The satisfaction of hanging on to absolutely everything

In this column, I have summed up how to fill your space with items in a way that will change your life forever. Can’t be done? I bet I’ll get that a lot and it makes sense, considering that almost everyone has experienced a relapse into zealous attempts to get organized.

Have you ever hoarded fiendishly, only to find that all too soon your conscience or your spouse has cleared your home again and taken who-knows-what to the thrift store donation center? If so, allow me to spill the secret of mastery. Start by gathering. Then utilize your space, haphazardly, entirely, in one go. If you subscribe to this practice — the HiveZac Approach — you’ll never see your floor again, sparing you untold hours cleaning it.

Although this method runs counter to current popular trends, everyone who completes my universally applicable training will likely keep their house attached to the earth by sheer force of gravity — with other magical results, too. Filling their houses with items probably will touch all other facets of their enviable lives, such as their ability to keep a job and custody of their children. Having dedicated more than some percentage of my week to this subject, I know that hoarding can transmogrify your existence.

Does it still sound too good to be truly free of hantavirus and other rodent- borne maladies? If your idea of hoarding is collecting one scrap worth something, someday, in a pinch, each day or stocking under your bed one found object at a time, then you’re right. It won’t have much effect on your life expectancy. If you dedicate yourself to this approach, however, hoarding can have an uncatalogueable impact. In fact, not even knowing what you have or where you keep it is the truest spirit of hoarding.

I have never read a single home or lifestyle magazine. That’s how I’m able to tackle hoarding so seriously. Now is the best time to begin your own life of hoarding under my tutelage, visiting homes and offices where all of a sudden everyone is getting rid of so much stuff. I can give hands-on advice (with rubber gloves on) to people who find hoarding difficult, who hoard but suffer bouts of spring cleaning, or who want to hoard but don’t know how to acquire things indiscriminately.

The number of items my clients will acquire, from clothes and remnants of undergarments to other people’s photos, dried-up pens, waiting room magazines with the addresses cut out, and makeup scraps, easily surpasses health code regulations. I do not exaggerate. I have envisioned myself assisting clients who have scored two U-Haul trucks’ worth of unwanted goods (including the trucks themselves) in a single go.

From my meditations upon the craft of acquiring and my dreams of helping functioning humans become packrats, I can say one thing with undeserved confidence: A drastic disintegration of the open spaces in a home causes proportionately drastic changes in personal hygiene and neighborhood property values. It is life transforming.

I mean it. Here are some of the testimonials I will soon start receiving on a weekly, even monthly, basis from future former clients:

“With your help, I lost my job and found undocumented work doing something I never dreamed of doing. Your course taught me to see that I need absolutely everything I can get my hands on. So what if I’m now divorced? I’m much happier this way. Someone I have been stalking on Facebook for years recently contracted tetanus from my front yard.

“I’m delighted to report that since stockpiling my property, I’ve been able to keep the meter reader from accessing my meter. My dogs and I are having a great time, even though I don’t know how many dogs I have anymore. I’m amazed to find that just bringing things home has changed me so much. I finally succeeded in losing twenty pounds, now that I cannot reach the kitchen.”

The results of the HiveZac Approach will inevitably change the future. Why? Because the ripple effect states that every action has an equal and opposite legal action. We don’t live in a vacuum, after all. Nor do we need to use the vacuums that we have stashed around here somewhere. Even if you can’t see anything else after completing my course, you will see quite clearly that you need all that you can get in life.

This is what I call the satisfaction of hanging on to absolutely everything. By putting your house in disarray, you will see your furniture and decorations come to life. Literally, with mold and mushrooms and such.

This — this is the satisfaction I want to share with as many people as possible.

Zach Hively writes from Durango, Colo. He can be read and reached through http://zachhively.com and on Twitter @zachhively.

From Zach Hively.