‘Objects of My Affection’ emotional, realistic

Lucy Bloom has a lot of problems. She is divorced and has just broken up with her boyfriend, and making matters even worse, has discovered that her only son is a drug addict.

Lucy has sold her house and just about everything she owns to put her son in a high-dollar drug rehabilitation program. She is living with her friend and is bunking in the same room with her friend’s young daughter.

Life can’t get much worse.

But, as luck would have it, Lucy sees a way out. She once wrote a book on decluttering your life, so she puts her services out for hire as an organizer. She is surprised to be hired by the son of an eccentric artist, Marva Meier Rios, who, it turns out, is a hoarder.

Marva's home is cluttered from top to bottom with years of accumulation. The challenge for Lucy is the deadline that both Marva and her son have put on the project. The entire house must be done by a certain date, and if she completes the task in the allotted time she will earn a huge bonus — one big enough that Lucy might be able to start her life over again.

The project seems almost doomed from the beginning. Lucy discovers that she is in big trouble when she learns that Marva wants to hold on to everything in the house. Marva also insists that she must have final say on getting rid of anything and each item in the house must be handled individually.

As they struggle through their clashes of wills and personalities, Lucy and Marva begin to plow through the mess and soon find that they have more in common than they initially thought. As the deadline nears, Lucy discovers Marva’s reason for wanting the project to be done by a certain date, and suddenly the job turns into a rescue mission rather than a cleaning one.

Jill Smolinski does an incredible job weaving the the stories of two willful women in “Objects of My Affection.” She gives readers an often emotional storyline with a genuine feel of reality. This is a fascinating story of holding on to one’s possessions versus holding on to the important people in life.