Collection Addiction

After a frenzy of catching up on work, attending meetings, hosting gatherings and cleaning up, I took an hour last night to go upstairs and start cleaning my sewing room. The piles had gotten so bad that I had to take giant steps over them to get to my sewing machine, and the surface of my cutting table was no longer visible. My cleaning method is to put things neatly into boxes and bins to get them out of the way, and then go back through the boxes after I have cleared space for the contents.

I started folding and placing my recent fabric and notion purchases in a large box. The stack just kept growing and growing. I again have more fabric than I have a place to put it. My husband had pointed out to me, upon arrival of yet another carton of fabric by UPS yesterday, that I had told him I would stop buying 'stuff'. I immediately became defensive and made an excuse about having ordered sometime back and I lied about the contents of the box.

Gentle reader, I have fallen back into my Collection Addiction. Look at this quote from eHow.com: "A person will become irritable or defensive when a family member or friend wants to discuss a perceived addictive behavior." I've descended into full-blown addictive behavior.

Those fellow addicts will recognize one of the hallmark symptoms of addiction behavior: "shame for what they're doing and fear of the addiction being taken from them can force people to hide their addiction from friends and family." I'm coming clean on the record. My name is Kim and I'm addicted to collecting fabric.