Hoarding

It's a serious disorder and I just want to say right now, that I am by no means belittling anything about it with this post. I just needed to talk a bit about it and how my mother does not understand what it actually means. 

Hoarding is a general term for the accumulation of food or other items. The term is used to describe both animal and human behavior. It is a normal stage of behavior in children
Hoarding as a human behavior falls in to two main categories. One type of hoarding is triggered as a response to perceived or predicted shortages of specific goods. Compulsive hoarding, on the other hand, is a mental disorder marked by an obsessive need to acquire and keep things, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. The compulsive collection and ownership of pets is known as animal hoarding. Compulsive hoarding is thought to fall along the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorders. [source]

Compulsive hoarding (or pathological hoarding or disposophobia)^[1] is the excessive acquisition of possessions(and failure to use or discard them), even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. Compulsive hoarding impairs mobility and interferes with basic activities, including cooking, cleaning, showering, and sleeping. A person who engages in compulsive hoarding is commonly said to be a "pack rat", in reference to that animal's characteristic hoarding.

It is not clear whether compulsive hoarding is an isolated disorder, or rather a symptom of another condition, such asobsessive-compulsive disorder.^{[2] [source]}

To really make you understand what I'm about to talk about, I should mention some stuff first. Less than a year ago my mother moved out of the house I was born and raised in, a 3 level townhouse, with 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, a backyard, shed and an entire basement. She moved from this, to a 2 bedroom trailer on an acreage with her boyfriend. When she left, she left a lot of her crap here too. It was part of our agreement. I would live here, rent it from her, but she would keep the stuff she couldn't take out there, because of lack of space, here. I was fine with it and for the most part left everything where it originally was. I guess this was out of respect and because I had just grown up with them being where they were. I had a roommate move in and she absolutely hated where most of my mother's stuff was, so she moved it all. I think that's beside the point though. 

Anyways, I don't have much stuff. I really don't. I've never lived anywhere but a single bedroom. So, most of the stuff in my house is my mothers. Oh, except for a bit in the corner of the basement, that's from a woman my mother practically begged to let stay here with me until she got her own place and the woman left one weekend in like July or August, saying that they were moving to Calgary (a city about 3 hours away) and that they'd be back the next weekend to pick up their crap. I haven't heard a single word from them since then. I have tried texting and calling the only number I have for this woman multiple times. So her stuff takes up about 1/4 of my basement. 

So today on the phone my mother accuses me of being a "hoarder". It's not the first time she's said it and I always find it so amusing and aggravating. If I were to put a percentage on how much of the stuff in my house is actually her's it would be about 45%. Then 10% is the crap from the vanishing woman and her daughter, and the rest is mine and my son's. Also, aside from the fact that only about 45% of the stuff in my house is actually mine, it's all stuff I do actually need. Toys for my son, my furniture, appliances, cleaning products, stuff I actually use on a regular basis. It is literally mind boggling to try to figure out how, in any informed human beings mind, I am to be considered a "hoarder" or "pack rat". 

If anything, I am merely disorganized or possibly even just lazy. Okay, very likely both disorganized and lazy. I live in a state of semi-chaos. At least the area's I frequent the most do. My computer desk, and my bedroom. I can only kind of see where she is coming from. My kitchen/dining room (because my house is not big enough for these area's to be separate) does have a stack of newspapers and cardboard boxes to be recycled. But honestly, the only reason they haven't been put out is because they need to be contained in the blue bag, and I don't have the money to afford the blue bag's. I can barely afford regular garbage bags. And even then, it's not that bad. They're not dirty or anything. They are mostly moving boxes and newspapers. They're even neatly stacked in an organized pile. 

I just really don't understand my mother.