Hoarding. I think of hoarders as people with stuff forming a landslide in their homes.

Until we had our basement finished. And we designated a certain part of the finished basement to be unfinished. That was when I thought of our family as hoarders. We did a lot of purging and sorting. To attempt to revamp the hoarder self image.

My husband collects music. He has 10,000 vinyl records and 8,000 CDs. While the basement was being worked on, these boxes of music were stored next to the furnace in the designated unfinished part of the basement. He also encourages others to keep their collections. Or make new collections. He is the person who, when I posted on Facebook: “What should I do with all my Martha Stewarts?” (I have been collecting the magazine since she first published. I have every issue.) My husband said, “Keep them!”

Our house is immaculate. Each room, people go into, saying, “What a nice room to read a book in!” Very sparse. I have a thing about neatness and cleanliness. You can tell. But to read a book? I spend a lot of time maintaining the neatness.

We hoard. Not only music, but Fiesta dishes. Many different kinds of china. And crystal serving dishes. Clothes. Dolls. Little porcelain shoes, also in boxes like the dolls. Bordering on hoarding.

The music on vinyl has gone into decorative crates in the finished part of the basement. The CDs in shelving in the unfinished part. However, we too have that cliched hoarders characteristic. When we wanted to find something like the wire that hooks the computer to the printer, we had to sort through a box labels “wires”, and delving into the assortment of extension cords, picture wires and Christmas light blinkers was a journey unto itself.