A Little announcement...

       Pssst...I have an announcement!

Did I ever mention that I have a shop on amazon.com?
Probably not, because I've kept it quiet- same thing with my eBay shop.  I also have an Etsy shop too.  I use the money to contribute to the $525 monthly payments to my school loan debt- free money, in a sense, for things I already have and need to get rid of.
I probably haven't "advertised" my shops because I don't want to hear how appalled people (who I know and care about) are about the "stuff" I've held onto and didn't get rid of when my good friends, Hoarders, visited.
If you are appalled, keep your mouth quiet, and buy something!  It will make you feel better because you contributed to my therapy of getting these treasures out of my house!

Now that the boyfriend and I have hit the 5 year mark, I'll share my amazon.com shop, which is now 6 years old. The boyfriend is not available for sharing, so sorry.

http://www.amazon.com/shops.fritzandlola


Soon I'll figure out how to link back to old posts...you can read about the Hoarders experience in the first post on this blog.
 

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".