So Much Clutter, So Little Room: Examining the Roots of Hoarding

The New York Times ^ | Sunday, January 4, 2004 | NINA BERNSTEIN

[TroutStalker]

If I may make a suggestion, select what you want to keep, and have an estate sale for the rest. You would be surprised what people will buy and take home for their own "collection".

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I've owned several Jaguars in my young life, the last sold away in 1978. I still have an extra head gasket set, valve adjusting tools and books for 3.8 and 4.2 six cylinder engines (and will not give them up).

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

I think there's a related disorder called animal hoarding. Lots of cats and dogs.

[aculeus]

... Randy O. Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and a national authority on the disorder who helped a group of medical, legal and social service agencies establish the New York City Task Force on Hoarding a year ago.

Similar groups exist in a dozen places, Dr. Frost said, including Seattle, Ottawa, Fairfax County, Va., and Dane County, Wis.

Doctor Frost, Title Hoarder.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

Where are you headed once aboard?

If I could live anywhere, it would be the BVI's. Sigh.

[TruthNtegrity]

Bookmarking to read later.

[Catspaw]

First stop will be either the Gulf Shores/Pensacola area or further east in the panhandle to finish outfitting the boat, then we're off. If we like a place, we'll stay. If we don't, we'll pull up anchor and move.

We spent a month in the BVI years ago and I love both the area and the people.

[The_Media_never_lie]

I just cannot stand to delete any interesting FR threads from my hard drive, but that's the extent of my problem. Honest.

[Catspaw]

If I may make a suggestion, select what you want to keep, and have an estate sale for the rest. You would be surprised what people will buy and take home for their own "collection".

That's what we plan on doing--having a big yard sale for one or two weekends prior to moving on board. What's left we either toss or give to St. Vincent de Paul (depending on what's left). There's not a lot of storage space aboard a boat (it's not like we're going to be towing a barge behind us), so what we take with us will be minimal. And we have 20+ years of STUFF to dump.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

Sounds wonderful. Stay safe!

[tiamat]

Oh, how fun! I've had fantasies of living on a boat!

could be worse! At least it's not an ark!

Good Luck!

Tia

[FITZ]

My grandfather was like that --- I always thought it was because he had lived during the depression and also during those "waste not want not" days that most of us can't imagine.

He wouldn't throw out used shoes because even though he didn't need to wear them now, he figured hard times could come back and they'd be better than wearing shoes with holes. He saved electrical cords, figuring if he ever needed to he could melt off the plastic and sell the copper. His house was neat because he didn't store his stuff there, but you couldn't have parked a bicycle in his 2-stall garage.

[SamAdams76]

For some reason, I have a compulsive need to stockpile National Geographic and Wired magazines. I have every issue of NG from about 1972 to the present and I have every issue of Wired since I first subscribed back in 1994.

My wife got me the CD-ROM version of every NG magazine from the past 100 years with the expectation that I would get rid of my collection. Nothing doing however. I mean, you can't take a CD-ROM to the bathroom with you.

I guess the glossy feel of these magazines especially appeal to me. In my computer room, the shelves are literally groaning under the nearly 120 issues of Wired but it is fun to thumb through them from time to time and see what was "cool" just five years ago (still can't afford it though).

[Wumpus Hunter]

People just don't understand that we won't be able to FIND this kind of stuff when the communists come!

[sinkspur]

The success of the off-site storage business (with garage-sized spaces crammed with stuff people don't even think about) shows that hoarding is widely practiced.

My wife hoards Christmas decorations and stuff, so we've had to rent a small storage space to keep it all.

My mother was a pack-rat; it took us a week to throw out all the junk she accumulated after she passed.

[linton59]

Great post. From experience, if you have a friend or family member with this problem, try to remove the words JUNK, STUFF, and CRAP from your vocabulary while talking with them, even if they use those words. Even when they refuse your help, it is much more helpful to say "I would love to help you organize and sort your collection of magazines" rather than say "I'll bring my pick-up over Saturday and we can take a load of your crap to the dump."

[FormerACLUmember]

Actually this is a clinical manifestation of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), treated with massive doses of SSRI medication.

[FITZ]

That could be hard --- it depends on the yearly cost of storage --- but I can imagine there are things stored in some of those places that don't amount to what people pay to store them.

[An Old Man]

"People just don't understand that we won't be able to FIND this kind of stuff when the communists come!" or for when the Mexicans come charging over the top of the hill

You need to be organized.

Put the $1's in a waste basket till you cannot squash another one in.

Then trade them in for $5's or $10's an stack them neatly in an old shoe box.

When you have 10 or more boxes of $5's and $10's trade them in for $100's.

With 20 or more shoe boxes full of $100's it's time to trade them in for some gold bricks. We like to keep a few dozen of those around just in case.

Semper Fi

[douglas1]

WE have a nice big laundry room where we live, I take stuff over all year long and it is always gone within hours.