Buried Under Good Intentions

I break decades of silence to share my deeply personal journey with hoarding in this powerful, vulnerable episode. What began as a practical response to financial insecurity—ensuring my family always had necessities despite an unpredictable legislative work schedule—gradually transformed into an overwhelming burden that shaped not just my living space, but my family's understanding of possessions and security.

With remarkable candor, I trace how legitimate concerns about providing for her family led to couponing, stockpiling, and eventually pathways through accumulated possessions. My heart-wrenching realization that her children were learning these behaviors not through direct instruction but by observation underscores the generational impact of our unaddressed challenges. When health complications from pulmonary hypertension restricted my ability to do routine household tasks, the accumulation accelerated.

The emotional weight of hoarding manifested in social isolation as I rarely invited people to my home, hiding my struggle behind closed doors. The breakthrough came through vulnerability—admitting I needed help and accepting it from a friend who recognized the depth of the situation. The process revealed not just the psychological burden but the financial cost of hoarding: countless unused items with price tags still attached that represented money that could have funded savings, experiences, or other priorities.

For anyone struggling with similar patterns or loving someone who is, I offer hope through transparency. Breaking free began with a commitment to buy nothing new for thirty days and having someone to hold me accountable. Though still working through papers and old habits, I'm experiencing the lightness that comes with letting go. This episode reminds us that healing begins when we become quiet no more about the burdens we carry in silence.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Unseen, unheard.
We've lived like that far toolong.
I'm Carmen Coffin and this isQuiet, no More.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Today I want to talk about something that I've been
quiet about for probably 30-someyears, maybe longer, and it's
hoarding.
I have always collected stuff,but after I got married I didn't

(00:43):
have control of anything and Idon't think I was upset about it
.
But things would happenSuddenly I'd find myself
responsible for a bill that Ihadn't budgeted for and I would
have to pay something all of asudden.

(01:04):
And that's hard to do whenyou're you know, I think for me,
I think everybody's on a fixedincome.
It's whatever your salary is,whatever somebody's paying you,
whatever your take home is outof your own business.
But when there's a hit to thatand you weren't expecting the
hit, that makes a difference.

(01:25):
It was hard for me to savemoney and it was difficult.
You know, I grew up knowing thatthere was food in the freezer,
even if it was just a smallfreezer.
Before we had an extra freezerat our house.
There was food in the freezer.
There was food in the freezer.
There was food in the cabinet.

(01:46):
I did not grow up running tothe grocery store when I decided
I wanted something to eat andgetting something and taking it
back home and cooking it.
So in fact, my daughter saysthat we have an ingredient
kitchen as opposed to a preparedfood kitchen.

(02:07):
So at our house, if you wantsomething to eat, then you have
to go in the freezer or thecabinet and pull the ingredients
out and cook it.
Now, as an elder as a babyelder sometimes I decide I want
something and I go to therestaurant, pick it up and bring
it home.
But primarily, we cook what weeat at our house, and so to be

(02:32):
sure that I always had food orour family had food, I finally
learned that I needed to buyextra, and eventually I learned
how to coupon and part ofcouponing is to buy in excess so
that you don't have to run tothe store to pick something up

(02:56):
that you're out of and Irealized that probably within
two years into my marriage,before I had children.
I was trying to figure out howto make sure that there was
always something in the house ifwe needed it.
My work schedule was a littlecrazy.
On Mondays, I went to workeither at one or at five and I

(03:20):
stayed until the legislativesession was over and we had
completed all our work and we'reready for the next day.
That could be as short asworking from five in the
afternoon until 8.30 or nine, orit could be as long as working
from one o'clock until maybe oneo'clock the next day next
morning, and then Tuesday,wednesday and Thursday.

(03:42):
I knew I was going to work at8.30 and I didn't know what time
I was coming home.
And Friday was an abbreviatedschedule because that was how we
made up during session for theextra time that we would put in,
and so running to the grocerystore on the way home was just
ridiculous.
So I made sure that when I buylarger packages of meat I would

(04:08):
break them down so we couldreach in the freezer and pull
out what we needed to cook.
I liked to use a crock pot, butmy husband didn't, and so I
stopped using that as much, eventhough that was a benefit.
And by the time we had children.

