Hoarding

Hoarding: What is it, exactly?  When I tire of studying or staring at the heart monitors at work, I fish around and can usually find a magazine or two that the day shift staff has left behind.  My latest read, a few days ago, was a Time Magazine piece about hoarding.  I had to read it, because my husband is convinced that I'm a hoarder.

Apparently, there are a few cable TV shows on the air right now that are devoted to the issue, and per the magazine article, there is a push among psychiatric professionals for hoarding to become an official diagnosis in the DSM.  Fascinating stuff.

I don't consider myself to be afflicted with this disorder (officially recognized as such or not), but I do have a hard time letting go sometimes.  I don't have sky-high piles of papers stacked around the house, nor do I collect trash...  Well...  Actually, I do have a few small stacks of magazines and books on the floor in the two spare bedrooms, and I have a really hard time disposing of receipts, but that's less due to some weird emotional attachment and more because I want to compare them with my bank statements and make sure everything checks out.  Eventually.  When I have the time to get around to it.  As for the magazine articles, I just hate to see valuable information go to waste.  Who knows, one of those recipes in a Sunset magazine might just become my signature dish (if I ever really take up cooking in earnest).

So ok, maybe I do have a problem!