Helping a Compulsive Hoarder

I don't know if you caught Oprah yesterday, the second part is on today about compulsive hoarders.

I find it extremely interesting because much of the psychology applies to simple "clutter bugs" as well.

I had an epiphany this morning, I am a paper hoarder.

I am looking around and seeing piles of files and baskets of papers that I have many times gone through, it is an ongoing job and still, I can't find things when I need them, most importantly, I don't do some things that are very important and have cost me money because it's buried in a pile, sometimes I can't find things, my office is cluttered with them and the sorting and "head space" that they take does affect my quality of life, and of my kids, because they use my office too, and they don't have me when I am so often dealing with it.

The funny thing is that I really couldn't tell you where most of it comes from, I don't print a lot of things, but a lot of it is soap making stuff that I did print years ago and haven't used or other business records that I no longer need.

I have already come a long way with this but I need to do more. I will be addressing this more fully when I have some down time over Christmas but meantime I am going to do it in small bits.

I have another problem which is a painfully slow internet connection. I have tried everything - I now have 3! computers in my office, a dial up and satellite connection and it still took about 2 hours to do 2 posts to my blog yesterday (I had to pull some amazon code, do a bit of research etc)

It's crazy, but I am going to use the time more wisely and sort paper when I need to, it is always worse at night. And try customer service to see if there may be something I can do (again).

I have put up a small series of posts about compulsive hoarding as well as a video at Compulsive Hoarding if you are interested.

Do you have a problem area? What is your "sore spot"?