Stuff by Gail Steketee

Author:Gail Steketee
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780151014231
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011-10-22T04:40:46+00:00

8. AVOIDING THE AGONY

I just feel like I want to die. If you weren't here, I would avoid doing any of this [sorting and discarding].

—Irene

I first visited Nell's home on a January day when the temperature hovered near zero degrees Fahrenheit. When I knocked, it took some time before a small voice asked through the door, "Who is it?" I called through the door, reminding her of our appointment. "Just a minute," she said. I waited in the freezing cold for nearly ten minutes, listening to shuffling sounds on the other side of the door. Then the door opened just enough for me to squeeze through. Once inside, I was trapped in a space only big enough to stand in, with walls of stuff up to my waist. While I stood there, my hostess, a petite seventy-one-year-old woman with neatly cropped hair and an impish smile, repacked the newspapers and bags against the door, clearing a path into the living room.

I could see why it had taken her so long to open the door. The objects she piled against it were too heavy to allow it to open more than a crack. As the pile grew, I felt uneasy. By this time, I had been in many hoarded homes and gotten used to them, but having the exit barricaded this way was unsettling.

Nell was terribly embarrassed by the condition of her home and fearful of what I would think of her. She normally went to great lengths to prevent anyone from seeing her place. She had become a master at maintaining friendships without allowing visitors into her home. She would offer to buy dinner, suggest going places for coffee, or meet her friends somewhere for a movie. Keeping them from noticing her car posed more of a problem. Her excuses for not being able to give someone a ride usually involved car trouble or temporarily having to store things in her car. For each of her social events, she arrived early and parked at the end of the parking lot, well away from where any of her friends would be likely to park, in order to preempt the inevitable questions about all the stuff in her car. Still, if someone really needed a ride, she would oblige, but only after asking for some time to rearrange things in her car. Her desire to be helpful to others was the only motive that could outweigh her desire to hide her clutter. She knew she had a problem, one she had struggled with for most of her life. Her children knew it, too, and their not-so-subtle pressure on her to clear the clutter had seriously strained her relationships with them. Her son had read about our treatment program and had convinced her to call.

Much of Nell's home resembled her front hallway. In places where furniture should be, boxes teetered on boxes up to the ceiling. She was a Tupperware representative and received weekly shipments, but she rarely sold anything, and the boxes were everywhere.

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