Do you know any Hoarders?

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seamus wrote: »

Likewise I ask myself whether I think I will need something in the next five years. If the answer is not "probably". It goes in the bin. "Maybe" is not good enough.

5 years! I used to have a rule of 1 year but after seeing what my father did that rule has shrunk to 1 month.


Even if a person is not a hoarder in the strictest sense of the word, I personally find that holding onto anything that is not necessary adds to an enourmous amount of clutter around the house.


Cleaning up and dusting the house with so much stuff is a monumental pita. The less stuff you have the less time spent cleaning and dusting thereby leaving more time for other more important stuff. Win-Win in my books.


These guys have an interesting couple of videos.

Irish Guitarist

If you're rich and buy expensive shite you'll never need, like dozens of cars and aeroplanes and a mansion with rooms you never use, you'll end up in Forbes magazine or MTV Cribs. If you don't have much money and buy hundreds of cheap ornaments or something and don't have much space to store them in you'll end up on some shitty Channel 4 documentary.

Deer

When I was very depressed in my twenties I was definitely on my way to being a hoarder. The house was a disgrace, I'd never throw anything away, was very slovenly about house keeping and you couldn't walk in my bedroom. My poor child at the time, I still feel bad about it and it's amazing that nobody called social services on me. But once I got proper medication I cleaned up my act, the motivation to clean the house was there, and to get rid of anything I didn't need. It didnt happen overnight but it happened. Nowadays I'm super clean and I won't say super tidy as I have 4 kids but as tidy as I can keep it and wouldn't be panicking that the house was a bomb if I had a surprise called. In fact very house proud now. I think deffo in my case it was related to my mental health at the time.

Pyr0

AlphabetCards wrote: »

I'll attach photos later when I clear the exif data from them. You wouldn't believe it, honestly!!

You're right! I don't believe it.

Now show us the evidence already! :mad::mad::mad:

Greyfox

Neyite wrote: »

I'm not a hoarder but I was long overdue a massive clear out of stuff. I downloaded a book by Marie Kondo and some of the points in her book helped change my mindset and be a bit more ruthless in getting rid

I'm definitely going to check that out, it sounds a very good place to start, thanks

Greyfox

seamus wrote: »

... "I'll get to it soon", but in the back your mind you know you'd need to take 2 weeks off work to do it.

Yeah I even took a few days off a few months ago but it was too hard to know where to start as sorting stuff is hard when you've no room for the stuff u want to keep and the joys of procrastination. I agree that if I don't use something in a given time I should throw it out. I'm staying in tonight to write out a plan with a timetable as it's going to take quite a while

SEPT 23 1989

It's an illness I don't understand

I could walk away from everything with a sports bag full of stuff and not give it a second thought

mistersifter

compulsive decluttering also exists as an illness. Would be interesting to hear about people's experiences with that. I love throwing stuff out myself but hasn't become a problem yet!!

ArnoldJRimmer

mistersifter wrote: »

compulsive decluttering also exists as an illness. Would be interesting to hear about people's experiences with that. I love throwing stuff out myself but hasn't become a problem yet!!

I'm like yourself, de-cluttering makes me very happy. I recycle a huge amount, donate excess clothing to charity, and keep everything neatly tidied away. Every six months or so, I'll clean out those cupboards to throw even more of the stuff away that I no longer need

I actually find any kind of clutter building up to be quite stressful. Had a couple of guests stay with me last year, and even though one of them had their own room, she insisted on keeping all of her cr@p like keys, shopping, cigarettes, jacket etc on my kitchen counter. Set my teeth on edge

mistersifter

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

I'm like yourself, de-cluttering makes me very happy. I recycle a huge amount, donate excess clothing to charity, and keep everything neatly tidied away. Every six months or so, I'll clean out those cupboards to throw even more of the stuff away that I no longer need

I actually find any kind of clutter building up to be quite stressful. Had a couple of guests stay with me last year, and even though one of them had their own room, she insisted on keeping all of her cr@p like keys, shopping, cigarettes, jacket etc on my kitchen counter. Set my teeth on edge

Had the exact same experience with a relative whi stayed with me last year. Her stuff left all over the table which was then scratched to bits after she left.

