This New York Times article about the children of elder hoarders really resonated with me. Here's a killer quotation: "Randy O. Frost, a psychology professor at Smith College, has been studying hoarders for two decades and is an author of "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things." Children of hoarders, he noted, often display a tortured ambivalence toward their parents, perhaps because unlike spouses or friends of hoarders, they had little choice but to live amid the junk.

"They grew up in this difficult environment and naturally came to resent it," Dr. Frost said. "But at the same time, these are your parents and you have to not only respect and love but take care of them. What happens when they get old?""

I am not the offspring of out-of-control hoarders, but my folks are the next best thing: Depression-era babies who compulsively fill store rooms with non-perishable foodstuffs and cannot throw anything away because it may be reused in some way. I used to think my parents were crazy to keep so many items, but I recognize now that it was a survival skill honed during lean times. My sister's late neighbor was a HUGE hoarder who stuffed his Long Beach home with all manner of detritus. Although he died in January, his executor is still trying to clear a path way through all the stuff.

Sadly, unlike the children of classic hoarders, I am not hypersensitive to clutter and envy people who purge their living spaces on a regular basis. I even offered to take any ephemera and publications abandoned at the residence of my sister's late neighbor.

Maybe my parents' compulsion is hereditary after all, like survivor's guilt. Oh dear.