Life Beyond Hoarding

I called my mom today to chat (I need to plan out creative ideas for work and I think better when I talk it through). She accidentally switched the call to FaceTime so I zoomed in on my dogs  and had her looking at my hot pink socks while I wandered around the house. Yesterday was trash day, so I went through the fridge and emptied everything out, trashing old stuff and cleaning out the shelves. I reorganized so that all the veggies were on top, within easy grabbing reach (since then I've realized that apparently you're not supposed to do that because you'll go to eat some cucumber and it will be frozen, but that's besides the point). Since I was on FaceTime with my mom and I thought my fridge looked pretty, I decided to show it to her. She was impressed. But she also said to me – so cavalierly I couldn't believe it, "I don't clean my fridge, but that's nice." And she laughed. She laughed . I know she doesn't clean her fridge. I lived w...

So I did it. It's done. We woke up at four am. He packed his half of the overnight bag just in case we had to borrow money from my brother and stay in a hotel (or in case the house was too gross and we needed a change of clothes after). I made coffee. He started to drive. We played the alphabet game (which is pretty rough in rural Pennsylvania). He won. Twice. Anxiousness was giving me heartburn so I was munching on Tums while he snacked on frosted animal crackers. The drive took four hours. I had told him about how disgusting our toilet was (I still don't know why it was like that, my brother and I have tried to clean it so many times), so we stopped to get gas and pee before going to my house. We went to grab bagels for my family, but when I asked the bagel guy who knows my family what they always order, he told me that they had already been in. So my boyfriend and I just ate our bagels in the car. We pulled up to the house. I felt weird. I didn't know if I was ...

So this is that weekend. I'm supposed to go up to the house and say goodbye to it and clear out all my stuff. I am not looking forward to it at all. But it might not happen this weekend. The roads are wicked icy apparently -- or they're going to be. There are two different routes I could go with it: John's Plan My boyfriend, John, comes home from work tonight. We go to bed super early (like seven o'clock). We wake up at 4am (ugh) and drive 4.5 hours to my house. We do something (????) with the dogs. We clean from 10am until we're finished. John expects 4-6 hours. Then we drive home. If we get started at 5, we should be here around 9-10pm. We sleep all Sunday, get up to watch the game, probably sleep some more. Pros: fast, gets it done with quickly, little time for feelings, can sleep all the next day Cons: little time for feelings, John drives 9 hours in one day (and cleans and puts up with me) Jacob's Plan My brother, Jacob, drives from my house ...