Leditfester
Posted on April 10, 2007
Filed Under marriage, kids, parenting, suburban joys, snark |
In the Boston Sunday Globe I found Daniel Klein’s OpEd piece entitled If We Could Cure Hoarding…, an amusing follow up to a Carey Goldberg’s ‘Buried Alive’ that ran on April 2nd. I would like to thank the Globe, Klein and Goldberg for inspiring a full blown compulsive purge of all the Madmarriage closets. Just the mere mention of apartments full of newspapers, magazines, boxes and bags triggered a lively response. We now own only the clothes on our backs and the linens on our beds and all else is at the curb awaiting the garbage crew. There is no food in the house save the morsels we are actively eating and every receipt, bill, easter decoration and child’s hand print in plaster has been deemed no longer necessary to our survival and justly discarded.
According to both articles, severe hoarding is now considered a facet of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And I am frightened that my OCD tendencies may take an unexpected lurch in the wrong direction and I may slowly become my Mother In Law who, god love her, is adored and saintlike and has only one suspicious trait and that is the tendency to hoard things like her grown sons’ baby clothes that are mildewing and yellowing with age in the nether regions of upstairs closets and the disposable chopsticks that come with Canton Cuisine takeout or whole armoires, yes armoires, because who knows when she might need another armoire and it’s best to be safe and grab up every armoire she stumbles across and cram them into upstairs bedrooms and the dining room and in front of the living room fireplace. She spends whole weekends stumbling through estate sales sorting through great accumulations of stuff that fellow hoarders are only willing to part with in death.
The Buried Alive article points out that hoarding is an “impulse control disorder and that those who hoard often experience active pleasure as they acquire possessions.” According to Goldberg, a study in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy suggests that hoarding is often a result of a excessive benevolence. “A caring person might think of all the friends and relatives who might conceivably wring benefit from a certain item and therefore feel compelled to acquire the item.” This completely explains the MIL’s fondness for all things Tuesday Morning, the trembling high she achieves purchasing vast quantities of tchokes manufactured in China and doling them out as Christmas presents or Easter presents or I Just Came Over to Babysit and Thought You Could Use These Hand Towels presents. After ten years, Goldberg’s article has finally allowed me to part with the guilt that is the immediate and ruthless culling of the Tuesday Morning crap. I used to think that getting rid of any of this well intentioned, but let’s face it, irregular or poorly manufactured stuff of the seasonal variety was deplorable behavior, a sure sign that I don’t love my MIL quite enough, proof that I am in fact a VERY bad person. But now I realize just accepting these things into my home, even briefly, is true love, genuine benevolence. She gets to experience the active pleasure of purchase and I quietly fulfill my own impulsive tendencies in their ‘everything must go, take no prisoners and hold on to your sandwich’ manifestation. As it turns out, me and the MIL are locked in a complex dance, each one enabling the other.
In Klein’s piece he humorously explains the benefits of the drug Leditgo, manufactured by the fictional pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithorElse. According to Klein, individuals previously given to amassing, “diaries, love letters, their children’s pottery class projects, National Geographics, Monkees records and un-matched socks” are willing to part with these treasures after only a week’s dose of Leditgo. And after a few months on the stuff, “they were purging their entire homes of no-longer-wanted items…Old mattresses and broken lamps were the first to go, but shabby husbands and worn out lover soon followed. In a number of cases, slacker offspring were tossed out an left at the curb with the other detritus.” It would appear that I am blessed as my body manufactures its own ample supply of Leditgo. I know this because I have absolutely no tolerance for sub-par lighting, old flames, the letters written to or received from old flames, last week’s New Yorker, Journey albums, children’s uderwear that has been soiled even once, sheets, blankets or pillowcases that have been thrown up on and, there are days, that I consider the shabby husband and wonder if he shouldn’t be recycled because their must be some desperate divorcee who would better appreciate his flatulence and the ability to melt an heirloom tea kettle on an open flame by forgetting to fill it with water before bringing it to a boil.
While I should really get my MIL a bottle of this Leditgo stuff so she could move about her home without having to pick her way through a maze of rocking chairs and drink carts and hope chests and armoires, I should also investigate the antidote for Leditgo. If the cure for hoarding is available, then there must be a restorative for those of us who suffer the opposite affliction. Perhaps an elixir called Leditfester, in capsule form. Please, Mr. Klein, it’s not just the collectors that suffer. Those of us tortured by bulimia of the soul need help as well. And my shabby husband and our slacker offspring might thank you for finding it.
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6 Responses to “Leditfester”
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Ahh, I knew we were alike.
I need me some Leditfester.
I am known around my house for my tendency to ditch-too-quick.
brilliant post! great to see you’ve finally accepted the dance with the mil!
you know, i am also in need of leditgo. perhaps you can recommend me for the show - clean sweep - because i don’t think i can let it go on my own.
am laughing really hard at the canine brokeback mountain clip!!
Truth be told, why keep two children?
Ohhhh I really like gws above. Who are you?
You must have seen those 9 photos that ran in the Globe the preceeding Tuesday showing various states of clutter/hoarding. I got more grief from people about both the state of my house and office. Oh well.
Just a few years ago I would have been slipping Leditgo into my Mother’s cocktail but this all turned around when I took a little backpacking trip to Europe. Turns out that my Mother hordes useful stuff along with that tacky, shellacked driftwood coffee table and the pots from no fewer than eight (yes eight) broken coffee makers. She totally outfitted me and the spouse with travel sized stuff, mesh shower bags, money belts etc. We estimated that she saved us about $50 with all that crap. Of course, if she purged just a little the folks could seal off half of the house and save hundreds a year in heating bills. Hmmm….