(04:28):
You know when you have childrenyou have all kinds of things
going on.
So a lot of times my husband,um, with our first child, was
working at night and she had ahistory of ear infections, and
it was nothing for me to have toget up and run to the emergency
room in the middle of the night, because that was before the
day of urgent care and we didn'teven have a children's

(04:52):
emergency room in Raleigh atthat time, so I would have to
take her to the adult emergencyroom and I was doing a lot of
that alone.
Not that he wasn't handlingthings, but you know, when he's
working out, when your husband'sworking, you take on those
other responsibilities.

(05:12):
If you all are working atopposite times of the day.
And as the girls got bigger andthey started having birthday
parties to go to, that you know.
You don't know when you'regoing to get invited to one, so
you have to go buy a gift.
Well, I didn't always havemoney to go buy a gift, so when
I would see something onclearance after a holiday, after

(05:37):
a holiday, I would buy boxesand bags and gift wrap and that
kind of thing.
For the next holiday I wouldsee toys on sale that were on
clearance for children that mychildren were the same age as
and I had cabinet space, so Iwould just store those things

(05:57):
first in big rubber bins, storethose things first in big rubber
bins and then eventually wemoved the cabinets when we
renovated our house from thekitchen to the basement.
So I did all of that.
But I realized here 33 yearslater that it was because I was

(06:17):
unsure of when I would havemoney to buy those things if
they were needed, and I didn'twant to say that I couldn't
participate in something becauseI didn't have it, so I made
sure we had it.
When I learned to coupon, Ilearned to.
I would buy four newspapers aweek so I could get all the

(06:40):
coupons that were in thenewspapers.
I would subscribe to a listthat would tell me exactly what
was on sale at the grocery storeor at the drugstore that week
and which coupons to use to makethose sale items even cheaper.
And whatever the limit was onwhat I could buy, I would buy it

(07:01):
I had I cannot tell you howmuch shelf space in our basement
that I would keep those thingson and I would rotate them out.
It wasn't that food was goingto go bad, but I also have
always been a giver, and so if Iheard that there was a family
who needed some food, I didn'tgive them a few cans when they

(07:24):
left my house or I went to takeit to them.
It was like somebody had beento the grocery store and had
made barely a dent in my pocketor in what I had.
And as my children got older andwe didn't have to have as much
stuff.
I had already been practicingthat and I didn't think about

(07:48):
stopping it.
So the beginning of the schoolyear, when school supplies go on
sale and you could buy fivepacks of paper per person for 50
cents a pack, everybody, eachchild, would get enough money to
buy whatever the max was, andwe would go to the store and

(08:08):
everybody would buy the max andwe would take it home and store
it.
The same with pencils and pensand highlighters and, um, I buy,
buy paper for, because I neverwanted to run out of things and
that was always a danger at ourhouse.

(08:30):
So we didn't use all that stuffand I'd give away a lot, but I
still continued the buyingpatterns.
And so when we moved, I movedout, I had all that stuff and
I'd kind of done the same thingin terms of clothes.

(08:52):
I would make sure that we hadenough clothes for maybe three
weeks without I mean clothes,underwear, so that we didn't
have to wash every week becauseI didn't always have time.
And once I was diagnosed withpulmonary hypertension, one of
the things that the doctor toldme was I should not do laundry,

(09:13):
because pulmonary hypertensionis a constriction of the artery
going from your lungs to yourheart, and so lifting my arms
over my head, or the way thatyou lift when you're folding
clothes and putting them andtaking them out of the washer
and dryer, that exacerbates yourcondition.

(09:36):
And so, while I taught mychildren to do laundry, they had
homework, they had projects,they had things they had to do
as well, so it was easiersometimes to just you all do it,
but they didn't always bring itand put it away.
And, yes, that's something Iwas.
I didn't train them.
Well, I trained them, but notnecessarily in the best manner,

(10:00):
and so I realized I had stuff.
And then, when I really startedto do research and dig, a lot
of the books and papers that Ihave downloaded some are
downloaded, but some are actualbooks but they're old, and so

(10:20):
when I find them, I buy them,still buying at the cheapest
price, because that's just who Iam now, I'm not trying to spend
all the money, but you have tohave somewhere to store that
stuff and since I, in the lastthree years I've added three

(10:40):
bookcases of books in my househistorical books, about Black
women, about slavery, about thewars and the defense systems,
all the things that I write andtalk about.
And I have papers and I don'treally get rid of stuff.

