[hennie pennie]

>>>>> "I spent some time reading at the Grocery Game and some women were taking the wallboard out of their homes in order to use the interior wall space between the studs as storage space. I start to wonder how much of this is almost an addiction, like gambling. It just seems excessive. How many bottles of EVOO does one need to have on hand, especially when people seem to go out on foraging trips with their coupons 2x-3x a week to make sure they get every last deal possible?" <<<<

Do you have a URL for that "Grocery Game" site you referred to?

I've read that the definition of being a clinical "real" 'hoarder' is that you save stuff that you'll NEVER use, that you save stuff that is absolutely without any value whatsoever, AND that your stuff interferes severely with the normal use of ALL the rooms in your home, for the purpose for which they were designed.

Many of the couponing sites I read in the 1990s had lots of members who once a year would donate all their excess Freebies to either homeless or battered women's shelters or to local food shelves.

I'd say that anyone who removes the drywall in order to make more room for storage.... needs to watch the cable tv series, HOARDERS: Buried Alive. It's either on A&E or on TLC - there are 2 different programs which focus on hoarders, and plenty of them save HUGE stores of food gone bad,bad,bad.

[reformedliberal]

http://www.thegrocerygame.com/

I totally agree on the hoarding diagnosis.

I believe there is an increase in personality disorders in our society. Why else would there be at least 2 TV shows that I am aware of dedicated to hoarding, another dedicated to interventions, and another one about *strange addictions*? This doesn’t even touch all the programs devoted to obsessively observing the lifestyles of upper and upper-middle class *housewives* or of celebrities in the so-called reality shows. This is a form of voyeurism, IMO. I find it boring as can be, but it is certainly very popular. I believe it all substitutes for productive lives, just as the hoarding gets called *frugality*.

As for couponing, you would have to give it away. Who can possibly make use of dozens of boxes of dry cereal, for example? When we traveled for our business, doing trade shows, I would save all the hotel toiletries and donate those to abused women’s shelters.