A Self-Confessed Hoarder’s Christmas List

I didn’t think I was a hoarder. I don’t hang on to broken phones or stacks of old magazines. Our house isn’t cluttered with rubbish, weeks of unwashed dishes, or indescribable things I see on TV shows where hoarders have a meltdown if someone tries to throw away an old slipper. You can easily walk through our doors, you can see (most of) the worktops, you can sit on our sofas and chairs, and tell me the carpet’s colour.

Sure, there’s a pair of jeans and a hoodie thrown over the chair in the bedroom: too clean to go in the laundry but too dirty to go back in the closet. There’s a stack of post, books, and papers for work on the table that I need to sort out. There is a pile of shoes by the door, kicked off in haste, a sign that a family lives here. And there are crumbs on the black kitchen worktop that I can never seem to keep tidy.

But I’m certainly not a hoarder.

But when we went around our missional community the other week declaring if we were Hoarders or Chuckers, I had second thoughts. As my turn to share grew closer, my mind frantically ran through our house, under my bed, in the loft space. Then I remembered the stuff in my mother’s garage, abandoned and collecting dust for twenty years: childhood toys, the gifts given on our wedding day, the souvenirs from countries I explored as a young person. Quickly my mind returned to the European side of the Atlantic, to a friend’s garage, where my own children’s childhood toys, some furniture and other bits lay untouched since we moved two years ago. And finally, my mind drifted next door to the garage where tools, golf clubs, bikes, and outdoor equipment were kindly stored for us by others sitting in the circle, since we now live in rented accommodation that doesn’t even have a garden shed.

It was my turn.

As I opened my mouth to say, I don’t think I’m a hoarder, my brain did the maths.

Three

garages

of

stuff.

I swallowed hard, felt like I was at an AA meeting, and confessed to my friends, I am a hoarder.

I have stored up fifty years of treasures on earth.

I have worshipped things.

I have lived in fear. Of not having. Of losing. Of letting go.

I have let the what ifs guide me. What if I get rid of it and then need it? What if I give it away but it’s actually worth something?

At that moment, I vowed to begin clearing a half-century of clutter from my life (and the garages). But more than that, I vowed to start collecting the right stuff. Stuff that makes my heart happy.

So instead of getting more stuff this year, here’s a wish list for a self-confessed hoarder:

• Cwtsh with me on the couch and watch a film that makes us laugh until we cry, or cry until we laugh in nervous embarrassment.
• Lie with me in a field under the starry canopy, your finger guiding me to Orion, Ursa’s Major and Minor, or Scorpius with its tail.
• Take me to the beach and teach me to skip stones on the water.
• Show me how to build a fire, dig a pit, and slow roast a lamb, the fat running down our arms as we savour every morsel.
• Hike with me through ancient forestry, through a waterfall, and past a lazy herd of cows.
• Forage with me and make some tipple we can drink together on a mid-summer’s night.
• Plant seeds with me, the rich earth getting under our nails, and marvel at the abundance that comes with patience and time.
• Put a record on the turntable, close your eyes with me and imagine we’re in Vienna, Liverpool or Nashville, Tennessee.
• Give your money to causes that alleviate others’ pain, then teach me to make bread, our muscles aching but our hope rising with the dough.
• Sit with me in the darkness and wait for the light to come.
• While I can still remember and know who you are, put your phone away and make memories with me.

Feed my heart, not my addiction.

Instead of presents, give me presence.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.