Underage Hoarders

One of my children is a hoarder. Pretty sure they mixed her up with another child at birth in the hospital nursery because there is no possible way this child could genetically come from me.

Anything that sits on my kitchen counter for more than 10 minutes is garbage. Seriously, I have thrown away money, cheques, tax and mortgage documents and home warranty papers.

They made my counter look all cluttery and shit.

Except she looks like my clone, so there goes the ‘switched at birth’ theory.

It must be the Stilwell genes. Thanks a lot Dylan. Leaving your socks on the stairs has now been genetically imprinted for future generations. Or it’s from my sister.

Everything is special to her. Every. Damn. Thing. Each surface, shelf, nook, cranny and corner in her room is filled with something ever so special.

My special cotton ball.

My special piece of ripped paper.

My special candy wrapper.

My special Band-Aid.

My special wad of chewed bubble gum.

My special purple button and black thread.

My special broken hair elastic.

My special 2004 wall calendar.

Precious stuffed animals by the thousands. Homemade cardboard cities from third grade. Broken crafts and random shoes. Stacks of paper with one scribble or stick man. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I can be sentimental, but unless your arts and crafts have your full name and date on them, spelled correctly...they are not worthy.

Not my fault you couldn’t print your name when you were two.

How many Build-a-Bear boxes and Happy Meal toys does one actually need to survive?? And what on earth is the point of Pokemon cards and homemade fortune tellers?

I have become like a Mexican drug lord, smuggling shitty crafts and broken crayons across the border of her room to the local dump. And she has become like a Canadian Customs Official. And Customs Officials are intimidating. They don’t even smile.

Once I made the mistake of placing my purged items in a garbage bin in the laundry room.

She saw it. Cue Armageddon. Needless to say the items were fished out and returned. I was defeated. It was a rookie mistake and this Jedi Knight needed a new strategy.

Now I use black industrial sized garbage bags and ONLY when she is out of the house. I take my lottery of swiped items directly to the trash outside and conceal the bag with coffee grinds. Sometimes I wear a disguise and pretend I have an invisibility cloak or super-sonic-speed power.

I am afraid she will walk through the door mid-mission.

The fault in this plan is that she has a WICKED memory.

“Umm, mom, what happened to my special Sponge Bob sticker that was on my side table two inches to the left of the broken marine blue crayon under my Owl magazine from 2009? You know the one; it’s the issue with the shark feature on page 47?

When I get busted, I panic and I do what any normal good mom would do.

I lie.

I tell her daddy probably moved it. Or she must have misplaced it. Or her sisters took it. Or the dog ate it. Or we can look for it later.

And then pray she doesn’t push the issue.

I have gone dumpster diving for green tissue paper and empty glitter glue bottles at 1:00 in the morning.

I’m not ashamed. Ok..I am a little.

We sat down one day in her room and worked together to make three piles.

1)Keep 2)Trash 3)Donate

The problem was our perceptions of what belonged in each pile didn’t quite correlate. Her ‘Keep’ pile was the only thing with anything in it. After a few hours of bartering like a tourist in a Mexican Flea Market, I realized the emotional trauma that ensued wasn’t good for either of us. I aborted the mission and questioned where I had screwed up in her child rearing and what attachment disorder I should diagnose her with.

The way I see it I have two options. I can continue to poach items out of her room in camouflage by moonlight.  Or I can leave it and continue to pray I will be able to find her each morning amidst the clutter.

Either way…I’m pretty sure her debut on ‘Underage Hoarders’ will be airing any day. I hope they blur out my face and disguise my voice. Like Darth Vader. I would totally sneak in a "Luke I am your father".

I’m glad she is deathly allergic to cats. I consider that a protective factor for her future.