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I'm a hoarder and I can't help it! I'm trying I really am, but I'm scared that the second I throw it away I'll need it. And I really, really have to get rid of stuff because my place is too small for everything I own.
I have told myself a million times to just throw it away and I've even managed to give away half of my clothes (and you can't tell by looking in my closet) and the world has not come to an end, but it's really hard to take that first step.
If you know a hoarder, the best thing you can do is help them. If someone who is not a hoarder helped me sort through my things, it would be easier. So if you know a hoarder, offer to help them thin out the hoard. It might be the only way.
Children of Hoarders (http://www.childrenofhoarders.com/coh33.php - broken link)
Thanks for the link. This website was great. And made me laugh, it is my mother, 100%. I can't help her, we just end up fighting. She goes crazy if I touch her stuff. I go crazy that she does not do anything about it. Once, we were together, "cleaning" her garage, which is filled with stuff. So, she wants to work on the yard, water the flowers. I want to choke her, how can she possibly think about yard work, when we made a pledge to clean out the garage this weekend?! She got mad at me for "forcing" her to ignore the yard, and said I was a controlling B, who just wanted to throw her stuff out. BTW, I had to pick up each piece of paper in the garage, and ASK her if I could throw it away, and after she inspected it for about 10 minutes, she wanted to put it in a box to "FILE" it, we are talking about a newspaper clipping that is 25 years old, filthy, and gross. Helping her with her stuff does not work for us.
Mine would say the same thing and she was exceedingly frugal...as well, yanno, I guess until we go thru it, we wouldn't understand....
yanno, my mom feared so much...travel, going anywhere, she was a real homebody...she really feared and fought change big time? Did yours?
We're still cleaning out my mom's house, b/c my sister is just like her and can't throw anything, I mean, anything away. We had stuff ready to take to Good Will, and she went back and took stuff off the truck...we just stood there and rolled our eyes.
I'm very very sorry for your loss...
this isn't a nice thing...we tried to talk to our mom the same way...matter of fact, my sister's even had junk in her attack that they were never able to go thru and get rid of...I believe that is why my other sister and my self cannot keep anything...I dunno?
I hope things work out at your end....God bless you..and sending hopes and prayers that all works out.
It is what it is and there are no do overs. But I'm sure not going to let it ruin the rest of my life. I can't change it so it's time to move on!
Thanks for the kind thoughts and yes, my mom was very fearful of change. She liked that apple cart full and stationary!
I have read in psychology books that some hoarders are compensating for the loss of a loved one.
I have seen cases where this was true, and others I could not make that assumption. My cousin is a hoarder, and now that her husband has passed away, she hoards even more to the point her daughter has to move her out because she can't hardly find her underneath the stacks of things. She has "tunnels" in her home....between the clutter if you've ever seen the show "clean house" you'll know what I'm referring to here.
My DH was a hoarder, but IMO, not too bad about it. One day after about 3 years of marriage, he sent me an article talking about how stressful clutter is in your life, and he asked me if we could spend one full week throwing things away.
You know who had the hardest time downsizing? ME! I literally cried when I made the decision to throw away things I had for 10+ years, but I agreed that if DH asked, "have you used this in the last 6 months, and the answer was, "no", it went in the garage sale pile.
We had 4 garage sales that year, and now we live clutter free. If something new comes into the house, something old must go out. We recycle, we don't buy unnecessary items, and we actually save a ton of money each year living this way.
I do feel a lot better with so much space now, and its very easy to toss things. That first step was painful....but I love cleaning house now, its so easy without 1,000 knicknacks to dust!
When my friend had a big house he unmercifully hoarded old rusted tools, old plumbing parts, old electrical parts, old unsalvageable furniture, broken gardening tools and who knows what else.
When something would break at my business he'd spend hours foraging around for something as simple as a short length of old PVC or a PVC joint and a simple job would literally take a whole day between the foraging and then trying to get the salvaged part to fit properly. Then the "new" part was so old and brittle that it would crap out again a couple of months later.
