Heather Christena Schmidt

No, I don’t have any dead cats living under piles of things I’ve hoarded, and my house is most certainly not a disaster. But when I got up this morning and read the blog post I wrote inebriated and snotty last night, I realized I should elaborate on my OCD. I don’t only have obsessive compulsive disorder in the sense that I need things to be ordered a certain way, neither just in the way I need to stack the dishes up when we eat out at a restaurant to encourage the waitstaff to take them away so that there is no more clutter on the table. No, no, faithful blog followers, it is much worse than just that. I hoard things.

Not just anything, though. I’m really not a candidate for the show (just yet, at least). I don’t hoard trash or old newspapers. As I said, there are no dead animals lost amidst my piles of rubble. But I do have a few things that I can’t seem to get enough of.

Notebooks

I can’t get enough notebooks. It’s so unhealthy; probably a relic left over from my days in graduate school. Every time I’m in an office supply store, though, I justify in my mind buying another notebook, despite the fact that I have tons of them laying around here with copious amounts of room in them. As a writer, you’d think I’d be filling them, but I usually write straight onto my computer so really don’t need so many lying around.

Jars of Spanish Olives with Pimientos

I currently have four in our refrigerator and two in my father’s refrigerator in case I want to eat some when we are over there. Astonishing, actually, because some are full, some half empty, and they all go together in the fridge. Every time I’m at the grocery store, though, I seem to forget that I have so many opened jars full of the olive-y, pimiento-y goodness at home.

Sweaters

I own a lot of sweaters. By “a lot” I mean over twenty. I love sweaters, and while I have worn every single one of those that I own on various occasions, generally speaking there are only three or four I circulate in my regular every-day wear. I have given away clothing to Goodwill and the Rescue Mission often, though, despite the fact that some of the stuff still fits – which means that had I not done so we would probably be looking at triple digits in terms of how many I would have.

Highlighters

I don’t even have a use for highlighters anymore (at least, not really), but I keep tons of them “just in case.” Now that I’m out of graduate school, though, I just don’t highlight when I read, or when I edit my writing for that matter either. This begs the question … why keep them around? Possibly I use these little, neon markers as a way to cling to my long-lost past. Or maybe I really am just hoarding.

Mini bottles of hand sanitizer from Bath and Body Works

Holy shit, by my count we have at least fifteen of those little guys floating around the place right now. Yes, I use a lot of it because I have OCD (which means I am something of a germ-a-phobe, at least during cold and flu season). But then during the summer months when I could care less, we still continue to buy them every time we are at the mall and the scents of goodness permeating from the Bath and Body Works store drives us in.

I’m sure there’s more that I hoard, just as I’m sure I’m well on my way to having that OCD hand washing obsession. Let’s face it, I need help. I’m going to go highlight in my notebooks, try on my sweaters, and rub hand sanitizer all over myself after I down a couple jars full of Spanish olives to make myself feel better before I call A&E and ask them for help.