Hoarders, have you ever known one?

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Hoarders tend to even hold on to household rubbish, empty bottles, newspapers, anything and everything. We aren't talking about going shopping and mass buying and then hoarding it.

A few symptoms a hoarder might experience are:
1. Tend to hold onto a large number of items that most people would consider not useful or valuable. For example:

Junk mail
Old catalogues and newspapers
Things that might be useful for making crafts
Clothes that "might" be worn one day
Broken things/trash
"Freebies" picked up


[Source]

I doubt psychological disorders distinguish between whether one is a Communist or Capitalist.

But that's my point, in developing countries bottles are to be recycled (it brings in money), newspapers are to be used. You wouldn't be able to hoard beyond what was necessary because you wouldn't be alone in the control over your household. How could you dumpster dive when the poor would have gotten there way before you for what they need and no one throws out anything that can be used or be fixed? I'm not discussing this in terms of communist or capitalist. I'm saying this disorder is less likely to show up in traditional developing societies. The whole thing is dependent on waste and excess and disposable income. In Cambodia everything gets recycled. If you have an old phone you sell it at market, they fix it and re-sell it for less etc. No one throws away stuff.

[Bells]

But that's my point, in developing countries bottles are to be recycled (it brings in money), newspapers are to be used. You wouldn't be able to hoard beyond what was necessary because you wouldn't be alone in the control over your household. How could you dumpster dive when the poor would have gotten there way before you for what they need and no one throws out anything that can be used or be fixed? I'm not discussing this in terms of communist or capitalist. I'm saying this disorder is less likely to show up in traditional developing societies. The whole thing is dependent on waste and excess and disposable income. In Cambodia everything gets recycled. If you have an old phone you sell it at market, they fix it and re-sell it for less etc. No one throws away stuff.

Oh you would be surprised at what people can find to hoard.

It is the fact that no one throws away anything and the fear of what may happen in the future - hoarding grain, rice, etc.. Just in case they may need it later.

Having been born in a third world country and spent the better part of my younger years there living in poverty and experiencing 'not knowing where our next meal would come from', I know the 'no one throws away stuff' and I also know about how people could not afford to buy things to hoard. I lived that. But I still have a a distinct and very vivid memory of my father's aunt hoarding old newspapers, clothing she and no one else can wear, scraps of material, broken bits of laces off shoes, even things like the bits that would break off shoes, little bits of rubber off sneakers for example, empty tin cans, the empty thread bobbins, broken toys, bags of rice (she would steal a cup of rice every few days and put them in hessian sacks and store it just in case it was ever needed).. Even cat fur was saved and hoarded, god knows for what. She even hoarded her frigging hair that she would collect from her hair brush.

If no one wanted something, she would take it and hoard it. If she found nails, pieces of wood, bits of concrete, broken light bulbs, burnt out light bulbs, anything and everything, she kept or would go out of her way to collect.. just in case it was ever needed in the future. Pieces of crockery even (imagine a plate breaks, it's is shattered... normally, it would be thrown out.. she would store it all).

It got to the point where we were never allowed to visit her, because her house was a rat infested mess and any attempts made by her family to clear out all the actual rubbish (and there was also mouldy bread rolls she hadn't eaten being saved - just in case she needed it in the future) were met with her trying to attacking them with whatever she could get her hands on (she chased my father with a rusty piece of pipe she had picked up in the street once when he and his brothers had tried to explain to her that it was going to kill her).

To this day, my father cannot stand to have any knick knacks in the house. At all.. Zero clutter. Drives my mother insane sometimes.

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Bells you don't hoard rice, you couldn't. How could you hoard grain when you have auntie and uncle and grannie and siblings not to mention husband and wife and all of their kith and kin under one roof? Its not possible to hoard when you live with extended family within a community where your even obligated to give excess to the temple and other family out in the provinces! Hoarders don't have normal relations with their families, this is known, the difference is that in developed societies people are more independent of the families and communities. You wouldn't even have the space to hoard in Cambodia, even in middle class families where you have live in help and family all around you. Where would you keep all the stuff? How would you be able to justify all the stuff when family can trump your concerns and override any fashion of living they find abnormal? If you had an abundance of something that could be used it would be used by someone, if it was considered "garbage" taking up excess space it would be discarded. There is no privacy for Khmers. I know, I had an apartment on that was at the top of a Khmer home and they would come into my space all the time. It was always friendly but they had no understanding of private space only communal space, hell they don't even sleep by themselves. I'm saying it takes a specific kind of society to produce a hoarder. In a society where communal obligations are more important than personal idiosyncrasies I don't see where the personal gap could arise to produce a hoarder. Redstar does have a point on that account.

