House That Held Everything

An unexpected inheritance leads to a shocking house of hoarding and a year-long quest to understand the deep connection between humans and their objects. The possessions of her departed relatives come alive in her hands, as author Eileen Stukane becomes a detective of the deceased in The House That Held Everything. In this first-person memoir, the author inherits the childhood home of a deceased cousin, and then opens a door to rooms filled wall to wall, floor to ceiling, with piled up items from years of secret hoarding, as well as from the disciplined collecting, of clocks, glassware, Asian porcelain, toy trains and more. As she separates significant items from garbage, she peels apart and exposes the emotional underpinnings of hoarding, and makes sense of the difference between collecting and hoarding.