This is a true personal story, although not quite true, and not quite a story. I have mixed in some lies to give people some privacy, and to shave off some technical details.
Margaret is a hoarder. She maintains a household full of junk. Mountains of clothing, overflowing cabinets of food, bags full of bags, blocked closets full of nobody-knows-what. The top layer is a thin coating of decorative tchochkes. The bottom layer is a collection of packed cardboard boxes, untouched since the house repairs that occurred 15 years ago.
The kitchen has no counter space, and much work is done on a pull-out cutting board, which blocks the utensil shelf directly beneath it. The dining table is unusable, forcing people to set up a temporary table in the space that the front door would open into. There are not one but two expensive television sets, one in front of the other, and the second one partially obscured by other junk. The house is composed of a series of single-lane walkways; people must back up and step aside to let others pass by, and wear close-toed shoes to avoid injury.
