Adult Readers

So, I have a lot of books.  Enough that I could open up a small bookstore- okay, I already have an online account where I sell my books.  It's surprising that I didn't major in library and media sciences- I really enjoy books- now that I can actually sit down and read them.  I have surrounded my students in books.  I have a huge collection of Children's books.  When I moved from one school to another I did get rid of some of the books, but held on to the hardback ones.  I also knew my niece would NEED books- so I didn't purge my library.  I even had a stamp made that said "This book belongs Lisa's Library" that I stamped in every book I bought for my students.

In addition to the hoard at my house, I kept my past 2nd grade classroom hoard in a storage unit.  I had over 20 boxes of books that I needed to go through to figure out what to bring into my 5th grade classroom.  The challenge was to keep the books that were already active on my seller account separate from the ones that were not listed, while organizing the books.  The ultimate solution was to delete my inventory and sort the books.  The personal organizer helped me with this, along with her assistant and my "assistant", the little sister.  All of the reading materials were organized, the organizers labeled the boxes and tubs the following: kids books, magazines, and adult books.  Yes, I now had an extensive collection of adult books. I was a bit floored myself. Maybe I'll be able to make some more money selling these newly categorized books.

Designer Mice

Did I mention I had a house mouse? It hoarded granola bars. It was a sneaky mouse. 

This is the one year anniversary of the discovery.

  

According to the lovely free on-line dictionary, Wikipedia, The house mouse is a small rodent, a mouse, one of the most numerous species of the genus Mus.
As a wild animal the house mouse mainly lives associated with humans, causing damage to crops and stored food. The house mouse has been domesticated as the pet or fancy mouse. 

Luckily for me, my fancy mouse liked to live alone behind the grate under my new LG fridge.  It made a nice home in between the compressor and the ice cube filter hose, after chewing through the power cord.

Flashback to 10/2009:
In a panic I called Kate asking her if she could drop by my house because my outlet was dead as I walked into worked with a reusable shopping bag full of food.  I had checked all of my breakers and it was the only thing that made sense.  When I checked in with her later on, she saved what she could and told she saw some granola bars that fell behind the fridge and some mouse poop.  Then she added that she had pulled out 21 granola bars from behind the metal grate.  Each of the granola bars had 1 bite out of them, with one corner torn off.

So much for going grocery shopping the night before and now I had to worry about vermin.

I know how to problem solve and the outlet wasn't dead.  Coco and the Abbycat were going nuts sniffing the fridge and the cubby where the fridge was.  I didn't see anymore mouse poop, I sprayed it down with another layer of Clorox, was armed with my Sargent Steamer, and had 4 mouse traps set.  The pets were also guarding the fridge and dishwasher. 

Two weeks passed and nothing happened- I even went to a specialized farmer/rancher store to get big mouse/rat traps.  I knew it wasn't a rat- the droppings were small that I had found.  The cat and the dog didn't change places either- they guarded the fridge as if it were full of gold! I didn't hear the mouse and didn't see the mouse.


Four weeks passed and I found Pink Panther insulation on the floor.  I didn't know if Coco had gotten into something of if the mouse was living under the dishwasher.  
TIP: When you can't pull out the dishwasher it's because a) it's jammed or b) the people who lived in your house before you tiled it in so you have to pull up the floor to get it out. 

It was 8:30pm on the following Thursday night when I arrived home from math class and heard a screeching, eeeeking, god-awful sound inside my house as I'm unlocking my door.  Mind you, I have no children living at my house.  As I walked inside, my hall light is burned out and the shrill sound was growing louder and as I feel around for the nearest light switch. I finally looked down stairs.  Abbycat was playing with the damn house mouse!

Good Kitty

 

 

The mystery was solved.

The house mouse was so massive, it didn't fit in the mouse traps which is why they were never set off.  The granola bar stash finally made sense and it was probably snacking on some dog food.  Due to the fact that I had sent Coco to my dad's house, there wasn't any dog food and the mouse was hungry and was going for the cat food down stairs.  Abby was having the time of her life, I was trying to find something to trap the mouse, when Abby looked up and the mouse took off.  I heard it scurry upstairs and I watched it high-tail it out the dog door and it was gone!  

I'm happy to report that we did NOT find any mummified mice during the cleaning process.  It was also 34 degrees in the house the following week- the thermal coupler in the furnace broke.

Yes, there is a Coco in my life

This is Coco.  She's my hand-me-down dog from my previous neighbor.  She has issues too. When we cleaned house we found her stash of bones in every corner of the rooms she could get in. Bones were under blankets, in between couch cushions, the stairs and in my mini-shag carpet (this is on the "to replace" list).  Coco was "absent" during the filming process because she's not so nice around men and needs boot camp to help her overcome her "naughty dog" habits. As soon as she set paw in the house she went crazy looking for her bones.  She raced through the house, circling round and round, sniffing the perimeter of my 1100 sq. ft. house.  She dug up my newly made bed looking for buried bones in the depths of my deep-pocketed sheets, nosed around under my bed, and sniffed down the cat over and over, as if she pocketed all of the milk bones we owned, and was holding them ransom.  Little did I know, Coco had a stash in the back yard. The combination of snow in the morning and sun in the afternoon made for a lovely mix of mud on the carpet, along with a perfectly seasoned knotted-rawhide bone that she was given the previous December.  Bones kept showing up day after day and she was putting in twice the amount of effort tucking them in the corners of the furniture and under my pillows.  There is nothing better than finding a freshly chewed up rawhide bone under the pillow while being growled at by your own dog.
Coco is now hoarding milk bones.  She saves them in a pile next to "her" chair and eats them when I get home from work.  She gets one bone in the morning when I leave and one when I get home.  Her latest trick was stealing bones from the cookie jar- she never even though of doing this before. She can't even drink out of the toilet, how was she getting to her jar? She misses her old stash of assorted flavors of bones.

