Stories From Candyland (20 page)

As my husband became more successful, we had bigger houses and more employees. We went from being in debt on a tiny house to having maids, butlers, chefs, and gardeners on the grounds of big houses. We entertained constantly. That’s what successful moguls did, and I was Mrs. Successful Mogul.

We had lovely houses, wonderful collections, beautiful furniture, and I knew our parties would be just fine. But my shyness, combined with lifelong insecurities and the image of white gloves, convinced me that my house had to be perfect before anyone could enter it.

I would get up in the middle of the night, white gloves ready to be used, and “test” my house. I remembered those little spots I’d found at my parents’ house, even though my mother and I were great housekeepers. I didn’t want anyone finding any such spots at my house.

As far as I know, my reputation for having a spotless home is still intact. I’ve never lost my focus on keeping the ideal house. Even after my husband passed away in 2006, I’ve kept up a routine of being a tireless white-glove monitor. I confess that I do often perform the test on mantels, sculptures, counters, and tables, all hours of the day and night, weekdays and weekends, even holidays. I hope the security guards don’t see me, but I suspect they do.

Only recently did I consider the possibility that I had passed a
90210
-like test.

When I was interviewing real estate agents to sell my
beloved home, The Manor (don’t worry, my mother’s gloves are moving with me), one of them, Brooke Knapp, sent me a note after she had visited my home. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

A dream of everyone living in Los Angeles. And, what a privilege it was to drive into the motor court of The Manor. I felt honored, humbled and excited with anticipation at the same time. It is beautiful beyond my imagination. The style, the scale, the symmetry, the attention to detail . . . yes, the attention to every little detail.

The silver, not just in the silver drawers or the silver “closet” but throughout the house was polished beyond perfection. . . from the perfume bottle collection in the lower powder room to the cachepot holding an orchid on the landing of the second floor. The china was stored to perfection. The home is spotless . . . not just one day spotless . . . but days of spotless . . . years of spotless . . . with a fragrance clean and fresh . . . not of those candles people burn to cover other scents but real fresh.

What I came away from The Manor with was the extraordinary accomplishments of its Mistress and Designer/Builder/Guardian. In the end, I was humbled by her style, her creativity, her effectiveness at creating an oasis of great beauty, happiness, enthusiasm, love and excellence on every level. . . an accomplishment few even attempt yet succeed at.

There aren’t many tougher critics than a Beverly Hills Realtor, who judges all the best houses.

I put the letter in with my mother’s gloves. I knew they’d be proud.

Chapter 15
Help Me, Oprah

T
here are six million hoarders in the United States, and I’m afraid I’m one of them.

I don’t want to be a hoarder. I hope I’m not one. But I fear I might be.

My hoarding fear was heightened in 2007 when one of my friends e-mailed me a page from www.childrenofhoarders.com.

“Children of Hoarders,” it read, “Oprah is looking for you.”
It told the “children of compulsive hoarders” that Oprah Winfrey was looking for people willing to tell their family’s “dirty little secret”—that they were “horrified, embarrassed and ashamed of the chaotic condition” of their parents’ homes.

My heart stopped.

Oh no. When was Tori last on Oprah? How many times a year would they book her? Hadn’t she been a guest recently, promoting a TV show or book in which she complained about me? They wouldn’t let her on to add “living with a hoarder” to her list of childhood complaints, would they?

I thought about my son, Randy. No, the odds of Randy spending his time on a site called www.childrenofhoarders.com was quite unlikely. Besides, he liked to go on television only to talk about his own projects, not spill the beans about our family. (He has a successful life-coaching business. I wonder if he coaches people not to hoard.)

Okay. I was safe. My kids were not going to spill the beans to Oprah that they had a hoarder as a mother.

Once that immediate fear passed, I consoled myself with the realization that I’m a collector, not a hoarder. Yes, that’s it. I collect things. I don’t hoard them.

Since I knew Oprah would be doing a show on hoarding, I decided I’d better be prepared with answers just in case anyone I knew watched it. Deep down, I knew everyone would watch it, and think, “Oh, poor Candy. An Oprah two-part series, of all things. I hope Oprah doesn’t mention her.”

I headed for the study, where I keep every script of every
show my husband ever produced. I’ve never counted, but there are thousands of them, all bound in beautiful burgundy, beige, brown, yellow, royal blue, dark turquoise, British racing green, and white leather albums with the names and dates of the shows embossed in gold. Perfect. This was clearly a collection.

My
Merriam-Webster
dictionary usually helps me out: A
hoard
is “a collection of things kept for future use or need.” Hey, hoarding doesn’t sound that bad. And it certainly makes my husband’s scripts a collection, not a hoard.

The dictionary helped further by defining
collect
: “to bring together into one body or place.” Yes! My doll museum had all my beautiful dolls, accessories, sewing machines, and lots of other possessions in one place. Again, a collection, not a hoard.