I finally had enough and told him that although I appreciated his help, this whole scenario was ridiculous and I'd give him the few dollars to go to the hardware store to get a NEW replacement part. He baulked like mad but we finally got it all sorted out and now these little jobs are accomplished lickety-split and they last.
He sold his house a couple of years ago and moved into a condo and couldn't bear to get rid of everything so I ended up with some rusted stuff piled under a tarp in my yard. It took a year and a lot of nagging before he finally got rid of that pile of junk and carted it off to the dump!
My sister is a hoarder...of stuff and cats...which I believe is a symptom of her depression and mental illness. It is a vicious cycle, IMO, as depression may lead to hoarding, which causes so many problems in itself, that it may feed the depression further. When I watch that show on TV, I cannot help but think of my sister and her family. I'm sure it must affect her kids similarly, as some have have obsession-compulsion issues.
We no longer visit my sister...as things kept getting more and more cluttered in their home...and the filth is amazing! It's odd how these hoarders don't see themselves amidst the problem. Unfortunately, it is a mental illness that is very easy to mask...one just leaves the house to go to work, go to school, or go shopping. You might never know the person is a hoarder as you cross paths in society.
My other sister also has the problem, as well as my deceased mom did. My dad has the problem, which seems to get worse as he ages. I'm wondering if hoarding is mostly a female addiction, as it seems to affect more women than men.
I am a hoarder to a degree. My parents keep me in check for the most part, one example is Since 2003 from 2007, I used to hoard those free weekly AutoShopper magazines. I would NEVER throw the old ones away. I remember this Chinese take-out place had them in a stack for their customers, I would walk in every time I could, take the car magazine and leave, the looks I got from people in the store were priceless. I never spent a penny in that place, haha. in fact I probably still have some from back then that didn't get thrown away on me. Now that I have my own internet connection, I just go on ebay or craigslist if I want to look at cars.
I think my main problem is I can't say no to free things. I also have a lot of electronic junk that I never use, I have 5 TVs in my bedroom. They work fine, I don't want to scrap or waste a perfectly good TV. In my bedroom, I also have a 55 gallon fish tank that I picked up last year thats still empty, a huge sound board thats missing the power brick, 2 printers that barely work, an outdated iMac, a bunch of old stereos from the 1970s, and LOTS of computer parts, like floppy drives, CDROM drives, CPU fans. I do keep it all neat and stacked on shelves though. I line everything up and make sure its all meticulous.
I am also a scrapper, I go around on trash day and pick up electronic junk and scrap it, mostly for copper & wiring. It's a fun hobby, but I filled my junk space (no one minds as long as I keep my junk in the corner of my yard that no one can see) in the backyard with TVs and monitors that I have to take apart. My friend, whos also a scrapper, had 30 monitors in his backyard, we called it the "monitor graveyard". Now that scrap copper is going up in price again, I've been busy scrapping all that stuff, and once I do I put it at the curb to make room for new hauls - however if it were really up to me, I wouldn't get rid of it, which scares me sometimes!
Last edited by RamCharger1985; 11-30-2009 at 12:14 AM..
I could probably be considered one. I've held on to pretty much every piece of mail I've gotten in the past 8 years, newspapers, old crossword puzzle books (long since solved), receipts, notes I've jotted down, old pay stubs, tax forms....
My "hoarding" seems to be limited that of the paper variety...I can say I'm glad that my employer doesn't even produce pay stubs any longer. If we want them, we'd have to go online and print them out...and I don't have access to a computer printer.
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I'm trying I really am, but I'm scared that the second I throw it away I'll need it. And I really, really have to get rid of stuff because my place is too small for everything I own. 
Mine would say the same thing and she was exceedingly frugal...as well, yanno, I guess until we go thru it, we wouldn't understand....
