Inga: OK, So I May Actually Be A Hoarder

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published July 13, 2026] 2026

I've always prided myself that I am the only one in my generation on my mother's side of the family who is not a hoarder. But given that I have made my 2026 project going through decades of file cabinet accumulations, I may have to modify that claim ever so slightly.

The good news (besides dispensing with tons of paper) is that I've gotten a number of columns out of these anthropological digs. I did a series of three columns from a folder of memos to team parents when I managed my younger son Henry's traveling soccer team. I recently quoted from a whole file of witty comments my husband Olof has made over the years. Another recent column was about my skills as a documenter of such comments.

In the interests of transparency, I will confess that my sons consider my formerly 67-now-36 albums of family photos to be hoarding. I myself think of photos as "artistic curation."

The kids had long been threatening to cremate me after my untimely death with the photo albums that I had amassed over the years. It would be a two-fer; get rid of Mom and the albums all at once.

But at least my hoard was confined to one (very large) bookcase. OK, and seven file cabinets.

So maybe there's some of that hoarder gene in me too. I may have to cop to being a file hoarder. And those 36 photo albums don't count the 2,000+ digital images on my computer.

Like me, my sibs are specialist hoarders. My (late) sister hoarded books. As in three deep on the book cases that covered every available bit of wall space. The person who bought her home after she passed away was probably thrilled to find that the home actually came with a fire place which was not at all apparent.

My engineer brother boards electronics. Lots and lot of electronics. He built many of them himself. But do not even think of staying at his four-bedroom home because three of those bedrooms are occupied by things with blinky lights.

The cousins, however, are equal opportunity hoarders. Freelancers, if you will. Their houses could probably qualify for one of those hoarder TV shows. One of my cousins says that he is paying more than $8,000 a year in off-site hoarding, er, storage since their home is at capacity.

For me, it helps that we don t have a garage (it was converted in one of the most ill-considered remodels in the history of remodels long before we bought the house). No attic or basement either, and only tiny 1947 closets back when people apparently only owned three sets of clothing. But it does keep one from over-accumulating. We have a hard-core rule that if we buy something, we give something else away.

One of my motivations for dealing with both the filing cabinets and photo albums is that on two occasions in my life, I have been tasked with cleaning out the home of a hoarder relative.

One of them was my aunt's home in Hard-To-Get-There Ohio. We filled up a 35-foot dumpster the first day. My aunt (never married, no kids) literally had magazines dating back to the late 1800s. And yes, the infinitely-hoardable National Geographics. (Why, why, why do people never throw away National Geographics???) The house had been in our family since 1860s. It's amazing how much stuff you can acquire in 150 years.

The second house was fortunately local. For the record, most of the organizations that pick up donations will only take 25 boxes at a time. It took eight months of twice weekly pickups.

So I really don't want to do this to my kids.

A while back, the New York Times had an article about death cleaning, i.e., going through your possessions long before your demise so that your relatives are not burdened with the truly onerous task of separating the wheat from the trash. One of the subsequent Letters to the Editor really caught my eye. The writer, after noting that she wasn't planning to spend a single moment of her precious time culling her abundance of possessions, including 15 years of New Yorker magazines (the evil twin of National Geographics) rationalized it like this:

Isn't it enough, she queries, that my children will receive whatever is left? Gosh, there's some pretty good stuff in that mess. And isn't it possible that inching their way through it will prove to be an interesting and rewarding treasure hunt? And won't this exercise tell them things about me that could not be learned any other way, adding mortar to their memory, and perhaps even their regard for me?

Note to her kids: MOVE NOW AND LEAVE NO FORWARDING ADDRESS!

Let me assure you, Letter Writer, their regard for you will be in the dumpster (along with most of your stuff) by the time they're done inching through your lifetime's collection of detritus.

"Interesting" and "rewarding" are not two adjectives I'd ever use in cleaning out the home of a hoarder. It's true that my aunt's house in Ohio produced some wonderful treasures, like stereopticons, gorgeous oil lamps, and some ornate ewers - intermixed, alas, with multiple cases of 40-year-old Jell-O, cartons of ratty underwear preserved in 1952 newspaper (she was a child of the Depression), and a huge freezer that was a veritable biohazard. (I remember showing my (hoarder) cousin a freezer container labeled "raspberries, 1968". (It was 2004.) She said, "Maybe they re still good?")

So, please. Do not do this to your poor children! For every treasure they might find after your demise, there will be 200 moments of fervent praying, "Please don't let this be hereditary."

And now a hot tip: My dear friend Eleanor maintains that she found a cure for her husband s hoarding. "I put my husband s stuff that he wouldn't get rid of in storage, then stopped paying the bill after three months." This is brilliant in its simplicity.

But in the meantime: only three more filing cabinets to go.