Quiet No More

Buried Under Good Intentions

• Carmen Cauthen

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I break decades of silence to share my deeply personal journey with hoarding in this powerful, vulnerable episode. What began as a practical response to financial insecurity—ensuring my family always had necessities despite an unpredictable legislative work schedule—gradually transformed into an overwhelming burden that shaped not just my living space, but my family's understanding of possessions and security.

With remarkable candor, I trace how legitimate concerns about providing for her family led to couponing, stockpiling, and eventually pathways through accumulated possessions. My heart-wrenching realization that her children were learning these behaviors not through direct instruction but by observation underscores the generational impact of our unaddressed challenges. When health complications from pulmonary hypertension restricted my ability to do routine household tasks, the accumulation accelerated.

The emotional weight of hoarding manifested in social isolation as I rarely invited people to my home, hiding my struggle behind closed doors. The breakthrough came through vulnerability—admitting I needed help and accepting it from a friend who recognized the depth of the situation. The process revealed not just the psychological burden but the financial cost of hoarding: countless unused items with price tags still attached that represented money that could have funded savings, experiences, or other priorities.

For anyone struggling with similar patterns or loving someone who is, I offer hope through transparency. Breaking free began with a commitment to buy nothing new for thirty days and having someone to hold me accountable. Though still working through papers and old habits, I'm experiencing the lightness that comes with letting go. This episode reminds us that healing begins when we become quiet no more about the burdens we carry in silence.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More.

Speaker 2:

Today I want to talk about something that I've been quiet about for probably 30-some years, maybe longer, and it's hoarding. I have always collected stuff, but after I got married I didn't have control of anything and I don't think I was upset about it. But things would happen Suddenly I'd find myself responsible for a bill that I hadn't budgeted for and I would have to pay something all of a sudden. And that's hard to do when you're you know, I think for me, I think everybody's on a fixed income. It's whatever your salary is, whatever somebody's paying you, whatever your take home is out of your own business. But when there's a hit to that and you weren't expecting the hit, that makes a difference. It was hard for me to save money and it was difficult.

Speaker 2:

You know, I grew up knowing that there was food in the freezer, even if it was just a small freezer. Before we had an extra freezer at our house. There was food in the freezer. There was food in the freezer. There was food in the cabinet. I did not grow up running to the grocery store when I decided I wanted something to eat and getting something and taking it back home and cooking it. So in fact, my daughter says that we have an ingredient kitchen as opposed to a prepared food kitchen. So at our house, if you want something to eat, then you have to go in the freezer or the cabinet and pull the ingredients out and cook it. Now, as an elder as a baby elder sometimes I decide I want something and I go to the restaurant, pick it up and bring it home. But primarily, we cook what we eat at our house, and so to be sure that I always had food or our family had food, I finally learned that I needed to buy extra, and eventually I learned how to coupon and part of couponing is to buy in excess so that you don't have to run to the store to pick something up that you're out of and I realized that probably within two years into my marriage, before I had children. I was trying to figure out how to make sure that there was always something in the house if we needed it.

Speaker 2:

My work schedule was a little crazy. On Mondays, I went to work either at one or at five and I stayed until the legislative session was over and we had completed all our work and we're ready for the next day. That could be as short as working from five in the afternoon until 8.30 or nine, or it could be as long as working from one o'clock until maybe one o'clock the next day next morning, and then Tuesday, wednesday and Thursday. I knew I was going to work at 8.30 and I didn't know what time I was coming home. And Friday was an abbreviated schedule because that was how we made up during session for the extra time that we would put in, and so running to the grocery store on the way home was just ridiculous. So I made sure that when I buy larger packages of meat I would break them down so we could reach in the freezer and pull out what we needed to cook. I liked to use a crock pot, but my husband didn't, and so I stopped using that as much, even though that was a benefit.

Speaker 2:

And by the time we had children. You know when you have children you have all kinds of things going on. So a lot of times my husband, um, with our first child, was working at night and she had a history of ear infections, and it was nothing for me to have to get up and run to the emergency room in the middle of the night, because that was before the day of urgent care and we didn't even have a children's emergency room in Raleigh at that time, so I would have to take her to the adult emergency room and I was doing a lot of that alone. Not that he wasn't handling things, but you know, when he's working out, when your husband's working, you take on those other responsibilities. If you all are working at opposite times of the day. And as the girls got bigger and they started having birthday parties to go to, that you know. You don't know when you're going to get invited to one, so you have to go buy a gift. Well, I didn't always have money to go buy a gift, so when I would see something on clearance after a holiday, after a holiday, I would buy boxes and bags and gift wrap and that kind of thing. For the next holiday I would see toys on sale that were on clearance for children that my children were the same age as and I had cabinet space, so I would just store those things first in big rubber bins, store those things first in big rubber bins and then eventually we moved the cabinets when we renovated our house from the kitchen to the basement. So I did all of that. But I realized here 33 years later that it was because I was unsure of when I would have money to buy those things if they were needed, and I didn't want to say that I couldn't participate in something because I didn't have it, so I made sure we had it.

Speaker 2:

When I learned to coupon, I learned to. I would buy four newspapers a week so I could get all the coupons that were in the newspapers. I would subscribe to a list that would tell me exactly what was on sale at the grocery store or at the drugstore that week and which coupons to use to make those sale items even cheaper. And whatever the limit was on what I could buy, I would buy it I had I cannot tell you how much shelf space in our basement that I would keep those things on and I would rotate them out. It wasn't that food was going to go bad, but I also have always been a giver, and so if I heard that there was a family who needed some food, I didn't give them a few cans when they left my house or I went to take it to them. It was like somebody had been to the grocery store and had made barely a dent in my pocket or in what I had.

