Book Nook: White Walls - A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess In Between

Judy Batalion’s mother was a hoarder. She grew up in a home stuffed with tuna cans, VHS tapes and piles of junk that her mother couldn’t bear to throw out. But as Judy’s home metastasized with trinkets and trash, her own obsession with things grew—until she traded her messy, emotional upbringing for a compulsively ordered, militantly minimalist lifestyle in New York. But just as Batalion seemed to have settled into a serene new life—including a serendipitous marriage to the son of a hoarder—she found herself enmeshed in one of adulthood’s most uncontrollable and messy experiments: motherhood.  

White Walls is an interesting look at what it was like to grow up as the daughter and granddaughter of a hoarder. I had a chance to review it, and it was a very personal, anecdotal story about family, stuff, and how things get passed on. She is honest about how her own hoarder tendencies cropped up as her stress level raised with growing daughters and a sick mother. It's a good personal look at what the home of a hoarder is like, how it affects those around you, and how people try to break the cycle.