Ive noticed it does become obsessive if im hungover. i seem to want to tidy everything and make my living space less stressful to ease the pain! I definitely find the aul decluttering to be a very therapeutic experience.

bottlebrush

Read through this thread. Then grabbed a few bin bags went upstairs and filled the bags with clothes I haven't worn in years - one bag for charity shop and one bag for the bin. Then filled a bag with shoes. Feel so much better!
My mother was a furniture hoarder. Spent her life going to furniture auctions and filling up the house with chairs tables and dressing tables and the like. She would do up a few old pieces - she would land an old dressing table in the middle of the sitting room floor and we would have to walk around it to get from one side of the room to another. There was another sitting room jammed packed with old furniture and we could just about open the door to get into the room to look for something. When she became ill we had to clear out the whole place and realised what a lovely home it would have been and we only had a few months of clutter free bliss before she passed away.
my sister is the same - new build house jammed packed with so called antique furniture and clothes. Only the kitchen and downstairs toilet are clear. Four bedrooms upstairs full to the gills with old wardrobes full of clothes. Two wardrobes in the dining room full of clothes. No room for visitors or people to stay over.
It would drive me daft. Couldn't live like that. Had enough of it growing up.

CFlat

I use to be an awful hoarder of chairs.

It didnt matter what type. Wooden ones, plastic ones, steel ones, aluminium ones, all shapes and sizes. id store them in the hall, in the kitchen, in the bathroom and even in the bedroom.

Then one day the canal froze outside our pub and that was that problem sorted.

JustAThought

???

I think its a mistake to assume that all.people that like to keep and accumulate things are dirty or mentally ill. Sure there is a point that when it spillls up stairs and waist deep in every room there is a problem but a lot of people have and keep a lot of stuff - but in a clean manner. Too many people on this thread jumping on bandwaggons. Lots of people have an 'iorning room' or a 'junk room' in the same way that lots of people have all kinds of stuff (stuffed) in attics and sheds. Dost make yhem dirty or diseased thou. Y'all have been watching too much yank extreme tv on people collecting their own waste or catpoo and dogs teeth in jars. They are the extremist end of it. Lots of people just like their stuff and are thrifty or attached to their memories or saving for a rainy day or futire use. Nothing too wrong with that.

the14thwarrior

i have to say in my work i have had to do a lot of home visits.....i've seen it all...
one lady begged for clothes from other people, she had none.... and in her home you could only access two rooms and a small portion of the stairs because of the piles and piles of clothes everywhere.
another man had lines of beer cans everywhere..... and we could not knock them down he would get upset.
another man just didn't use his toilet often enough preferring to go other places..and i'll never forget pulling back the bedsheets and when i opened his oven..... oh god.....
another lady had diogenes syndrome (extreme hoarding) and it was terrrible....
these were though by and large people that you knew were sick .
i think the shock is worse when you don't suspect, i did one visit where i was really in shock, just dirt and filth everywhere and the family never told us once.

screamer

I don't think hoarding stuff is always some kind of mental illness.....
I think hoarding rubbish is just laziness.
A female family member was a hoarder but no mental illness involved.. Too much money spent on clothes and shoes and too lazy to clean anything plus no ability to clean or tidy, simply a skillset she just didn't have. Also zero pride in her home it usually looked like a bomb site and she didn't give two hoots.....

RhubarbCrumble

the14thwarrior wrote: »

another man just didn't use his toilet often enough preferring to go other places..and i'll never forget pulling back the bedsheets and when i opened his oven..... oh god......

Oh my God. Please don't tell me that you mean he actually used the oven as a toilet?!

freshpopcorn

I think what people consider hoarding can vary.
I find some people can be a little melodramatic about clutter and tidying up.
Extremes at either end of the scale are just as bad.

acai berry

I used to have a door to door job. Sometimes a person would come to the door in answer to my knock, immediately stepping outside the door and pulling it closed behind them. So they would talk to me on the outide doorstep, with the door closed behng them. If they didn't have a dog or children, I would suspect they were a hoarder.

DrPhilG

It's definitely a form of mental illness. I've watched a few episodes of the TV show about hoarders in the US. Some of them really struggle to the point of panic attacks when they have to face dumping what is clearly just dirt and rubbish.

Some insane examples too, people who literally have a few feet deep of crap throughout their house and have to climb through a half blocked door to reach a dirty old mattress where they sleep. This kind of stuff...