Speaker 2:

And as my children got older and we didn't have to have as much stuff.

Speaker 2:

I had already been practicing that and I didn't think about stopping it. So the beginning of the school year, when school supplies go on sale and you could buy five packs of paper per person for 50 cents a pack, everybody, each child, would get enough money to buy whatever the max was, and we would go to the store and everybody would buy the max and we would take it home and store it. The same with pencils and pens and highlighters and, um, I buy, buy paper for, because I never wanted to run out of things and that was always a danger at our house. So we didn't use all that stuff and I'd give away a lot, but I still continued the buying patterns. And so when we moved, I moved out, I had all that stuff and I'd kind of done the same thing in terms of clothes. I would make sure that we had enough clothes for maybe three weeks without I mean clothes, underwear, so that we didn't have to wash every week because I didn't always have time.

Speaker 2:

And once I was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, one of the things that the doctor told me was I should not do laundry, because pulmonary hypertension is a constriction of the artery going from your lungs to your heart, and so lifting my arms over my head, or the way that you lift when you're folding clothes and putting them and taking them out of the washer and dryer, that exacerbates your condition. And so, while I taught my children to do laundry, they had homework, they had projects, they had things they had to do as well, so it was easier sometimes to just you all do it, but they didn't always bring it and put it away. And, yes, that's something I was. I didn't train them. Well, I trained them, but not necessarily in the best manner, and so I realized I had stuff. And then, when I really started to do research and dig, a lot of the books and papers that I have downloaded some are downloaded, but some are actual books but they're old, and so when I find them, I buy them, still buying at the cheapest price, because that's just who I am now, I'm not trying to spend all the money, but you have to have somewhere to store that stuff and since I, in the last three years I've added three bookcases of books in my house historical books, about Black women, about slavery, about the wars and the defense systems, all the things that I write and talk about. And I have papers and I don't really get rid of stuff. And so when you came to my house which was rare because I didn't want anybody to come in my house and see what was going on it looks like not quite as bad as those hoarders shows.

Speaker 2:

But there was a little path to walk through and if somebody, if people, were coming for dinner because you know I like to entertain we would hide stuff. I would hide stuff. The Christmas closet. There was a closet that my aunt had in the house and I always remember growing up that when we would go to exchange Christmas presents she would go in that closet and she would pull things out that were already wrapped and she had penciled the name in on the back of the package and so that became my Christmas closet. When I moved it was stuffed to the point I couldn't shut the door. I have pictures and oh, just so much stuff.

Speaker 2:

But I wanted it organized and I thought that buying organizational things would help to clean up the stuff, but you know that's not what does it. What does it is being willing to go through and sort and figure out what you can keep and what. I cannot tell you how much stuff there was that was in my house, that was still brand new with tags on it, stuff that I had bought that I hadn't put you know. I would buy it with an idea of what I was going to use it for and then not have the time or take the time or make the time to create where things were going to go. I had stuff, ideas in my head, but not plans on paper or the time to sit and do things that I needed to do to straighten up, and a lot of times our families see that and they just talk about it, how bad it is, how they wish that you would straighten up.

Speaker 2:

But the other thing I realized was that children learn what they see, and so for my children they learned that it's okay to buy stuff, it's okay to not necessarily use it, it's okay to have an overabundance of things that you don't necessarily need. They learned that I didn't say to them this is how you do, but I showed them this is how you do, and so it didn't just affect me, it's affected my whole household. So how do you change that? When you're willing because first your mindset has to be right you have to ask for help. It's too much, it's overwhelming, to try to do it on your own and I've decided I know it's an embarrassing thing because I've been embarrassed it's terrible when I see these TV shows and, mind you, I don't have no dead cats and no dead rats under my stuff. It's terrible when I see these TV shows and, mind you, I don't have no dead cats and no dead rats under my stuff, no critters, none of that. But it was just I knew what piles of things were because I would put them in piles. But everybody, you know people walking in, they just see piles.

Speaker 2:

So I made the decision to pay someone to help me organize and a friend of mine looked at she was going to help me organize, she was going to help me get organizers and that kind of stuff, and she looked at what I was living in and she gave of her time and her money and her effort to come to me and help me organize. And the weight that has been lifted from me knowing that all that stuff is not there Now. I'm not finished. I still have some boxes of papers to go through. I still have some boxes of papers to go through, but I can't even tell you how much money I'd put into buying things that hadn't been used, that still were wrapped up, that still had price tags on them, that I had not used, that could have been gone into savings or trips or all the things.

Speaker 2:

It is a weight. Hoarding is a weight. It is an emotional weight, it is a physical weight and it is something that is hard to get out of. It is a conscious. You have to make a conscious decision Don't buy anything else. I mean literally. She said you can't buy any food for 30 days. You cannot buy anything for. I mean literally. She said you can't buy any food for 30 days. You cannot buy anything for 30 days. If you're thinking about buying something, you need to take a picture of it and send it to me first, and everybody doesn't want to do that for you. So if you are able to have someone who will do that, you are blessed. Be willing to ask for help and be willing to accept it, and if someone offers you help, be willing to take it, because you will feel better on the other end, and I'll probably talk about this some more, but I'm going to be quiet about it right now but I'm going to be quiet about it right now.

Speaker 1:

You've been listening to Quiet no More, where I share my journey, so you can be quiet no more.