The Most Unexpected Hoarder
By Ashlee Gadd
@ashleegadd
My mother would never call herself a hoarder.
Having said that, every six months or so, she reveals something else saved from my childhood—tattered school projects, faded baby clothes, books, dolls, dusty VHS tapes. At least once a year she presents me with a new box of treasure, or, as I lovingly refer to it: a box of old crap.
Last year, though, she gave me a box filled with stuff I actually wanted. Namely: a few pairs of OshKosh B'gosh overalls I wore in 1987. They were that perfect kind of vintage—still in style, could easily be paired with a new t-shirt. I could not wait to put my daughter in them and take a few pictures.
I put the box in the hall closet, and promptly forgot all about it.
A few months later, when I stumbled across the box again, my heart sank. I immediately grabbed my camera and stripped my daughter down to a diaper to try everything on. While some of the clothes fit (barely), as I suspected, none of the overalls did. I tried cramming her 16 month-old body into the 12 month-old overalls, but, without an ounce of stretch in the fabric, I couldn’t even get them up over her thighs.
Not usually one to get sentimental about these things, I was surprised at how devastated I felt over missing the chance to put her in an outfit of mine I actually liked.
When I confessed this to my mom a few weeks later, she didn’t miss a beat.
“Oh don’t worry, I have more.”
The next time I saw her, she presented me with three more pairs of overalls, all sized 18 months.
***
On the list of things I never thought I’d do as a mom, Regularly Dig Things Out Of The Trash is right up there with Catch Vomit In My Bare Hands.
To set the stage, I throw a lot of stuff away. I am a perpetual purger, Marie Kondo-ing my way through this house every chance I get. Anytime I can pawn the boys off on their grandparents for a night, the first thing I do is attack their room. Armed with multiple garbage bags, I go through their dresser, bookshelves, toy bins and baskets. Their room is never cleaner than when they’ve been out of the house for 24 hours.
I prefer not to include my children in this process because my oldest child Everett is a bonafide hoarder (no doubt, he takes after his grandmother). He is sentimental about everything: that art project he made when he was three, that happy meal toy he got when he was four, that rock he found outside when he was five, that Kiwi Co craft he made when he was six, and on and on, and on and on.
Everything, to him, is precious.
Cleaning out his room with him in the room is futile. I will ask him, “When was the last time you played with this?” and he will say, “I am going to play with that today!”
I will ask him, “What is this?” and he will say, “It goes to that thing in the magic set with the box trick!”
He has a solid case for everything, a logical reason to keep his treasures forever and ever. Put him on the witness stand, he’s good to go, evidence abounds. His little brother, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach. When I ask him if he still plays with this or that, he answers honestly: no. When I ask if I can give away this book or that puzzle, he says, “Sure.”
(Bless it; he takes after me.)
The last time the boys had a sleepover at Grandma’s, I did my usual sweep of their room, armed with one bag for donations and one bag for garbage. I discarded faded pajamas with holes in the knees, broken crayons, old craft projects stuffed under the beds. After re-organizing the books, I scanned the top of their bookshelf for anything else I could tidy up. I tossed a bunch of loose Legos into one of the emptier Lego bins, and grabbed a bunch of popsicle sticks and threw them in the garbage. When I could finally see the floor again, I vacuumed the carpet and took a moment to soak in the fruit of my labor.
Twenty-four hours later when the boys came home, they had been in their room all of two minutes when I heard Everett call out in a desperate voice, “Mommy!! Where are my s’mores?!!”
S’mores?
“Your what?” I asked, sure I had misheard him.
“My s’mores!” he said again, “I made s’mores with those popsicle sticks, remember? They had little papers on them?”
Aha. It all comes back to me. One day the kids had made a “firepit” with their magna tiles, complete with a little battery-operated light inside to look like a real fire. They lined all their stuffed animals around it, each positioned with a popsicle stick attached to a post-it note, roasting s’mores. I had forgotten all about their ingenious invention when I tossed the popsicle sticks in the trash.
“Um, I’m not sure,” I lie, “Why don’t you look around your room and I’ll check the rest of the house?”
Tears start pooling in his eyes. His lip quivers.
“I worked so hard on those,” he tells me.
Again, I lie, reassuring him they’ve probably been misplaced, definitely not thrown out. He heads to his bedroom to check again as I start quietly digging through the garbage can.
***
“This is making me want one more,” my husband says one night, folding tiny baby girl clothes. He’s standing in our bedroom next to the bed, arranging piles of onesies and miniature dresses.
