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

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

[ccmay]

We are just now going through a dozen boxes of old photos, cards and memorabilia, pitching out pictures and obituaries of people we don't know.

Someday you will have a descendant who is interested in genealogy and family history, and he or she will curse your name!

-ccm

[Final Authority]

for later read

[redhead]

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

Bookmark them. Then they will be stored on FR's servers, and you'll free up a bunch of hard drive space.

[Polybius]

Wonder if any FReeper might have a hoarding problem...uhhh...

"Hello. My name is Polybius."

"Hi, Polybius!!!!"

"I....ummm....errrr.....never throw away FreepMail."

[Eric in the Ozarks]

When we lived in the Twin Cities, I finally had enough of the Strib so I called and canceled except for the Sunday paper. A few weeks later, they offered me the Saturday for free, since I was taking the Sunday, so I agreed to take the paper two days a week.
A few months later, the Strib called offering me Thursday and Friday for free, since I was already getting Saturday and Sunday. That's as far as they would go, tho.

[BlueLancer]

"Like the elderly tinkerer, the Bronx man, Patrice Moore, 43, saw treasure where others saw mainly trash."

"Life, as it is."
I have lived for over 40 years and I've seen "life, as it is": pain, misery, cruelty.

I've heard all of the voices of God's noblest creature: moans from bundles of filth in the streets.

I've been a soldier and a slave.
I've seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa.
I've held them in their last moments; these were men who saw "life, as it is".
But they died despairing. No glory. No bray of last words. Only their eyes filled with confusion, questioning "Why?"
I do not think they were asking why they were dying, but why they had ever been born.

Life itself seems lunatic. Who knows where madness lies?
Perhaps to be too practical is madness.
To surrender dreams, this may be madness;
To seek treasure where there is only trash.
Too much sanity may be madness.

But maddest of all, to see "life, as it is" and not as it should be!
("Man of La Mancha")

[TroutStalker]

LOL! We had large stacks of National Geographic at Pop's house from way back. Those things are heavy, too.

When we gave a subscription to our daughter, she asked if she had to keep all the old ones. She is definitely not a hoarder.

[TroutStalker]

We still have all the old photos that the living can recall, and that's still a lot. It might be fun to take all the others and make things up to write on the back.

[sweetliberty]

"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"

This is a joke, right?

[blam]

"They see more connections between things, which leads them to value those things much more than the rest of us do. "

Yup. I have it...but, I have the room to store it too.

[Auntie Mame]

This is one of my favorites! Thanks.

[Auntie Mame]

Have you visited http://www.flylady.net/ ?

It's a godsend!

[tiamat]

How cool is that?

thanks!

Tia

[tiamat]

It's unAmerican to throw out National Geopgraphic.

Friend of ours told us a story about how they caughter a Soviet spy during the Cold War because the guy threw out his Geographics.
Fed went through his trash, found those, every month, and decided to investigate further....

Tia

[Cogadh na Sith]

And a third, trying to explain why she had bought several puppets that she did not want or need from a television shopping channel, spoke of feeling sorry for the toys when no one else bid on them.

Sounds just like my ex-wife... It nearly drove me mad. I guess it finally did drive her mad...

[sweetliberty]

"It's going to be awful to clear out their stuff once they pass on."

My grandma was a packrat like that. She didn't throw anything away. In addition to holding the philosophy, "waste not want not," she loved to shop and was incapable of resisting bargains, nor could she pass up many of the unique items offered in mail order catalogs (which she also never threw out). Her collection of costume jewelry and Avon filled the dresser top and most of the dresser drawers, as well as a couple of shelves in a closet. Hatboxes filled with hats she never wore stacked to the ceiling in one closet whose lower shelves contained stacks of Christmas cards she had received over the years, bound together in 8-10 inch stacks with large rubber bands. She seldom had to shop at Christmas, just rummage through the cedar chest and a few drawers, and she was good to go. Plundering at Grandma's house was truly an enjoyable activity and the opening of any door, drawer or cabinet promised new advernture.

When Grandma passed away back in 1985, it fell to me to go through her things. There was one closet whose floor was stacked several feet high with nothing but junk mail, in addition to what was on the shelves. While I was afforded many a walk down memory lane at the time, the sheer volume of stuff was overwhelming and because she would sometimes stick something worth saving in the midst of all the "junk," it was necessary to handle virtually every item. I don't remember exactly how long it took, but I had to take an incomplete for that quarter at college because I was out of the state for so long.

While I wouldn't have had her be any different than she was, I think I responded by developing an almost obsessive need to unclutter. Now, that may sound simple, but I am much more like my grandma than I like to admit and I can turn even few belongings into a pretty good size mess. It's an inherited talent I think. Anyway, I developed the philosophy that it's not much good to have it if you can't find it when you need it, and decided that if it isn't either beautiful, useful or highly sentimental, it goes. It has worked out well for the most part, but sometimes in my zeal to unclutter, I have gone too far and lost or given up some things that I truly regretted later.

[not_apathetic_anymore]

"They see more connections between things, which leads them to value those things much more than the rest of us do. "

Yup. I have it...but, I have the room to store it too.

Me too. But I've decided that I've hit my limit, and am trying very hard to de-clutter. Last year I took maybe 10 car-trunk loads to Goodwill. One of these days I'm going to run into the stuff that carries the emotional ties. I can predict with 100% certainty I'll get bogged down there:(

[wideminded]

Spending time on FreeRepublic is like hoarding. There's always just one more interesting article to read. Perhaps a lot of us have more in common with the Collyer brothers than we would like to think.

[Inyo-Mono]

I sold my old Volkswagon back in 1976 yet I still have an outside mirror, choke cable, bumper and Becker tube radio for it. Never know when I might need 'em.

[sweetliberty]

Thought some of y'all might find this article interesting.