Hoarders

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Friday, April 29. 2011

I suppose that the voyeuristic TV show Hoarders has raised the visibility of hoarding. It's one of those OCD-type of things that fades from totally insane to fairly normal.

If what you like to hoard is money, then you're just thrifty or stingy. If you like to hoard "collectible" items, then you're a collector: Art, rocks, knives, rugs, guns, pinball machines, etc.

If you can't get rid of stuff you don't really need to the point that it interferes with life, it gets to be a problem. Come to think of it, hoarding money can have the same effect.

I cannot embed this bit. If interested, there are more of these on YouTube - like this one: We can't have people over to our house:

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:57 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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We recently cleaned out a house that had been lived in by a hoarder. Never had a single piece of mail that ever arrived at this house in more than 50 years, not a bill, catalogue, Christmas card or junk mail had ever been tossed. Most were bundled by month and year and put in boxes.

Before and after images here: http://shipshapecleaners.com/3.html

The experience has made me much more ruthless in my discarding of stuff.

#1 Ship-Shape (Link) on 2011-04-29 15:08 (Reply)

My mother has a friend who's house is much much more cluttered than that! I wish I could have taken pictures, literally only narrow paths allowed movement from room-to-room. I bought her husbands carpenter shop tools (he had recently died of Alzheimer's) and my dad and I went to return the key to one of her multiple! storage buildings where she had stored his tools. She is building on her own property a storage building to house her..... stuff. When she dies, she will make some estate auctioneer a pile of cash disposing of a few tons of junk.

#1.1 JoeC on 2011-04-30 09:58 (Reply)

That house was just a little cluttered. Goodness sakes!

#1.2 pbird on 2011-05-01 16:34 (Reply)

I am always fascinated by how a simple-minded television show can turn a fundamental human survival characteristic into a "disease". In our long past, hoarding (storage) once had a viable purpose.

Remember, hoarding isn't a sickness, it's an adventure! You never know what you're going to find that you forgot you had (or where you put it!).

Disclaimer: I'm a "hoarder" in a family of "hoarders" living in a region of "hoarders" ("...don't throw that away, we might need it!"). We believe hoarding may be a genetic propensity. Fortunately, we live in the middle of nowhere on a lot of dry, scrubby land.

P.S. We love your blog!

#2 Quana on 2011-05-01 08:21 (Reply)

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Friday, April 29. 2011

Hoarders