Hoarders, have you ever known one?

In Tucson Arizona a few years ago, I had a friend that was a hoarder. I tried to help him, but to no avail. I suspect he was a bit of a hoarder before he started dumpster diving, but the problem really became overwhelming when he started hoarding other peoples junk. It's hard to describe how fast he was able to fill up any property he was able to stay at, until he was kicked out leaving the property owner with incredible amounts of junk to dispose of. He would then find a new place to stay at and start over collecting new hard found junk.

Another thing about dumpster diving hoarders is they find and get to know eachother and then they compete with one another to get the best stuff. I met one guy that liked to refer to himself as an urban miner. His primary efforts were looking for metals he could turn in for money, but while doing that he naturally found other stuff he wanted too. He owned his own home and was very neat about how he stored his loot.

I was watching one of the hoarding programs on TV and they claimed that about 5% of the population has some degree of this hoarding affliction. That seems a bit high to me, but if true, many of you forum members should actually know or have met some hoarders? If so, do you have a story to tell?

 

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'Old John' was such a one. He lived in an old shack beside one of my friends not far along the South Klondike highway. He was an elderly recluse who collected and saved everything from years of living in the north during the time when it was truly remote and spare parts and such were difficult to obtain. He lived alone and when he died there was no family to attend to his affairs and so it fell to the coroners office to delegate.

I gather that when they inspected the premises, it was determined that the only practical thing to do was to salvage any scrap metal in the yard and use the 'building' for a training exercise for the local volunteer fire department. Afterwards, loaders and dump trucks removed the debris that did not burn and took it off to the appropriate location in the land fill.

One of my relations by marriage was married to a 'junk collector'. When he passed and she held an auction to clean up the yard and sheds that he had piled high with his finds, she did not have to worry about finances for the rest of her life, so it really depends on the nature of what one hoards and what condition it is kept in.

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Yes, my mother. She buys movies that she does not watch (she has quite a few VHS and DVD movies that still have the shrink wrap) CDs that she does not listen to (once again in the shrink wrapping) gifts for friends and relatives that she never gets around to sending. Convincing her to get rid of anything is a major chore. The family would have get togethers to clean out her place, and it was always an ordeal. At one of these, I moved a worthless AMF exercise machine that she had bought used, then never once used herself, (despite having it for about a decade) out to her storage shed. The next time we had a clean up day, I was disassembling it to place it in the dumpster. She spotted what I was doing, and began screaming at me. How dare I throw that out, she was going to use it to lose weight, etc. Nothing would have made me happier than if she made an attempt to use it, but she was far too overweight to even be able to climb up on it (between being overweight, and her bad knees and ankles, she can't walk from one end of her place to the other without getting winded). So I had to pull it out of the dumpster, and reassemble it and put it back in the shed. Where it remained, untouched, until she finally saw that she needed to move to an apartment. Then it, along with a great many other things, finally got thrown out or given away. Moving her was agonizing because of her insistence on keeping so much stuff. It's a neuroses, no doubt about it.

 

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I like the part about her making the money in a garage sale. I tried to get my friend Dave to sell some of his stuff and make some money. I even offered to set him up with an Ebay account, if he would be willing to learn how to work it. He never made the time to do it and I wasn't going to do it for him. He actually had some stuff that would have been good collector item stuff that could have made him good money.

 

Every once in a while I will find something I bought years ago and it's still in the original wrapping (I just hate it when that happens).

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Neverfly and I know a woman who hoards. She says it began when her husband died years ago. She is always afraid she will need something and the money wont be there to buy it. So she spends every dime she has getting stuff she doesn't need right now but "may need later". She even does it with groceries. She buys more than she has room to store and it will go bad in her car. Neverfly and I have tried many times to help her and clean her house for her but if we can't go every single day it just goes right back to how it was. It isn't just collections of stuff. She has a hard time even throwing trash away and has cats that she cannot clean up after. She is also morbidly obese. She is a real sweet woman but her dark side comes out when you even suggest getting rid of something that she considers important which is everything in her house.

 

It's tough knowing there's not much you can do to correct the problem. Sooner or later you will have to let her fend for herself, or except a permanent baby setting job for no money. I haven't heard of any cure for this particular disorder. The best you can hope for is to keep it under control as much as possible.

 

I figured out how to get a hoarder to give up his/her stuff without much of a fight.

First rent a storage area large enough to hold most all of the junk, then convince the hoarder to have the stuff moved into storage to be saved for anytime they might need it. Pack it full from bottom to top, close it up and lock it. Then quit paying the bill and let it be auctioned off.

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There's a good chance the hoarder will never know as they will be busy working on a new house full of junk.

Also, when you bid on a storage locker your always gambling, so that's on you if you feel burned.

 

The lady we know has a brand new never been opened atari game system from the 80s in her garage. We have offered to ebay it for her so she can get the money, I am sure it is worth a lot to a collector. But unfortunately she is the collector of all things and she wont let it go.

 

Yeah. My stinkin' boyfriend.

I shit you not. And I'm vigilant about throwing shit away. Once a month I do a, "Okay, I'm going through the house and throwing EVERYTHING away that I determine has no worth," which gets his attention and we end up doing it together for fear of me tossing away some Beyblade, Gohan/Goku shit that inevitably ends up shoved in some drawer. He's also a clothing collector and I see to it that his habit benefits the poor at the Salvation Army. Were it not for me culling our possessions, I'm certain we'd be ceiling height in his detritus.

~String

 

I never really thought about what it would be like to be in a relationship with a hoarder.

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But then it's always good to be needed, and if you ever go away for awhile, at least nothing will go missing while you aren't looking.

 

I think in a sense, all capitalists are hoarders. They accumulate capital and want to keep on going; their greed expanding, they are never satisfied. In this way, capitalism is a mental illness.

 

Is that you're professional opinion? Can you support that with empirical evidence? Scientific studies? Or are you just so sure of yourself that the entire world is expected to just bow to your good judgment. In which case, I say you make a VERY good communist indeed. You've got good role models. See: Stalin and Mao.

~String

 

Roommates from hell

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There is a difference in my mind, between hoarding things that may have value or use at some time in the future and just plain 'clutter' or messiness, but that's the way my mind works.

Hoarding is the nature of some species. Perhaps it is just the nature of some among ours as well?

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Cohabiting with someone who has entirely different maintenance styles in this regard would be untenable for me. I am far from immaculate in my domicile but it is observably somewhat orderly and everyday objects are located in a logical manner and you won't be in danger of tripping to reach them. The kitchen table is the surface most often in need of reclaiming, lol, as it tends to catch paper and small objects readily.

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I know someone who has been referred to as a "collector". He obtains some things an don't like getting rid of anything unless its donated. But strangely he's "strict" about cleanliness in certain areas. Like the bathroom, kitchen, an his vehicle. I have read somewhere that hoarder's are first in denial then they feel shame not sure that's true.

 

Well hold on Redstar may be on to something. Just think about it, in order to hoard you have to live in a society where there is a lot to throw away (the dumpster diver) and where there is a lot to consume. It would be interesting to see if this is strictly a western or developed society phenomenon. I cannot imagine in a place like South East Asia for example, where extended families live together and where disposable income is something new that you would find a whole lot of hoarding in terms of people becoming more attached to things than their community. I would imagine that a hoarder in Phnom Penh would be at a loss as all their family from the provinces would just descend upon them and re-distribute all their stuff. In order for them to hoard in that culture they would have to live alone and Khmers don't live alone. The pinko stuff aside it may be interesting to explore how much this could occur in a traditional developing society.