Where do I start?

     Hi, and welcome to my blog!  I'm a little nervous to start a blog, especially starting one about something so difficult as hoarding.  But the first step is admitting I have a problem, right?  So here it is:  I'm a hoarder.  Most of my coworkers, friends, and even relatives don't know this because I am able to relatively maintain a few rooms of the house.  Of course these rooms are nowhere near glamorous.  They are very cluttered and disorganized, but the chairs are usually free of stuff and the kitchen is functional.  So where do I hide my hoard?  In the basement.  In the three car garage.  In the bedrooms.  Behind all of the closed doors.

     I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself.  I'm 26 years old.  I work full time and I'm trying to go back to school.  I recently moved back in with my parents, as did my 20 year old brother and my twin sister.  And of course we brought our hoards with us to add to my parent's already hoarded house. Oh, did I mention that my grandma moved from a very spacious house to a small apartment in an assisted living center, but didn't want to get rid of any of her collections?  So basically our family home is now the storage facility for 6 people.

     

     I'm a very private person, so posting those pictures was very hard to do, even harder than admitting to the problem!  And just looking at them, I feel very overwhelmed.  Where do I start?  I know I want to start in the basement, but it's a very large basement.  Which pile do I tackle first?  Am I going to be strong enough to make the hard decisions that I know need to be made?  If anyone has any suggestions or words of encouragement I'd love to hear from you!  Or maybe you're struggling with a similar problem?  I'd love to hear from you too!  Maybe together we can free our homes and our lives from all of the stuff.  Wait, there's no maybe to it.  We can do it.  It will not be easy, but we all deserve to live our lives free of the hoard.