There was even one of woman who hoarded her own piss. Her family had an intervention to get her to clear the place out and when they dug deep into the bathroom they found a big 3l bottle of pee. The more they dug the more big bottles they found, ended up with probably well over 100l of old stale piss. Horrific. Her family were really upset at that point. It was the realisation that she was seriously messed up beyond just hoarding rubbish. Saving gallons of your own piss is a different level of loopy.

Canis Lupus

I've boxes of PC stuff in my cupboard that are so outdated I don't even use them anymore.... But you never know when you'll need an IDE cable so I won't throw it out.

dublinman1990

DrPhilG wrote: »

It's definitely a form of mental illness. I've watched a few episodes of the TV show about hoarders in the US. Some of them really struggle to the point of panic attacks when they have to face dumping what is clearly just dirt and rubbish.

Some insane examples too, people who literally have a few feet deep of crap throughout their house and have to climb through a half blocked door to reach a dirty old mattress where they sleep. This kind of stuff...



There was even one of woman who hoarded her own piss. Her family had an intervention to get her to clear the place out and when they dug deep into the bathroom they found a big 3l bottle of pee. The more they dug the more big bottles they found, ended up with probably well over 100l of old stale piss. Horrific. Her family were really upset at that point. It was the realisation that she was seriously messed up beyond just hoarding rubbish. Saving gallons of your own piss is a different level of loopy.

Holy Sweet Jesus. That is unbelievably nasty behaviour.

Could you not imagine the stench coming out from all of the piss being stored in those bottles in the woman's house?

And to think of the horror of a man, from a few posts above, would considering using his oven as a possible toilet?

And to think all of this stuff happens people's homes anywhere in the world including Ireland.

The level of behaviour shown here from these people is just another level of sick.

Graces7

JustAThought wrote: »

???

I think its a mistake to assume that all.people that like to keep and accumulate things are dirty or mentally ill. Sure there is a point that when it spillls up stairs and waist deep in every room there is a problem but a lot of people have and keep a lot of stuff - but in a clean manner. Too many people on this thread jumping on bandwaggons. Lots of people have an 'iorning room' or a 'junk room' in the same way that lots of people have all kinds of stuff (stuffed) in attics and sheds. Dost make yhem dirty or diseased thou. Y'all have been watching too much yank extreme tv on people collecting their own waste or catpoo and dogs teeth in jars. They are the extremist end of it. Lots of people just like their stuff and are thrifty or attached to their memories or saving for a rainy day or futire use. Nothing too wrong with that.

My family call it the "spill room" . So you can close the door on it and be neat. I do not have one here and i miss it. Because of my knitting work I have a lot of yarn etc. In one sense I hoard it. but needfully.

And I knew a lovely family whose house was full of stuff, left by family members. It had meaning and need for them. Stairs lined with boxes etc

When I came to Ireland I left all my furniture and everything behind,because of lack of money,I brought a rucksack,laptop and cat. The car followed with stuff. I regret deeply leaving all I did, and it has made me wary of getting attached to anything now. But every time I move.. thankful for charity shops...

Graces7

Akrasia wrote: »

Everyone hoards a little. I haven't even got a CD player anymore but I still find it hard to throw away my old CDs. Same with DVDs.

I have thrown away loads of them though. I just keep the ones that I know I'll forget about unless I come across them every year or so while doing a spring clean.

My wife would keep every single picture or scribble our children have ever made if I didn't get to them first.

My rule with keeping random stuff that 'might be useful some day' is, if you don't have a place to put it where you know where it is, you might as well not have it because you won't be able to find it when you need it.

Only thing I hoard now is food ready for the winter. Nothing else after 8 house moves in 14 years..

Some people mentioned are clearly very ill. You can only feel sad for them and hope they can change with help. it must be a very stressful existence for them, and I doubt anyone could be happy living in those conditions.

I'm not a hoarder, I've moved more than 15 times in my 31 years and don't hang on to anything without good reason - but find it almost impossible to part with books. The Kindle put a halt to that, probably just as well.

I hate clutter and don't let things pile up. Things get bagged up and donated or recycled every month or so and I'm probably a bit compulsive about keeping things organized. If I don't love it or I don't use it, it's surplus to requirements and it's gone. It's very liberating and I like knowing that something I have no use for might be appreciated by someone else.

