Hoarders

I'm fascinated with the A&E show Hoarders. I also love Clean House and a show that used to be on BBC called Life Laundry. I am obsessed with people and their strangely cluttered homes.

My house is not a zen garden showplace by any means but I am the only one in my family who seems to have escaped the crazed collector sickness. My mom, who collects what seems to be the entire contents of homes my aged relatives have moved out of, says I am a "minimalist." She lives in a house with my stepfather, who collects stacks and stacks of out-of-date road maps, travel literature, magazines and newspapers. My sister scoffs at the "minimalist" tag but she is not in a good position to talk: she collects juicers, and cookbooks, and Weebles, and those little string and wood toys that you push the bottom of the base and they collapse into a heap.

I do have a few weird things, like an assortment of radio tubes, about a half dozen pairs of never worn children's shoes from Buster Brown, and lots of "round things." I like to put my round things into the empty bowls of broken, black globes that I also seem to have collected over time. But everything has a place and you can see my floors and table tops. I don't have to make tunnels to my toilet; I just have a few oddball, small collections.

When I watch Hoarders, it amazes me that the people on the show so often can't see their junk for the junk it is. How is it possible that someone with 5 apartments crammed full of stuff can't see that dried out face cleaning pads belong in the trash? The people are clearly traumatized by seeing their things go into the dumpster. Women who have lost their children due to unsafe and unsanitary conditions cry over the thought of throwing away a moldy, flood-damaged, coffee table with a missing leg. It's really hard to understand when you don't have that problem.

And luckily I don't ....... but even I have to say that my music collecting has crossed a line into silly. My iPod is packed full of some useless and awful stuff. For awhile, I was going to the library and checking out CDs to copy them onto my iPod. I'd copy entire albums from one-hit wonder bands (who knows, maybe there was an under-appreciated gem on there!)and artists I had never heard of but had interesting cover art or song titles. All this unknown and unloved crap gets in the way of finding what I really want. My ability to browse and discover is hampered.

It's the same with music review podcasts. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with how many backlogged podcasts I have to listen to but I can't just delete old ones and start fresh, what if my favorite new band is there waiting to be discovered!? Sometimes I even listen to them but, when it comes time to delete them, feel like I need to keep it and listen again later because I really wasn't giving it my full attention.

I was thinking about this the other night as I was syncing my iPod. I noticed that I had 276 days and 19 hours worth of music to listen to and decided that life iss too short to spend with music I don't like. It was time to clean house. I started with the non-Music podcasts, anything more than 1 month old was deleted. Then I moved on to the music podcasts. That was harder. I decided listen to a bunch that I knew I was interested in, deleted a bunch that I knew I was not interested in and saved a few to listen to later when I cleaned the kitchen. While I would not be giving those my full attention. i figured if it was my next favorite new band, it would grab my attention and I'd take notice. If it didn't grab my attention, it was not meant to be.

Then I sorted out all the songs I had given a "1 star" rating too. Every now and again I rate a song, either a favorite or a song I never, ever want to hear again. I highlighted the songs and tried to click the delete button. I couldn't do it. Delete is permanent. What if I changed my mind? What if my tastes changed? I'd have to compromise for now. I unchecked those songs so they would not sync but would still be retained in iTunes.

Baby steps.