When I was young I lived in the Oakland hills in California. They were truly not the world’s most popular farmlands, so one wouldn’t expect to have a chicken coop in their backyard. Perhaps at higher elevations in the hills chickens would have not existed at all, but at 8016 Hillmont Drive there was a chicken coop and it was in my backyard. And with that I witnessed the beheading of one of the hill chickens (apparently Aunt Margie had the craving for some chicken soup and thus began the festivities). So I am probably one of the lucky few who truly understand the intensity and descriptiveness of the phrase “running around like a chicken with it’s head chopped off.” I have witnessed this intense disorientation and it’s not a descriptive you’d want of yourself. However, that is how I will describe my morning routine, especially when looking for matching socks. Imagine a chicken with it’s head chopped off wearing one sock rummaging through drawers and closets trying to find the matching mate…every morning.

Now, another part of my routine is to check my emails about 5 times each morning, even while looking for matching socks. Tuesday  morning this week while doing my chicken dance (hop-pull up sock-hop-pull up sock, etc) I received an interesting email from the Better Organized mailing list which was very timely. The item that caught my attention though was called “Where Hoarders Go for Help“.  I found the title quite catchy, but the information I found there was a little shocking.  Hoarding can be a serious mental illness and there are nationally recognized groups that help folks with this compulsive behavior. I admit I’ve never seen an episode of Hoarders, but that’s now on my list for viewing

Now, what does this have to do with infoproducts?  Well, I admit to being very, very, VERY disorganized, but I am by no means a hoarder (obviously because I’d have more socks, right?), as a matter of fact if something annoys me, is too dirty or just looks weird, I throw it out and let someone else grab it from the garbage and figure out what to do with it.

BUT…I might be a hoarder of infoproducts I seem to have  a couple of hard drives full of infoproducts – resell rights products I was going to sell, training products that I was going to read, PLR product that I was going to “recreate”, videos, PDFs, ebooks (remember the old .exe ebooks?), articles, graphics, websites, CDs, software, templates, memberships!!  Oh my!

Is there a such a thing as an infoproduct hoarder? YES!  I’ve heard and read many people admit they have hard drives full of ebooks they have never gotten around to reading, but they keep buying more.  I’ve seen the question “do you have a hard drive full of PLR material collecting dust?”  so many times.  Check out Jacinta’s comment on my blog – she’s obviously experiencing some sort overload as well! LOL

Luckily for me, over the past couple of years I’ve become more frugal (ok, cheap) so I’m limiting what I buy at this point.  Luckily for me, eBay has stopped the sale of digital products!  That was where it all started 10,000 ebooks for 99 cents!  Who could resist that  It’s very hard to go from paying $0.99 cents for 10,000 ebooks to paying $47 for a 20 page PDF!

So, what am I going to do?  I think the first thing I need to do is get all this stuff organized. My first step will be to consolidate everything I have into one place.  So, I’ve bought a new Iomega Prestige 1TB external hard drive.  Like I said, I’ve bought it – I haven’t done anything with it yet!  LOL

If you are an infoproduct hoarder, please let me hear from you and let me know how you deal with infoproduct overload!