By: Louis Bishop

To say I hoard, would be like saying maybe Ric  Flair did a little blow in his day. Well maybe not Ric Flair, I am sure he did a good amount in his day. One man can only doso much limo riding, kiss stealing son of a gun without some help from the devils dandruff. Maybe I hoard like a depressed teenage girl that thinks she is too fat sticks her finger down her throat. She has been made think she is fat by television. When really she just has curves before the other girls. So not a ton of hoarding , just a nice amount so no one notices too much is wrong.

I figured out that I hoard, or just have a lot of useless old shit, when I decided to move. Why would you move? Well my dear to save money. I know saving money isn’t cool nowadays I know. I’m supposed to blow all my money on booze, drugs and hookers. But my job is not paying what it used to.  All that FUN stuff had to slow way down. Saving money is fun for me. My brother has always called me “Lou the Jew” because of my tight saving ways. Every year for about 15 years he has wrapped all my Christmas gifts in Star of David wrapping paper. When his 9 kids ask “ Daddy why is uncle Louis’ gifts all wrapped the same daddy” “well kids your uncle is a Jew that’s why!” Oh they have a good laugh every year about that and I do as well, because I got money sucka!! So I moved to save money, plain and simple. I moved in with 2 stand up comics, more on that later. We are getting lost in me being a Jew  hookers, drugs and why I moved. What this is about is learning that I had a problem and taking the steps to fix it.

My hoarding has been put in my head by my mother. She always would say “you might need that later” or “how much did that cost?” and “your just gonna throw it away?” Which would break my Jew heart into a million pieces. So I kept it. All of it! Buttons, old pants with holes in them, shoe laces, broken lamps, broken computers, street signs, old magazines, any free thing I ever got in my life, EVERYTHING! I wanted to keep it all, if we can be honest.  Because I have friends who have “normal” jobs they could not help me move, so; I did it by myself. Also my old place was on the second floor, with slippery steps I fell down once almost breaking my back and legs. True story I was going to host a show at The Lazy Pirate in Carolina Beach and fell down steps. Had to host it all bloody, bruised and in pain. Fun hosting a comedy show after you tumbled down 20 steps  in the rain. I moved sofa, love seat, giant chair, and studio equipment and king bed down the steps from hell…. ALONE! I was tried as fuck but had to keep going because I had to be moved out by the weekend. Then I really started looking at all my useless material things in a different light. Do I really need this stuff? Am I willing to move it again? Or would it be a lot easier to just throw it away? Now if someone was helping me I would have kept 99% of the useless stuff, because I could have got it done way quicker. But being that my fat ass was baring down on my poor knees every time I moved a box. I decided to purge a bit, kind of like the teenage girl we mentioned earlier. I got rid of at least 70% of my useless shit. I still have 30% or more but hey it’s a good start. I am not totally “Clean” yet but I am moving in the right direction. One day I will teach a help group for hoarders. I will help them get clean by making them move out of their place. No one can help them and they only get a small truck to move their stuff, so they got to make as many runs as possible. That will break them I know it did me.

Really how much useless stuff do you need? Is any of it really worth anything to pass on to someone? Nope most of it isn’t; throw it away, it feels so nice to get rid of the past. It is like a fat belly around your mind, just old memories you don’t want to throw away. So it gets bigger and bigger until you can’t move anymore. Get rid of it if you can. Start anew. Pictures are import. Books are important. Clothes that fit are important. If you haven’t used whatever it is in a year, toss it! I’m trying to become more streamline you know. Hoarder never helps, only hurts!

Bye for now and remember Sweet Young girl that thinks she is fat… you are not baby you are the way all the other girls wished they looked.

Louis Bishop is a comedian out of Wilmington, NC raised is a trailer park in Jacksonville, NC he was fed a steady diet of professional wrestling, corn dogs and dysfunction.  You can hear him on the Creedence & Bishop Show and see him around Eastern North Carolina.