Hoarding Intervention! or the Minor Paper Purge and the Larger Purge to Come

Tomorrow there’s an earth day related free community shredding/recycling event at the police station. So, Anna had jury duty today, and even though I have three final papers to write, I decided to stay home and clear out some of the backed up paper in our room. I went through the file crate and the gargantuan stack of articles and crap that five semesters in an OCD home will create and came up with two reusable shopping bags full of paper. The fact that I was able to get that much and manage not to have some sort of panic attack (YET) is phenomenal. Usually, I would have been digging through the bags pulling “important and irreplaceable” documents from the jaws of doom. Yay me…a sign of the OCD getting better? Maybe, or maybe just a short respite.

Today was simply a precursor to the major purge happening next weekend (Goddess willing and the creek don’t rise) in which we will be going through every nook and cranny of our incredibly small and way overstuffed room and purging our lives of all the unnecessary and unused stuff we have accumulated.

All of this is, of course, related to the relatively low-grade hoarding (compared to other symptoms) that accompanies the rest of my OCD insanity. There are other, non-OCD reasons I hold on to, well, everything, including childhood traumas and incessant moving, but it hasn’t really been all that serious (again, YET). But I have a thing about holding onto every single paper relating to school, and there are so many bags, purses, and wallets in the closet that I cannot begin to explain it. The bookshelf, as usual, is a monstrosity. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to mount a yard sale, so the books will be traded to powell’s.com, paperback rack, and my favorite books and the other random stuff will likely go to the refuge house thrift store. I think once we clear the mountains of clutter out of the cave, I will feel much better and be able to function better in there. The only problem lies in actually convincing myself to get rid of the stuff. Here’s hoping…