[Bells]

Bells you don't hoard rice, you couldn't. How could you hoard grain when you have auntie and uncle and grannie and siblings not to mention husband and wife and all of their kith and kin under one roof? Its not possible to hoard when you live with extended family within a community where your even obligated to give excess to the temple and other family out in the provinces! Hoarders don't have normal relations with their families, this is known, the difference is that in developed societies people are more independent of the families and communities. You wouldn't even have the space to hoard in Cambodia, even in middle class families where you have live in help and family all around you. Where would you keep all the stuff? How would you be able to justify all the stuff when family can trump your concerns and override any fashion of living they find abnormal? If you had an abundance of something that could be used it would be used by someone, if it was considered "garbage" taking up excess space it would be discarded. There is no privacy for Khmers. I know, I had an apartment on that was at the top of a Khmer home and they would come into my space all the time. It was always friendly but they had no understanding of private space only communal space, hell they don't even sleep by themselves. I'm saying it takes a specific kind of society to produce a hoarder. In a society where communal obligations are more important than personal idiosyncrasies I don't see where the personal gap could arise to produce a hoarder. Redstar does have a point on that account.

Oh you can hoard anything, even rice.

It becomes a disgusting mess.

It isn't always on a large scale Lucy. That's the thing.

RedStar tried to claim that hoarding is a result of capitalism and thus, capitalism is a form of mental illness.

Not being able to let go or refusing to let go of things is not born out of capitalism. It is born out of a psychological fear and yes, war, famine, stress, abuse can affect that. And that is not just something that happens in Capitalist countries, but everywhere.

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Bells, you don't get it. Khmers could never hoard rice. Its a dietary staple eaten at every meal of the day, large sacs of rice are constantly utilized and given to the temple's its inconceivable to allow rice to waste since hoarding is a collection of something not the use of something. Hoarders by definition collect more than they can conceivably use. It wouldn't be possible to hoard rice in a household that east rice every day and then shares it to boot. Again, you behave as if hoarding can be done on such a scale in a communal setting where items belong to the family unit and no one person when it cannot. Hoarders don't hoard for others, they hoard for themselves. I am not suggesting Redstar is right about his capitalist/communist connection, I'm saying he is correct that hoarding can only occur within a certain setting. The setting of course is a society where things can supersede the community or family, where there is a place for excess and waste. You cannot hoard what you cannot personally own and keep for oneself ie: rice.

Hoarders also tend to have a sense of personal ownership over their items. You cannot do that in these traditional extended family where anything that can be used would be taken for use by others. I am willing to bet that hoarding is common in developing countries where there are highest incidence of obsessive-compulsive disorders as opposed to other societies where you cannot just closet yourself in a space and hoard.

[Bells]

Bells, you don't get it. Khmers could never hoard rice. Its a dietary staple, large sacs of rice are eaten and given to the temple's its inconceivable to allow rice to waste since hoarding is a collection of something not the use of something. Hoarders by definition collect more than they can conceivably use. It wouldn't be possible to hoard rice in a household that east rice every day and then shares it to boot. Again, you behave as if hoarding can be done on such a scale in a communal setting where items belong to the family unit and no one person when it cannot. Hoarders don't hoard for others, they hoard for themselves. I am not suggesting Redstar is right about his capitalist/communist connection, I'm saying he is correct that hoarding can only occur within a certain setting. The setting of course is a society where things can supersede the community or family, where there is a place for excess and waste. You cannot hoard what you cannot personally own and keep for oneself ie: rice.

Hoarders also tend to have a sense of personal ownership over their items. You cannot do that in these traditional extended family where anything that can be used would be taken for use by others. I am willing to bet that hoarding is common in developing countries where there are highest incidence of obsessive-compulsive disorders as opposed to other societies where you cannot just closet yourself in a space and hoard.

You aren't getting what I am saying.

