The Stuff of Fiction

What does it mean to be the child of hoarders

One college summer when I was back sleeping in my childhood bedroom, I awoke with a dream stuck in my head. I felt compelled to finish what I had been conjuring.

“Dad, I need to make an elephant lamp. I mean, like form a wire frame around a light fixture in the shape of an elephant, and skin it with purple tissue paper mache.”

He didn’t look at me funny, he just said ok and we immediately got to work—in the basement where the magic happened, where the creative half of the biparental hoard lived in a hive of tools and tape and neighbors’ broken VCRs forever pending repair. We had whatever I needed.

[I would insert a photo of the results, but the sweet purple elephant lamp is long gone. Just use your imagination.]

When I brainstorm lists of ideas for this newsletter and prepare a big essay on “off-gassing” (my journey towards net-zero) perhaps too long for this newsletter, going back to my origin story seems like a good starting point. What is it that makes me the sort of the person who loves repurposing things, who finds great joy in discovering the perfect container or formatting a spreadsheet, who spends too many hours crafting a map for organizing this virtual Home|body here, and has an aversion to spending any money outside a Savers second hand store?

I could write plenty about how being the child of hoarders had me filled me with shame, anxiety, dread, embarrassment, disgust—and that’s all true—but I’d rather do something different here and own it with gratitude.

You’ve seen the shows; it can get really gross. This lady below on “Hoarders” (a whole schadenfreudian horror of hoarders) even hoards children—she has 14 poor kids she subjected to this nightmare. And this was a very tame episode compared to the kids in this compilation.

My parents weren’t that bad; they only had two kids and kept things somewhat in check. Or more accurately, it was us kids who kept things in check. Somehow my brother and I refused to sit back and accept we would just live this way. We actively attacked the mess, in ways that were technically wrong. When my parents went away one weekend (on a marriage retreat, of all things, and of course back then you leave your kids home alone all weekend), my brother and I, without their knowledge or permission, sold in a tag sale whatever we didn’t bag as trash. Many years later as adults, when my dad was in hospice in the living room, the clean team clicked into action again, reclaiming the parts of the house our father could no longer access.

Maybe it was our attempt at agency—even if that meant neglecting the agency of our own parents—that enabled me to take this negative and make lemonade. My second novel, I’ll admit it, is a fictionalized version of making peace with this cluttered childhood of mine. The basement freezer that spits out frozen peas when you open the jammed door is very real.

In my home and life now, the older I get the more organized I want to be. But I’m no minimalist or clean freak. I like things to be contained and have their place, but I’m free to collect within those bounds. Like this little cabinet where I save family mementos, each their own story. Or the basement shelves with labelled mason jars of craftable items inspired by my Found friend Pia. I seem to be the person who ends up unhoarding people and places where ever I go because it’s incredibly satisfying to very tangibly make something better and, more so, maybe I’ll find some shiny treasures in the piles. I love beach-combing for heart-shaped rocks. I like lists. I relish metal bits.

Behold below just a taste of the whack wonders of my parents’ house, plus cool Walkman. I battled my childhood demons every weekend for months on end as my dad lay dying, developing an addiction for the true crime podcasts starting with the great Canadian Someone Knows Something that became my soundtrack for this mission. There was nothing of particular “value” here except things that sparked joy or befuddlement. These crimes against humanity could be very comical.

The article on “How to Be Happy” from a 1953 Science Digest deserves its own post; next time!

What the hoard? Aircraft remover?, hairdressing doll, bowling ball bag of hands, "red lead" paint, defunct Sabena airlines blanket, a box of animal stoles, a walkman radio, Science Digest TOC 1953, "Microbe killer" to drink for any ailment