|
"If you've ever dreamed about discovering Aladdin's Cave, read Nona Smith's Stuffed. When Smith and her husband are put in charge of liquidating a hoarder's treasure-crammed estate, they must move heaven and earth and fight a devil or two to complete the job. Smith presents this tale of acquisitiveness gone awry with grace, compassion, and plenty of humor. You'll never think about your own stuff the same way again." --Susan Bono, editor and publisher of Tiny Lights: A Journey of Personal Narrative
"Stuffed is a hard story told softly. Bridging the gulf between collecting and its less attractive cousin, hoarding, it combines the thrills of a treasure hunt with the occasional frisson of horror. It explores the elements of a tragic compulsion with humor, but always maintains compassion for those who never learned to let go. --Cynthia Wall, psychotherapist and author of The Courage to Trust: a guide to building deep and lasting relationships |
The opening of Nona Smith's Stuffed, Emptying the Hoarder’s Nest
I don’t possess a hoarding gene. I own no workbench piled high with broken items I might someday get around to fixing. I don’t save that one earring hoping its missing twin will turn up. No clothes linger in my closet waiting for fashion to return them to vogue. Books I’ve read get passed along. I even clean out my recipe files.
My husband Art and I used to watch the television show Hoarders. Like a rubber-necker at the scene of an accident, I was curious about what happened to those people and their stuff, but I never related to them.
Some of my friends are hoarders---intelligent, reasonable people, who collect things: empty boxes, articles from newspapers, silver trays inherited from great aunts that take up closet space and never get used. I don’t do that. Which is why I didn’t suspect hoarding could become a problem for me. I was wrong.
Thirty months ago my husband’s friend Linda died, leaving Art the trustee of her estate, including the remains of her late husband’s trust. In the eight years since her husband’s death, Linda changed nothing. Sold nothing. Gave nothing away. Not his clothing. Not the stocks they’d purchased in a better economy. Not subscriptions to magazines he could no longer read.
Art knew the couple collected things. He’d been in the apartment building they owned. He was aware that except for one rent-paying tenant, the rest of the two-bedroom apartments overflowed with his friends’ stuff. He’d seen the condition of the basement. He knew about the computer repair shop. The warehouse in Albany. The two houses in southern California. But not until he became responsible for all of it did he fully grasp the situation.
We stood together in the living room of the apartment the couple shared for decades, and I turned to Art. “Did you know about this?”
“Yeah,” he said. He sounded stunned and looked around as if seeing the place for the first time. “But I didn’t think they’d die.”
We took in the chaos: hundreds of stuffed animals (mostly teddy bears), computer screens and keyboards in various states of repair and disrepair, tools of every kind, mechanical music machines. We saw apothecary jars, botanical prints, Navajo rugs and jewelry-making equipment. In the kitchen, first-print coin sets crammed a cabinet under the stove, unopened coke bottles from the 1950’s and glass paperweights that looked like objects d’art filled the cupboards. In one bedroom, the closet shelves over-flowed with antique metal toys. A large collection of flashlights crowded the closet floor. Scattered around the room, we found old radios and rusty cooking implements amid boxes of unsharpened pencils and dozens of still-pinned-and-folded, never worn plaid shirts. A hall closet swelled with table linens for parties they’d never hosted. In Linda’s bedroom, sweet hand-pinched, clay animals lined the shelves, and teddy bears were everywhere.
Some of the items we knew were rare and valuable; some had been improperly stored and lost whatever value they might have had. Moths had eaten sections of the Navajo rugs. Dampness bled one botanical print into another. Many items were duplicated and in their original packaging: sets of stainless stacking bowls, rolls of thirty-five millimeter film, cartons of Scotch tape, CDs of The Sound of Music. Two hefty, sealed cardboard boxes from England bearing the Steiff label held sizeable twin teddy bears, tucked away like Sleeping Beauty.
We walked through the four apartments, assaying their contents, trying to make sense of where to start dissembling this estate. After two hours, we ended up back in Linda’s apartment where the teddy bears occupied all the best seats.
“This creeps me out,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“No kidding.” Art looked downcast as he ushered me out and locked the door.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Finally, I left our warm bed, sat at the computer, and Googled “hoarders.” On the Mayo Clinic site I read that hoarding, “the excessive collection of items along with the inability to discard them,” falls on the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorder. A section of the brain called the anterior cingulate controls decision-making, problem solving, and spatial orientation, and operates differently in the hoarder than in the average person. Understanding that hoarding is a compulsion was a great relief to me, and I was pleased there was no blame involved. It wasn’t anyone’s fault they hoarded, but rather a dysfunction of their anterior cingulate.
I understand compulsions. Mine run toward organizing, putting like items together and in place, throwing out useless stuff. In fact, I could imagine that my compulsion would enable me to effectively work with theirs. I slipped back into bed and had no trouble falling asleep.
