Monday, August 30, 2010

Please Welcome Our New Co-Author!

Hi! My screen name for this blog will be "Maggie," which is my middle name.  I am "Julia's" cousin and both her mother and my grandmother shared the hoarding gene.  My mother has it to a lesser extent, but she has it.  

Julia's mother hoards moderately -- enough to be very,very embarrassing and inconvenient, but not enough to be a health hazard -- a fire hazard, probably, but no real filth.  My grandmother (who raised me during part of my childhood) was an astounding hoarder.  I'll tell my full story later.  For now, I'll tell you that when my grandmother died we took over two tons of hoarded paper alone out of the house (junk mail, newspapers, etc).  That's right, more than two tons of JUST PAPER!

It took three fillings and dumpings of a large industrial dumpster to remove the rest of the "junk," and there was still plenty of salvagable items for an estate sale and later, a garage sale for the remnants.  My grandmother died with nearly $100,000 (US) in credit card debt, mostly for items she never used and just stuffed into her house, right up to the ceiling.

We decided to make this blog a joint effort.   I hope we can all help each other and share our stories.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, I can't believe the amount of money that is spent on stuff - while maintenance is completely neglected.

    The more you have, the more you have to be dedicated to taking care of it -

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