MONDAY: TOKELA

Hi! My name is Tokela Smith. This is my experience from the first two days of the trip at Ms. Helen's house.
Mrs. Helen was a wonderful person. Upon arriving at her house I was surprised to see this frail little elderly lady whom I had heard was a hoarder and into Star Wars. She was a very interesting person and I had some great experiences that included cleaning her home and talking to her.

Upon cleaning her home I found that she was a hoarder by nature and really felt like everything was important so she wanted to keep it all (including things that she even admitted were broken or unnecessary). In trying to clean out her living room which was her bedroom and most personal space I had to do a lot of persuading by using psychology so that we could clean effectively and keep what was really important and discard those things that she didn’t need and weren’t going to use. This area was the hardest to clean because she guarded it like a hawk, inquiring about each thing we touched. Cleaning other areas of her home (kitchen and porch) was not as hard because she was a little more lenient about what we could discard.

Upon talking to her I found that she was a hoarder because she felt as though she may never know when she would need the thing she threw away so she figured it would be best just to keep it all. Another reason was because she lived through the Depression and at that time the mindset was that everything had some type of values and it could always be used for other purposes.

Also, upon talking to her I found that she is a big fan of Harry Potter (she has all the books and video) and Star Wars (she has all the movies as well as signed autographs from all the cast members both past and present). Through conversing with her I also found that she wrote children books and that she started her own Star Wars fan club called …of which she was the President for multiple years. I had a very great experience cleaning with and talking to Mrs. Helen and even though she is elderly she is still very much so up to date (movies and books).