Hoarders

This morning on the web news, there was an article about an elderly Calgary woman who is a hoarder, and how they are trying to seek help for her. Hoarders are, generally speaking, elderly people who keep what most of us would consider junk... and keep it to a whole other level than we do! There is an A&E TV show about hoarders and my mouth just falls open sometimes at the piles of stuff. People have trouble moving around... the bed is covered with stuff... and they don't want people to come over and visit. It's gone way beyond cleaning up and decluttering! And I wonder at that... wonder at the level of consumerism that our culture has taken on... Where things become more valuable than people. Where things become the level of our relationships. This one lady refused to un-hoard her house, even though it meant she would lose contact with her daughter, who had had enough. Nowadays, they are classifying hoarding as a mental disorder... but we all have a little streak of hoarding in us... Especially if our parents grew up during the Depression and learned to keep everything to reuse it again! But there is always a balance and everything, and hoarding takes it way over the edge! What also strikes me, is that its so clear to us... and so "not clear" to the hoarders... And I wonder about the things that we do that are so "clear" to others... and so "not clear" to us!