Extreme Makeover: Kitchen Drawer Edition
A tale of six full dumpsters and three empty junk drawers
I live across the street from a hoarder. Lived, maybe. I’m not quite sure if they died or are in the process of moving. Perhaps they’re just turning over a new leaf. I’d like to be able to tell you, but even though I live across the street from them I couldn’t pick their face out of a lineup for a million dollars, much less know what is happening to them.
Though I don’t know their name or face, I have known of their hoarding since shortly after we bought our house two years ago. It was hard to miss since the curtains were always open. Whenever I looked out my windows I would see into their overcrowded dining room. In it, a table stacked high with papers and boxes surrounded by more tables with more papers and boxes. You’d think someone might want to hide that mess from passers-by, but my guess is the curtains were perpetually open because it would be impossible to access them.
Last weekend there was a flurry of activity around that house. Cars parked side by side so deep in the driveway that even more vehicles now overflowed onto the street in front of my house. I know this is irrational, but I despise when people park in front of my house. Get off my damn lawn!
On Monday, two giant haul away dumpsters were dropped off in their driveway. And I do mean giant. I looked up the company that rents them, and they claim to have 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 yard dumpsters. (I assume that is cubic yards because a 90 foot long dumpster seems insane and impossible) I’m not sure of the exact size of the ones in question, but they were at least 6 feet tall and maybe 20 feet long. Simply massive.
Early Tuesday morning, people started swarming around the property like little worker ants. They exited their trucks, cars, and SUVs, and they flooded into the house. Every time one of them would exit the house they carried giant bins worth of garbage. Within no time one of the two dumpsters was full.
As the second was being laboriously filled, my whole house started to rumble. I looked outside to find a big tow-style truck with another empty dumpster to drop off. After thirty minutes of careful maneuvering from the driver, one receptacle was hauled away and another was left in its place. I couldn’t believe they could fill up two of these things and still need another one!
Well my surprise only grew on Wednesday morning. While I was changing yet another dirty diaper, I looked out of my window. Both dumpsters were completely full. So high were these garbage mountains that a bunch of it had spilled over the sides and been strewn about the yard like leaves in the cold Minnesota wind.
Surely this was all they needed. Three massive bins must be enough to clear out a 1,500 sq ft house. Nope! The same rumble that I experienced the day before started to shake me. When I looked outside, there was the same truck carrying another empty dumpster. After thirty more minutes of maneuvering and disrupting traffic, one of the old ones was hauled away and a new one was in its place.
As of Thursday evening, six dumpsters have been completely filled. That is an unfathomable amount of junk. How did someone even acquire this much shit to clutter their lives with in the first place?
Late edit: It looks like six might have been the magic number. There appears to be no more activity, although the last two dumpsters still remain. Maybe they are just waiting for the end of the snow.
This whole happening has inspired me to take stock of my life. To take stock of my stock, if you will. I am not a hoarder, quite far from it. I don’t attribute much sentimentality to objects. I enjoy things that have a function and that I have need for. For instance, I love watching television. There is a television in almost every room of my house. Excessive? Maybe. However, I don’t just have televisions for the sake of having them. I don’t weirdly collect televisions or hold on to old ones that are broken or outdated. They get put to use and when they are no longer useful they are tossed out.
If I keep an old video game system, which I wish I had done more over the years based on current prices, it isn’t because I have strong memories tied to the plastic casing and inner circuitry. It’s because I want to be able to play those games again one day, and I know there is no guarantee of being able to play them on a newer system.
Hell, I don’t even take pictures. Over the past five years I have gone to many concerts. I barely have any evidence of my being there. In my last post I was going to prove my gen Z girl street cred by showing pictures I had taken of my time seeing Phoebe Bridgers at the Pitchfork music festival. And of seeing Lucy Dacus at First Ave when she had just broken her leg and was performing from a laying position on a couch. The only problem was, though I had been there, I had no photographic proof. Not a single picture or video of the entire experience. The truth is, I’m fine with that. I have the memories, and that’s all I really care about.
Memories are my sentimental hoardings. I hold on to the experiences that I have in my head until my brain is packed like one of those gargantuan dumpsters. Concerts I’ve been to, fun times with friends from throughout my life, my wedding, the birth of my child. To me it’s even more special to remember these things without a visual aid.
Don’t get me wrong, some memories I wish I could lose. Like the time I accidentally called my first grade teacher “mom.” Or the time in high school I was running up to a girl I liked and slipped in mud. I slid five feet straight from a place with hopes and dreams into what felt like would be the end of my entire life. Of course there are many more which are less cute and even more mentally and emotionally crippling.
All of that being said, I determined I have entirely too much useless garbage in my house. It litters my kitchen cabinets. It fills three separate “junk drawers,” a concept I was not even familiar with until I met my wife. It takes up pantry space, end table space, and laundry room storage.
My wife isn’t a hoarder, either. But she’s closer to it than I am. She does attach memories to objects. She also has a much longer time window where she considers an object recently used, or even likely to be used again.
I threw away stuff this week that has no purpose. A beer stein from a brewery in a state we haven’t lived in for 6 years. A beer growler from that same brewery that we can’t even use in Minnesota because they have different liquor laws. This was met with swift condemnation, as if by getting rid of these things I was rejecting our former life and fun times.
Here comes another side rant!
I hate how arbitrary laws regarding alcohol are. Where I grew up you could buy beer and wine in the grocery store. Here you have to go to a liquor store for both. Also laws are different by county for some reason. Even by city! I used to have to drive to the next city over because the city I lived in stopped selling beer at midnight and half a mile down the road they cut off at three in the morning. And some countries are dry counties because of Jesus. The man whose blood alcohol level is quite literally 1.00. Make it make fucking sense!
Also, don’t call something a sin tax. That phrasing should be illegal. How dare you tell me I am sinning by drinking alcohol or smoking a cig. Should we also be taxing murder and adultery? This is America, damn it! Separation of Church and State and what not.
A lot of stuff has been removed from my kitchen this week. Cabinets are more clear and organized, things are in better position for actual use, and bills that have been sitting hidden in a drawer have been paid. I’m proud to say that all of this clearing required zero industrial sized dumpsters. In fact, it took up less than half of my regular sized trash bin.
There is still more work to do to make the house feel less cluttered, but I have my neighbor to thank for my new kitchen order. I’ll have to thank him/her…potentially at a cemetery.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed what you read here today, please share with your friends, family, and neighbors (even if they aren’t hoarders).
If you are new here and missed any of my previous work, consider reading this piece about friendships over time.
Nice article! I enjoyed how you transitioned from the anecdote about your neighbor, into how it applied to your life and made you think. There's definitely something to be said for having a clean space. I've heard it called the "golf course effect" Something about having things uncluttered on the outside gives a serene feeling on the inside.
Six dumpsters is genuinely wild. The drawer purge angle is smart tho, sometimes external chaos makes us look inward. Noticed similar thing hapening when a friend moved and seeing their stuff pile up made me realize how much random kitchen gadgets I'd been ignoring for months. Small scale hoarding is just easier to justify until something bigger puts it in perspetive.