Hoarding

I have been watching a lot of hoarding shows lately. They've got me in the mood for declutterizing. I started watching them a few months ago because my mom was a hoarder. Well she would probably still be a hoarder but she's lost her mind and doesn't know anything anymore. She was diagnosed with a form of dementia about two years ago but we'd noticed a problem around our wedding in 2005. She started forgetting words, names for things. I thought it was cause she was getting older. She wasn't old, only 60, but you start forgetting things you know? She used to be able to describe the thing she had forgotten the word for but in 2008 she stopped being able to do even that. I stopped letting her watch my son by herself then. I asked her what she would do if Dacian started choking, she said "oh that's because he eats gluten". Yeah not good. She was forced into early retirement because her disease was affecting her work. In 2009 her drivers license was revoked. She couldn't read signs and would get confused driving someplace new. In 2010 her behavior had escalated to the level that I and my siblings didn't think she was safe living at home by herself. It was when we got a call from the Truckee police department that we knew it was emergent. My mother had tried to walk the ten miles into town to go to the grocery store. When she got tired of walking she hitchhiked. The young girl who gave mom a ride was so concerned that she called the police to do a welfare check on her. The officer found mom lugging grocery bags down Donner Pass Rd. That was one of the scariest calls in my life. We called a guardianship service in Reno and had them file for incompetency. It took a few months but mom was placed in a memory unit in July of 2010. Her mind's gone, she doesn't recognize us anymore, she doesn't speak much anymore. But she's determined to get back to her house. They have her medicated pretty heavily because she's an "exit seeker". My mothers house is the real reason I watch the hoarding shows. I helped my sister clean out decades of food, clothes, furniture and pictures. She had canned food that expired in 1985. She had her maternity clothes. She had every picture and craft project that all her kids had done. They say to keep tax records going back 7 years, she had hers since 1970. She had a mountain of yarn. Her garage was so packed with stuff you couldn't see the two cars that were in it.
Seeing this made me callous about my possessions. Why keep things just in case I could use them later? I'm not as decluttered as I'd like to be but watching the hoarding shows keeps me on my toes. I will not become my mother.