I've never encountered a hoarder, though I've been in dirty houses that were very messy and probably had a potential hoarder in the mix. That kind of situation is so depressing in itself, you'd wonder what came first, the depression or the hoarding. I don't think I have it in me to hoard like that but who knows what I'll be like when I'm eighty, you just never know.

harr

Had an experience recently where I attended a small meeting in a neighbors house.. good god how do people live like that, I often complain about how messy my kids are but this house was mad and both parents work professional jobs and are always dressed to the nines..
About two weeks of dishes on sink, dirty plates on every surface and floor..used nappies in various locations, hallway stacked with newspapers and books..most of the furniture broken in someway..torn carpets and about 5 cats and 3 dogs along with 3 kids under 8 it was mayhem.
In this instance it was just laziness and no self respect to live like that.
God forbid if the house ever caught fire.. no shame or excuse given..I couldn’t even see out the window with the dirt..not to mention the stench..

freshpopcorn

I also find their is a difference between hoarding and a dirty house.
Kind of going with the stereotypes here now.
A woman might have wardrobes of clothes and she might never wear them or a man might have a shed load of tools that he rarely uses. Once the items aren't smelly or creating havoc for themselves or other people in the house I'd be over look the issue.
Having a house which is dirty, Unwashed plates in several rooms, dirty clothes, etc, piles of rubbish in every room is totally different!

harr

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I also find their is a difference between hoarding and a dirty house.
Kind of going with the stereotypes here now.
A woman might have wardrobes of clothes and she might never wear them or a man might have a shed load of tools that he rarely uses. Once the items aren't smelly or creating havoc for themselves or other people in the house I'd be over look the issue.
Having a house which is dirty, Unwashed plates in several rooms, dirty clothes, etc, piles of rubbish in every room is totally different!

It can be a crossover of both..why the need to hold onto every newspaper or hang onto to broken stuff..I agree that there is a difference between both, but when you have a crossover it’s mayhem...

freshpopcorn

harr wrote: »

It can be a crossover of both..why the need to hold onto every newspaper or hang onto to broken stuff..I agree that there is a difference between both, but when you have a crossover it’s mayhem...

Oh Yes I understand this!
I was more referring to people making an ordeal of somebody having a lot of clothes/crockery which wasn't overly used/slightly in the way.

acai berry

Reading the above has prompted me to search out stuff I am hoarding in order to get rid of it. I moved house about a year ago and have far too much stuff. It's easy to know what has not been used in a year, because it has not been touched in that time. I still think I need the stuff, even though I haven't touched it in over a year.

Makings of a Hoarder?????

tara73

it's so funny to read how because of this thread all the bit messy but still ordinary people here panic, think they're on the brink of becoming a hoarder and throwing out stuff...:D:D

Alun

Canis Lupus wrote: »

I've boxes of PC stuff in my cupboard that are so outdated I don't even use them anymore.... But you never know when you'll need an IDE cable so I won't throw it out.

That's different I'm the same, my "man cave" resembles a computer museum from the 70's! Like you say, you never know when you might a SCSI terminator, a 10Mbit Ethernet card with a coax connector or a set of Banyan Vines installation diskettes !

acai berry

Alun wrote: »

That's different I'm the same, my "man cave" resembles a computer museum from the 70's! Like you say, you never know when you might a SCSI terminator, a 10Mbit Ethernet card with a coax connector or a set of Banyan Vines installation diskettes !

Knowing the names of all of these things is quite impressive, Alun. I'm wondering if knowing the names of them would increase the temptation to hoard them? :eek:

the14thwarrior

well i opened the oven flies flew out and other stuff moving.
i closed the oven quickly.
there was no electricy etc. he hadn't paid bills. so i was in the middle of the room before i realised just what was also all over the floor....
i had to back track my steps with my co worker saying to the left, to the right.........think of the final scene in the shining...
i could not stay there a minute longer

his daughter had tried to intervene so many times...... eventually we got council to do a compulsory clean up......
no reason this man might be mentally ill, but he was able to walk etc. in hospital...... and he using up a good hospital bed.... maddening.

to this day my co worker would often say to the left, to the right.... when negotiating a tricky situation.

acai berry

Sad story!