to get to it and I want a solution NOW)

2d. Keep the extras and use for collage (which sounds like finding a use for them; however, do I really want them? And, isn't it sacrilege to cut them up?)

3. Or I could burn them burn burn burn!! them all! ALL!!! Mwwahahahahaha!!!

(You will note I have never claimed I wasn't crazy myself.)

I just don't know what to do. What is reasonable, and what is hoarding? I don't honestly know what that looks like. Any ideas?