A Love Song for Mr. VS Regarding Hoarding

It’s recently come to my attention that Mr. Victoria Sawyer would like to take up hoarding as a hobby. He has an interest in hoarding, I think, because he’s seen how enjoyable it is for people in his family.  So he thought he’d try it out too.  It’s NOT cool!!!

Mr. VS loves going to yard sales.  He also loves to collect all kinds of things.  For example:  Mr. VS has a record collection that is probably somewhere near 1300 or so.  It’s getting so out of control that I wouldn’t be surprised if the room in which all these records reside went crashing down into the basement because of all the weight.  And then we’d have to start the collection and the house all over again.

Secondly, Mr. VS loves boy toys of all kinds.  He has a large tractor, like a real farming tractor (Mr. VS plays at being a sexy farm boy).  He also has a motorcycle, a 1972 Jeep (as a toy, but it’s not toy size, it’s man sized) several three wheelers and TWO hideous broken down crappy trucks.  Okay, one of them runs but it’s kind of lame.  But he loves it because it’s a dump trunk. AND he has too many chain saws to count.  Why would anyone need 10 chainsaws?  He claims (in his boy way) that when one chainsaw gets stuck or is dull you’ll have a second and then when that one gets dull, you’ll have a third.  And ON AND ON.  Ridic.  That kind of logic can get you into trouble because it can go on into INFINITY!!

Thirdly, Mr. VS loves tools and building supplies.  Whenever he goes to yard sales, he’s the one who will buy the box o’ junk for $2 without even really looking through it all or if he saw there was one thing in there he wanted.  Then he’ll bring it home, go through it and store it in the basement.  It doesn’t matter what’s in there, it’s all “good stuff” and not “junk.” And he’s sure that he can “use” it someday and assures me that new at the store it would cost us a lot of money.  Also when I suggest that we have a yard sale, Mr. VS declares that he doesn’t have anything to sell.  He needs all his stuff. It’s all good stuff.

So we have tons of screws, nails etc in the basement.  We have so many hand tools it’s not even funny.  Mr. VS also has other ridic things stored down there, like an enormous AC unit that we can’t even use because it wouldn’t fit in any of our windows, but heaven forbid it go to the trash when one of his friends was moving.  Secondly, he’s got all these weird obscure but large tools down there.  Like a planer and other things that I don’t even know what they are.  Like weird pokey-jab type deals and large metal thingamajigs and weird whirly-gigs with teeth.  (I’m not really quite this dumb about tools, but I like to make up names for stuff cause he hates it.  Like these torches he has…I call them “tubes.”  I’ll say…STOP BUYING TUBES! And he’ll have no idea what I mean.)  He also has this huge engine on a stand that he refuses to get rid of because he worked on it once when he was a teenager or something like that.  It’s like his nostalgia thing.  My nostagia stuff is like…notebooks or knickknacks or something.  His is a huge engine.

So our basement is getting quite full and Mr. VS keeps bringing home more and more.  It’s gotten so bad that he has to pull the girl move of trying to sneak stuff into the house so I won’t see it!  How GIRLY IS THAT!!  That’s like when a girl goes on a shopping spree or buys some new shoes she doesn’t need, then she sneaks them into the house and the boy doesn’t even notice!  Because boys are clueless about stuff like that.  But I am not clueless!  I’ve seen the piles of stuff down there and I can always tell when Mr. VS has been to a yard sale.  He gets a guilty expression on his face, but he also is defiant.  “It’s GOOD STUFF!!”

Also sometimes on the weekend when Mr. VS goes out to yard sales, I beg him not to, or to behave himself.  However, inevitably, when he comes home he will slink into the house and ask me how much I love him with a guilty smile upon his face. Obviously I have learned very quickly that this means trouble and announce to him that I love him very little in the hopes that it will somehow make him take his stuff back.  And….yup…Mr. VS has somehow brought home the motherload of junk and knows that I will be cranky.  He’s pulling stuff I should be pulling!!

I recently asked Mr. VS when it would end, what was the limit on his “extravagance?”  He said, once I’ve filled up our barn.  And we don’t even have a barn yet.  I thought he was going to say when our whole property was filled up.  I fear that we are never going to be able to move.  We will have to live in our house forever, crammed in with junk up to our ears and no yard sale in sight to alleviate our problems.  Mike and Frank from American Pickers will come to our house one day to try to find some rusty-gold and my oh my will we have some.  However Mr. VS will be the kind who will not sell a damn thing because he’s attached to all of it.  He’s that cranky old hoarder…already!

Heaven help me.  Marriage is wonderful, isn’t it?  Co-habitating is awesome.  I love Mr. VS, don’t get me wrong.  But if he dies first I’m going to be pissed.