His comment catches me off guard, but then again, this moment snuck up on us. Our daughter is almost 18 months old. If we were going to have one more, the clock is ticking.
We always said she’d be the last. We’ve already sold the bassinet, the infant car seat, the sling, the baby tub. I sold all of my maternity clothes without a second thought.
But now we’re here, at an unexpected fork in the road, and choosing which way to turn is harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought we were on a straight path, you know, the one that leads to a vasectomy, until Covid hit and turned the whole world upside down. Unconsciously, we started looking at our life and house and family size with new, fresh eyes.
Our two boys have barely left the house, haven’t seen their friends for months. And yet, they remain unfazed. Happy, even. This realization continues to astound us, bless us, overwhelm us with gratitude: them having each other is a special type of saving grace we didn’t know we needed this year.
But what about her?
***
We are at a makeshift hair salon in my parents’ kitchen. An old family friend smiles behind her mask, attempting to fix the at-home haircuts I’ve been giving my boys over the past few months. She has three children, all grown now, spread out across the same age gaps as ours.
Without prompting, as she snips hair off the top of Everett’s head, she says, “If I had to do it all over again, I would have had a fourth. The youngest one gets left out a lot.”
Brett and I look at each other with half smiles and nod. We hear this a lot.
A few weeks later, I relay this to a friend over Voxer. She says, “I don’t know … I always think those conversations mean something.”
Four kids. If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have scoffed and called the idea insane. I wanted two, possibly three. But four? That’s preposterous. We’d need a bigger house. A bigger car. A bigger booth at the restaurant. A bigger checking account.
We’d probably have to get a minivan.
I really don’t want a minivan.
(I know, I know. You love yours.)
***
She is my first baby to take a pacifier, and my first baby to cherish a lovey. It was actually the first thing I bought for her—a soft, tan lovey in the shape of bunny ears. I spotted it on a vendor’s table at an event I attended when I was 10 weeks pregnant. It was the only thing I bought that day.
I know this is gross, but I’m pretty sure that lovey has been washed one time in 18 months. It smells like her, like a baby, like that weird but intoxicating scent of cheerios and drool and innocence, with a hint of lavender bubble bath. Every time I do the laundry, I cannot bring myself to throw it in.
One day it dawns on me: we do not have a backup. I look up the Etsy shop, whose owner is on a break. I message her anyway, explaining my newfound panic, and ask if she’d be willing to make me another lovey. She messages back and says she’d be happy to.
I ask for three: one backup, one for me to keep forever, and one to give Presley someday if and when she becomes a mom.
***
A few days after her 18-month checkup, I am cleaning out the baby clothes, making little piles on the floor. Keep. Toss. Sell. Donate. My keep pile seems unusually large, probably three times bigger than everything I kept for both boys combined.
I try to look at everything in the keep pile with a critical eye. There’s the outfit she wore home from the hospital. The gown that matched my postpartum robe. The eyelet green romper, the coral jumpsuit. The outfit in the box we opened when we learned she was a girl. The tiny leggings with ladybugs on them—bought on clearance, on a whim, before I knew she was a girl, before ladybugs meant anything to me. Her teal floral birthday dress, three knitted sweaters, two pairs of gifted baby shoes she never even wore.
I cannot bear the thought of parting with any of it.
This is the last everything. Those words have been churning in my mind, on repeat, from the minute I peed on the stick, a silent benediction of sorts. I thought I had prepared myself for the end, but here I am, cross-legged on the floor holding newborn pajamas in my hands—genuinely sad, shocked at how fast it all went, surprised at how heartbroken I feel.
I find myself analyzing every second of the last 18 months.
Did I enjoy her enough?
Did I work too much?
I fold everything and place the collection in a sealed plastic tub, trying to convince myself I am doing it for her, saving these items in case she has a daughter of her own someday.
But the truth is: all of these items are precious to me.
I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready to let go of the final baby phase, the final baby things. I’m not ready to let go of the loveys and pacis, the baby toothbrush next to the bathroom sink. I’m not ready to let go of breastfeeding, her weight on my hip, the scent of innocence hovering over the rocking chair.
I’m stockpiling all of it—stashing fleeting moments and ruffled dresses away like a squirrel, like a mother who knows this season is almost over, like a woman in denial.
Like the most unexpected hoarder of all.
Words and photo by Ashlee Gadd.