My doll collection was originally Tori’s. Over the years, I bought her beautiful dolls, and then our friends and family bought her dolls, and then, one day, she didn’t like them. I never had dolls growing up; I preferred the company of stuffed animals, such as my substitute dog, Morgan. But I loved each of the dolls we bought for Tori, and thus began my collection . . . and then my doll museum, a light, airy, spacious room with a constant temperature of sixty-eight humidified degrees, special lights, stages, and a section for the anamatrons I bought for Aaron. It’s a beautiful room, and people love to visit it. Nothing wrong there, Oprah.

Hoard
as a verb means “to lay up a hoard of.” (This is certainly not an expression I’ve ever used.) Its origin is Middle
English and comes from “to hide.” These are ugly-sounding concepts. My collections are all beautiful, and need not be hidden!

And then I remembered my Beanie Babies. They were hidden away. What would Oprah say if she learned I had thousands—yes, thousands—of Beanie Babies stored neatly in special bags in closets? Would she shake her head if she found out I had paid collector’s prices for some of them—does anyone remember when the Blue Elephant was going for five thousand dollars?—and that I made late-night trips to McDonald’s for months every time a new mini Beanie Baby was offered? Would eBay’s stock price drop if anyone realized that I probably accounted for a good part of its revenue by buying Beanie Babies online? Then I remembered that I had been motivated by thinking that Beanie Babies might be a good investment someday. Who knew the market would be flooded and the value would drop? If I keep holding on to them, though, I might make a profit.

I tried to find out if carefully packing things that could be worth something someday counted as hoarding. I couldn’t find a reference. I decided I’d look at my Beanie Babies as savings bonds with no maturity dates.

My collection of Steuben glass is scattered (also neatly and, in some cases, artfully) throughout the house. My antique perfume bottles are out for all to see. I have a collection of antique crystal round or spherical ball clocks. (I dare you to find anyone who hoards those.)

My beautiful hand-painted fans are neatly arranged, and I look at them every day. That’s a prized collection.

One day I was lost in thought trying to distinguish my twelve years of back issues of
Architectural Digest
(hoarding, I guess) from my hundreds of books about gardens (not sure which), when two intercom lines buzzed on two different phones.

I glanced over and saw six lines lit up. Uh-oh. Was Tori on television again talking about me? (I hoped it wasn’t that seashell story. I really thought that was one of the nicest things a mom could have done for her little girl.) Had something happened to a friend? Had war been declared?

None of the above. Oprah’s show on hoarding was about to begin, and the promo said it was going to be a two-parter.

For the next hour I sat fascinated as Oprah went “Inside a Hoarder’s Home.” I felt like taking notes, but I had years of notes on every possible subject that I never looked at. (Did that mean I hoarded notes, too?)

I joined millions of viewers (and apparently many people I knew) eavesdropping on Sharyn and Marvin, whom Oprah defined as having a three-thousand-square-foot house that “looks like a typical American home.”

But, she went on: “Step inside, however, and the foyer has become a narrow passage walled by stockpiles of possessions. The kitchen is drowning in bags and boxes filled with unused items. The family room is unrecognizable, with every piece of furniture covered in heaps of miscellaneous belongings.”

I couldn’t wait for the first commercial break to do a quick inventory of my own house.

My foyer was as big and bright and uncluttered as ever.

The kitchen looked spic-and-span, although I knew there were stockpiles of paper towels and paper plates, and countless sets of glassware, dishes, china, silverware, pots, pans, salt and pepper shakers, and everything else. Not one bit of clutter, though.

Family room? Hmm, my house has a lot of rooms. I’m not sure which one is the family room, since the kids moved out years ago. I ran in and out of three rooms where we all used to like to congregate. All were recognizable, and I didn’t find anything in heaps.

I got back to the TV in time to hear Oprah reinforce the idea that nearly six million Americans have a hoarding problem. I always say there’s strength in numbers. I hate being alone.

She then announced that Sharyn and Marvin had seventy-five tons of trash in their home. “It would take fifteen huge Dumpsters to hold that much trash,” Oprah said, and demonstrated by standing in front of a big blue Dumpster. “Imagine this amount of junk taking up every room, every hallway, every inch of space in your home.”

She then described Sharyn and Marvin as “a husband and wife nearly buried alive in clutter.”

I have 56,500 square feet of living space. If you add the attic and other storage, it comes to about 70,000 square feet.
I know what you’re thinking. If 3,000 square feet could fill fifteen Dumpsters, how much could 70,000 square feet of hoarded items fill?

Now that Oprah had exposed hoarders—and even brought doctors in to help them—I decided I’d better make sure that I wasn’t one.

I called some friends.

“Did you see
Oprah
? Do you think I’m a hoarder?”

I have nice friends. They said things such as, I’m a little eccentric, that the house is so large no one could hoard that much, and that I’m a collector. No one accused me of hoarding. I made a mental note to start stockpiling extra gifts to give them for the holidays.