Coco needs her rest- this is how I find her when I get home from work. 



One of Mira's favorite phrases to say as a 2 year old was "Coco Loco"- I couldn't agree more.  This is what you get when you mix a Dachshund and a Jack Russell Terrier. 

$$$ Consignment Cash $$$

One of my favorite places to consign my "goods" is at Emilie Jayne in Salt Lake City on the corner of 800 E. and 800 S. housed in an old grocery store.  I've been going here ever since Jayne opened the store years ago to shop and consign items.  Anyhow- when going through my collection of Pyrex, Glassbake, and Fireware milkglass (white baking pans, bowls, etc.) I had a difficult time letting it go and imagining it sitting in the 1-800-JUNK truck.  I held on to them for the summer and couldn't find a good way to display them and decided to consign them.  I kept 3 out of the 50 pieces and brought the rest to Jayne to sell at her store.  The majority of the pieces were vintage and were all in complete sets.  Being a hoarder, I had spent countless hours scouting second hand stores to complete these sets over a period of 5 years.  After a short mourning period, I parted with the dishes, along with 2 boxes of "stuff" on September 4th. 
All of my goods that I dropped off have sold in less than 2 months and I have a little over $200 to add to the bank account for the home improvement fund!  Yahoo!

Check out these links below to see what the store looks like and have written about Emilie Jayne .
Vintage Mixer
Your Heart Out

 

Ta-da...Transformation!

When I bought my house just over 3 years ago I had imagined a perfect art studio/craft room in the 2nd bedroom. As I moved in, switched jobs and started teaching at a public, year-round school, the "getting organized" part never took place. Three years later I couldn't even walk in the room. It was a disaster area, yet I knew what was in there, at times went crawling over the top of for the important things, and tried to ignore the mess (it's hard to do this when the door won't shut!). This was also when I knew I was hitting my all time low and luckily I was okay about going back to a therapist on my own before I was turned over to Hoarders!

A big part of my life has been art and crafting.  I've had supplies for this since pre-school- it's all I ever wanted for gifts throughout elementary.  I also have an undergraduate art degree.  I have a craft hoard- sure it's been thinned down, but I'm still working on this.  I'm going to be selling a bunch of these items (which are all new) on etsy when I get my shop up.  My first goal was to get this art studio/craft room in place.  I knew if I could get back to the "art part" of my life, I'd feel a bit like myself again, and recognize why I love creating.
Fast forward....after the room was emptied and bare, including the carpet, I went to work with Kate.

I had bought the paint 12 months prior thinking I would be able to get it done the summer before (I have such high expectations- though not always realistic). I even paid full price at Lowe's for this particular Waverly color rather than settling for the $5 oops gallons!  IKEA was the best choice for the type of desk and counter tops I needed (some were even in the "AS-IS" section) and the flooring is actually one 16'x11' piece of vinyl.  I had tried bamboo flooring, but soon found that the foundation was not level and the builders choose not to make it plumb when pouring the concrete.  This project kept my summer going, kept me happy, and is finally done!

Yes, everything is organized and has a home.

Since you were asking...

Yes, I am a hoarder.  More specifically a recovering hoarder. Yes it is embarrassing, expensive, and inconvenient.  Yes, I've had a lot of help to get to this place in my life where I can actually admit that I am a hoarder, but most importantly I was finally able to ask for help (with a lot of help from the little sister).  The "asking for help" part took me 10 years.  After Kate submitted the application to Hoarders, I was at a huge loss and knew I was in deep- I just thought I was a collector, rather than a Hoarder.  I didn't have garbage and crap all over my house- I just had a lot of stuff.  I was making money dropping this "stuff" at the consignment store and selling books on-line, yet it didn't look like anything was leaving the house. 
Five months later, a clean up crew of 20 people (a professional organizer, the local 1-800 Junk crew, my parents, sister, and Eric), and 400 small boxes my house was emptied out.  I donated 2 tons of new and gently used items to be resold and another 2 tons of stuff to be recycled, or thrown out (these items couldn't be donated because they were broken or were considered "garbage").
It's been ten months since the Hoarders experience began.  I go to therapy weekly, have spent around 40 hours working with a personal organizer, and have made a lot of progress.  I've had more good days than bad ones.  Have had set backs and have had to make a lot of changes.  I still think about my "stuff", hope that it has a good home, yet I don't miss it. It's amazing how much life those items took away from me.
The new goal is to re-purpose the things that I did hold onto and/or get rid of them, continue to stay in the recovering hoarder category, and bust out my craft and art supplies.  I finally finished the 2nd bedroom to create my studio.  It's been a 3 year "work in progress".