A Rationale for Hoarding

If you have ever watched TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive program, you have probably thought to yourself,

Dang.

And,

Seriously?

And,

Intervention! Intervention! Can we please get some intervention up in here?!

And when the program was over, before you changed the channel to Wizards of Waverly Place (or is that just me?), you probably took a moment to be seriously pensive and think:

How does that happen? Why do people become hoarders?

How does someone go from the sweet lady who likes shopping at Ikea and reading want ads to the crazy lady who has 54 dead cats buried under a collection of newspapers and pieces of furniture that were never assembled?

Well, as most things do, hoarding starts small...

(Disclaimer: I realize that this is a serious issue. I am about to make light of it. If that offends you, please stop reading. Because I hate offending people.)

...It's starts on a 105 degree Tuesday.

In a normal work office. On a normal work day.

The time is 10 minutes after lunch hour.

And the future hoarder is still hungry.

She is wondering how she can survive without 28 more grams of sugar.

Just then she sees a glint of silver glimmering from a pocket in her purse.

Just kidding, nothing's glimmering. Actually, I can't remember why she looked in her purse. But she did.

And in her purse was one very smooshed--that's right, smooshed--Special K Bar.

In fact, based on the state it was in, she probably should have thrown it away weeks ago.

But instead of following normal food rules of society, she ate it.

And it was the best 28 grams of sugar she ever had.

Just kidding. Actually, this potential future hoarder has eaten gelato in Uruguay and chocolate cake from Costco--she has had better grams of sugar. But the sugar was good.

She also found a mysterious $10 bill that she thought she had spent. So she will now probably associate hoarding with re-attaining spent money.

In case you haven't figured it out, the potential future hoarder in the story is me.

So if you see me on TLC in 10 years in a house full of kittens buried under piles of Special K wrappers, you won't have to ask how it happened. You won't have to wonder why. You won't have to ponder how a perfectly normal girl who just happens to have birthday cards saved from her 10th birthday, ended up in crazy town.

You'll know.

It was all because of a $10 bill and a smooshed Special K bar.