Examines the issues surrounding hoarding and provides an overview of the topic.

"A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being After the tragic death his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house-a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their...

"Junk has become ubiquitous in America today. Who doesn't have a basement, attic, closet, or storage unit filled with stuff too good to throw away? Or, more accurately, stuff you think is too good to throw away. When journalist and author Alison Stewart was confronted with emptying her late parents' overloaded basement, a job that dragged on for months, it got her thinking: How did it come to this? Why do smart, successful people hold on to old Christmas...

Magpies Meg and Ash want their nest to be the best, and to have everything their chicks will need when they hatch, so they add everything from cuckoo clocks to mops and socks.

"Offers a fascinating and insightful account of what becomes of the stuff that we accumulate in our homes and lives. It's a powerful reminder of how the deeply personal acts of daily life are shared across families, cultures, economies, and countries, and an account of how one author's struggle to manage her family's clutter led to a deeper understanding of what matters most in all of our lives"--Back cover.

"Things that are no longer useful, wanted or liked are kept because we might need them someday. This protects us from the uncertainties of the future or, if it is too painful to let go of our object memories, stuck in the past. One way to make peace with your stuff is to live with the things that you love now, that fit you now, that align with your lifestyle now because now is where life happens. If you want to change your relationship with stuff,...

"58,642,129. That's how many dollars seventeen-year-old-Fortuna Jane Belleweather just won in in the lotto jackpot. It's also about how many reasons she has for not coming forward to claim her prize. Problem #1: Jane is still a minor, and if anyone discovers she bought the ticket underage, she'll either have to forfeit the ticket, or worse... Problem #2: Let her hoarder mother cash it. The last thing Jane's mom needs is millions of dollars to buy...

When Katie Steury hires her old friend Harley Lambright to remodel her rundown old house into a bed and breakfast, she does so with trepidation. They've always had a rocky relationship, and she is partly responsible for his most recent breakup. Harley realizes that Katie's been hiding her mother's hoarding, but they discover that clearing the debris in one old house also means they have to do some clean-up in their lives. Forced to reevaluate their...

Seventh-grader Annabelle's mother is a hoarder, and their whole house is full of canned goods, broken toys, fabric, and old newspapers--but when a pile of newspapers (organized by weather reports) falls on Annabelle's younger sister Leslie and their mother is more concerned about the newspapers, it sets off a chain of events that brings their fix-it-all grandmother in and Annabelle realizes that if there is any hope for change she can not isolate...