The next morning I felt full of energy and enthusiasm. “Hey,” I said to Art. “I get it now, and I know where we’ll begin.”
Art looked up from behind his coffee cup, waiting for me to continue.
“First, we’ll sort the teddy bears for sale and donation. Then we’ll locate all the Navajo rugs and move them to a single room so we can get to the glass paperweights and apothecary jars and box them up. This will give us room to maneuver the mechanical musical instruments into the open to be viewed for appraisal.”
I was on it
My husband Art and I used to watch the television show Hoarders. Like a rubber-necker at the scene of an accident, I was curious about what happened to those people and their stuff, but I never related to them.
Some of my friends are hoarders---intelligent, reasonable people, who collect things: empty boxes, articles from newspapers, silver trays inherited from great aunts that take up closet space and never get used. I don’t do that. Which is why I didn’t suspect hoarding could become a problem for me. I was wrong.
Thirty months ago my husband’s friend Linda died, leaving Art the trustee of her estate, including the remains of her late husband’s trust. In the eight years since her husband’s death, Linda changed nothing. Sold nothing. Gave nothing away. Not his clothing. Not the stocks they’d purchased in a better economy. Not subscriptions to magazines he could no longer read.
Art knew the couple collected things. He’d been in the apartment building they owned. He was aware that except for one rent-paying tenant, the rest of the two-bedroom apartments overflowed with his friends’ stuff. He’d seen the condition of the basement. He knew about the computer repair shop. The warehouse in Albany. The two houses in southern California. But not until he became responsible for all of it did he fully grasp the situation.
We stood together in the living room of the apartment the couple shared for decades, and I turned to Art. “Did you know about this?”
“Yeah,” he said. He sounded stunned and looked around as if seeing the place for the first time. “But I didn’t think they’d die.”
We took in the chaos: hundreds of stuffed animals (mostly teddy bears), computer screens and keyboards in various states of repair and disrepair, tools of every kind, mechanical music machines. We saw apothecary jars, botanical prints, Navajo rugs and jewelry-making equipment. In the kitchen, first-print coin sets crammed a cabinet under the stove, unopened coke bottles from the 1950’s and glass paperweights that looked like objects d’art filled the cupboards. In one bedroom, the closet shelves over-flowed with antique metal toys. A large collection of flashlights crowded the closet floor. Scattered around the room, we found old radios and rusty cooking implements amid boxes of unsharpened pencils and dozens of still-pinned-and-folded, never worn plaid shirts. A hall closet swelled with table linens for parties they’d never hosted. In Linda’s bedroom, sweet hand-pinched, clay animals lined the shelves, and teddy bears were everywhere.
Some of the items we knew were rare and valuable; some had been improperly stored and lost whatever value they might have had. Moths had eaten sections of the Navajo rugs. Dampness bled one botanical print into another. Many items were duplicated and in their original packaging: sets of stainless stacking bowls, rolls of thirty-five millimeter film, cartons of Scotch tape, CDs of The Sound of Music. Two hefty, sealed cardboard boxes from England bearing the Steiff label held sizeable twin teddy bears, tucked away like Sleeping Beauty.
We walked through the four apartments, assaying their contents, trying to make sense of where to start dissembling this estate. After two hours, we ended up back in Linda’s apartment where the teddy bears occupied all the best seats.
“This creeps me out,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“No kidding.” Art looked downcast as he ushered me out and locked the door.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Finally, I left our warm bed, sat at the computer, and Googled “hoarders.” On the Mayo Clinic site I read that hoarding, “the excessive collection of items along with the inability to discard them,” falls on the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorder. A section of the brain called the anterior cingulate controls decision-making, problem solving, and spatial orientation, and operates differently in the hoarder than in the average person. Understanding that hoarding is a compulsion was a great relief to me, and I was pleased there was no blame involved. It wasn’t anyone’s fault they hoarded, but rather a dysfunction of their anterior cingulate.
I understand compulsions. Mine run toward organizing, putting like items together and in place, throwing out useless stuff. In fact, I could imagine that my compulsion would enable me to effectively work with theirs. I slipped back into bed and had no trouble falling asleep.
The next morning I felt full of energy and enthusiasm. “Hey,” I said to Art. “I get it now, and I know where we’ll begin.”
Art looked up from behind his coffee cup, waiting for me to continue.
“First, we’ll sort the teddy bears for sale and donation. Then we’ll locate all the Navajo rugs and move them to a single room so we can get to the glass paperweights and apothecary jars and box them up. This will give us room to maneuver the mechanical musical instruments into the open to be viewed for appraisal.”
I was on it
"To find out how this amazing and eclectic estate gets settled and how the various collections find new homes, you'll have to read the rest of the book. You'll never look at your own stuff the same way again." Nona Smith
