Suddenly some..... Hoarding

MOVING AGAIN

When you decide to move home you realise how attached you become to things, a year ago we moved to a new apartment in a new part of town to start a new life. We emptied our home of 8 years, packed everything up and moved it, me across the city to the place which was to become my new home and my still husband to the other side of the World. Well, actually he left with only a suitcase - never to be seen again, but that's not for this, I'll tell you later.

As a family unit we are 4 people (3 now) and split down the middle when it comes to the type of processions person we are - Myself, I am not a tidy person but, I don't keep much, just a few things which have real meaning to me, a Budha I was given by a monk in Bali, a dandilion clock in resin which has been on my bedside table for so long I've forgotten where and when it came from a chipped candlestick from my great grandmother. Life feels easier with these things and odd and wrong when they are not in their place. This makes me a light mover and easy to feel at home, my oldest daughter is the same a couple of boxes and away we go. 

On the other side of life is my other daughter and husband both are obsessive about most things actually, they are keepers, they keep everything - not hoarders, but keepers what's the difference? They keep everything that means something to them, a cinema ticket to a film they enjoyed, a stone from a broken necklace that they liked, so what we see as broken and of no value they insist on keeping just in case. The reality of this is, at a time like moving, a nightmare, whereas I can pack up in 3 boxes and a couple of hours, they agonise about throwing even the shop label of a favourite dress away. Don't get me wrong I understand that it's a problem and needs to be dealt with and my daughter is but the strife this causes not just her is immeasurable to all of us. 

Writing it here a me trying to deal with it. When I started writing this it was 5:30am am she had just left for her school graduation trip and as we are moving again 2 days after she gets back I have been trying to get her to finish packing her room before she goes, two weeks into this task she left giving me the following instruction "If you pack the rest of my room do not look in anything and DO NOT throw anything away". My dilemma is I want to get rid of all those little bits or do I do as I'm told? On the one hand how can one start a new life in a new apartment with so much, to put it bluntly, rubbish? and won't I be supporting her in her keeping mentality? Or do I throw it out and hope she won't be too upset?