Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

     If there is anything scarier than being labeled a hoarder I’m not sure what it is. The kids and I watched a show on television this past weekend and they discussed hoarding and the physiological issues surrounding the practice.

     I’ve known a few houses in my day that I would consider the people hoarders. My late Uncle Robert handed down his love of hoarding somewhat useless piece of paper with historical notes written on it to me, which explains the look of my office at times with it’s stacks and stacks of notes and photos and books.

     It isn’t that I can’t throw anything away. Quite the opposite in fact. I enjoy immensely the late nights where I get in my “throw away” moods and start tossing things I’ve set back over the years just in case I needed it some day. Of course, it never fails after I’ve thrown something out, no less than two weeks later I’m looking for it because someone has asked me for information.

     I’ve tried to become more organized and even have a file cabinet at my desk side which has more than enough room to store all the small newspaper clippings, old envelopes and photos in, but trying to dive into that to arrange it into some logical order is mostly an uphill climb. It isn’t that I would be lost without my unique system of stacks of papers, but the cross filing of things would become a nightmare.

     Take for instance an old photo of my Great Grandfather and his high school class from Stuart. Should I put it in the Weesner family folder, or should it go into the small folder of items that concern the history of Stuart? Certainly you can see my dilemma. It would only take one small mistake in classifying some treasure and I would spend sleepless nights pulling out file after file, only to sit down on the floor and get lost in the contents of things I wasn’t looking for to start with.

     Perhaps I should take time to put things into larger boxes? Oh, no, wait…I’ve already got those as well. Filled with mementos from high school and FFA and the farm, and scores and scores of things I won’t ever really find a use for until just after I’ve tossed them out. I would hate to get a phone call from someone asking me where all the post offices were in Guthrie County, or even if I have a township map that shows the ghost towns in Wright County. I would be remiss in my duty to part with such treasures and yet part of me finds the clutter somewhat unbearable.

     I take solace in the fact that I’ve not got a hobby collecting things. Except for the model trains that take up half of my office, and the stacks of Centennial books from across Iowa that rises and falls like the crashing waves of the ocean. It isn’t as though I collect weird things. Oh, except for that box of empty jars that have been sitting on my kitchen floor all winter and the various margarine and sour cream tubs that have come to my house filled with goodies from church dinners and Grandmas house.

     No, no, my hoarding tendencies aren’t all that bad. I can see most of the floor in every room on a given day, except if I’ve opened a box out of the closet and started to separate things into piles across the living room floor only to become distracted by the couch, which has been beckoning me to take a nap. I’ll clean up those piles later; it isn’t as though I worry about company stopping by out here in the country anyway.

    The more I think about my hoarding, I’ve come to realize that I may not be ready for a spot on prime time quite yet, but I probably should try to clean up a few piles while it is still early and I have the energy. I think I’ll start with the bank box I just brought down from my upstairs closet while I was looking for pictures of the Methodist Church in Dexter. Yes. That will be a good place to start, and with tomorrow being trash day it just makes sense to throw out all those things I no longer need. Oh look! Unopened Christmas cards from 2005, right here next to a 15 page dissertation on why Dexter’s business district is called “uptown” instead of “downtown”! Oy! This is going to be a long night.

See you next week…Remember, we’re all in this together.