(11:04):
And so when you came to myhouse which was rare because I
didn't want anybody to come inmy house and see what was going
on it looks like not quite asbad as those hoarders shows.
But there was a little path towalk through and if somebody, if
people, were coming for dinnerbecause you know I like to

(11:26):
entertain we would hide stuff.
I would hide stuff.
The Christmas closet.
There was a closet that my aunthad in the house and I always
remember growing up that when wewould go to exchange Christmas
presents she would go in thatcloset and she would pull things
out that were already wrappedand she had penciled the name in
on the back of the package andso that became my Christmas

(11:48):
closet.
When I moved it was stuffed tothe point I couldn't shut the
door.
I have pictures and oh, just somuch stuff.
But I wanted it organized and Ithought that buying
organizational things would helpto clean up the stuff, but you
know that's not what does it.

(12:09):
What does it is being willingto go through and sort and
figure out what you can keep andwhat.
I cannot tell you how muchstuff there was that was in my
house, that was still brand newwith tags on it, stuff that I
had bought that I hadn't put youknow.
I would buy it with an idea ofwhat I was going to use it for

(12:31):
and then not have the time ortake the time or make the time
to create where things weregoing to go.
I had stuff, ideas in my head,but not plans on paper or the
time to sit and do things that Ineeded to do to straighten up,
and a lot of times our familiessee that and they just talk

(12:52):
about it, how bad it is, howthey wish that you would
straighten up.
But the other thing I realizedwas that children learn what
they see, and so for my childrenthey learned that it's okay to
buy stuff, it's okay to notnecessarily use it, it's okay to
have an overabundance of thingsthat you don't necessarily need

(13:13):
.
They learned that I didn't sayto them this is how you do, but
I showed them this is how you do, and so it didn't just affect
me, it's affected my wholehousehold.
So how do you change that?
When you're willing becausefirst your mindset has to be

(13:35):
right you have to ask for help.
It's too much, it'soverwhelming, to try to do it on
your own and I've decided Iknow it's an embarrassing thing
because I've been embarrassedit's terrible when I see these
TV shows and, mind you, I don'thave no dead cats and no dead

(13:59):
rats under my stuff.
It's terrible when I see theseTV shows and, mind you, I don't
have no dead cats and no deadrats under my stuff, no critters
, none of that.
But it was just I knew whatpiles of things were because I
would put them in piles.
But everybody, you know peoplewalking in, they just see piles.
So I made the decision to paysomeone to help me organize and

(14:22):
a friend of mine looked at shewas going to help me organize,
she was going to help me getorganizers and that kind of
stuff, and she looked at what Iwas living in and she gave of

(14:43):
her time and her money and hereffort to come to me and help me
organize.
And the weight that has beenlifted from me knowing that all
that stuff is not there Now.
I'm not finished.
I still have some boxes ofpapers to go through.
I still have some boxes ofpapers to go through, but I

(15:16):
can't even tell you how muchmoney I'd put into buying things
that hadn't been used, thatstill were wrapped up, that
still had price tags on them,that I had not used, that could
have been gone into savings ortrips or all the things.
It is a weight.
Hoarding is a weight.
It is an emotional weight, itis a physical weight and it is
something that is hard to getout of.
It is a conscious.
You have to make a consciousdecision Don't buy anything else
.
I mean literally.
She said you can't buy any foodfor 30 days.
You cannot buy anything for.

(15:36):
I mean literally.
She said you can't buy any foodfor 30 days.
You cannot buy anything for 30days.
If you're thinking about buyingsomething, you need to take a
picture of it and send it to mefirst, and everybody doesn't
want to do that for you.
So if you are able to havesomeone who will do that, you
are blessed.
Be willing to ask for help andbe willing to accept it, and if

(16:01):
someone offers you help, bewilling to take it, because you
will feel better on the otherend, and I'll probably talk
about this some more, but I'mgoing to be quiet about it right
now but I'm going to be quietabout it right now.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
You've been listening to Quiet no More, where I share
my journey, so you can be quietno more.