Rice was also a dietary staple where I was born. And it is overly easy to hoard. Especially when one lives in abject poverty. 'You save a bit for later'.. But it doesn't just have to be rice. It can be anything. You see little containers, plastic bags full of stuff in their rooms or space. Hoarders do hoard for themselves and others. It isn't a selfish condition, quite the contrary. The thought in their mind is that they or someone else might need it in the future. My father's aunt hoarded rice because she thought she and her family might come to need it in the future. Same with clothes, broken thongs, anything and everything. Someone might need it and she will have it.

You are applying it from a Western standpoint and saying 'well Khmers would never hoard rice because they eat it every day'.. To them it is not a waste if they hoard it. To you and I we see it as a waste. But to them, it is saving some of it for when they may not be able to get any.

Hoarding can occur in any setting and sometimes, it is just small things that no one notices. And I can assure you, you can hoard anything. Even on a small scale.

It isn't cultural.

For example, 50% of reported cases of female adult-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder begin in the postpartum period (4). Accordingly, obsessive-compulsive disorder has been described as a pathological form of altruism or maternal love, perhaps a result of the deregulation of the brain circuits responsible for threat detection as part of normal parental behavior (5). Obsessive-compulsive traits are also manifested as “magical thinking,” a common mental technique for asserting control over the world through rituals. Magical thinking, an ancestor of science in most cultures, cognitively represents the concept of thought-action fusion. One of the roles of magical thinking is the formation of fear of and responsibility for causing harm to others (6).

The epidemiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder is quite consistent in different countries and across cultural studies. Results from 15 clinical samples from different continents suggest that cultural variation has minimal influence on lifetime prevalence rates, which range from 1.9% in Korea to 2.5% in Puerto Rico (7). As might be expected, symptoms often take on characteristics of the patient’s culture. For example, a correlation between compulsive ablution, poor insight, and religious rituals has been reported among Egyptian Muslims (8). The religious connotation of obsessive-compulsive disorder in Muslim culture is denoted by the term weswas, which refers to the devil as well as obsession. The early Christian definition of the term “obsession” has the same connotation, meaning partially lucid diabolic possession.

Matsunaga and colleagues report in this issue of the Journal the first comprehensive analysis of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in an Asian population. Due to its history of isolation, the Japanese population is one of the largest populations with a single ethnicity. Some of Japan’s isolation is reflected in its unique cultural institutions, which rely on highly ritualized ceremonies to regulate aggression in social interactions. It has been said that the Japanese have made courtesy a religion, as concern regarding negative social evaluation is much stronger in Japan than in Western cultures (9). Shame has been linked to suicidal behavior and even glorified in Japanese literature by Yukio Mishima (10) and others. Despite these well-known cultural differences, the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in Japan are remarkably similar to those in other cultures. Four factors explain 58% of the variance: contamination/washing, hoarding, symmetry/repeating and ordering, and aggressive/checking. Symmetry is associated with an earlier age of onset and, along with hoarding, accounts for decreased function and poorer outcome from treatment. The results suggest that obsessive-compulsive disorder is more deeply embedded in common neurobiology than in cultural differences.


Source: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/arti...9&journalID=13

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

@Bells

And since when is Japan considered a undeveloped traditional society? You're not getting what I am saying. In a family full of other people how can you hoard a daily staple? Hoarding BY DEFINITION is a disorder whereby you compulsively keep, not use, keep something FOR YOURSELF. I am saying you cannot do it anymore than my mother could hoard bread in the house if I'm at home. All Khmer's keep sacs of rice but it isn't hoarding. It isn't hoarding when they use it to feed their kith and kin and give some away communally. You need to have disposable income to hoard, you need disposable income to even have just a little bit more which the actual poor rarely have.

Compulsive hoarding (or pathological collecting) is a pattern of behavior that is characterized by the excessive acquisition of and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that would seemingly qualify as useless or without value

There. That's the definition. Rice which is being used everyday doesn't qualify. Neither does having a book case full of books one has read and keeps. Hoarding is by definition EXCESSIVE. That means you have to have the ability to keep, not utilize, keep an abundance of something that you cannot possibly use.

[Bells]

@Bells

And since when is Japan considered a undeveloped traditional society? You're not getting what I am saying. In a family full of other people how can you hoard a daily staple? Hoarding BY DEFINITION is a disorder whereby you compulsively keep, not use, keep something FOR YOURSELF. I am saying you cannot do it anymore than my mother could hoard bread in the house if I'm at home. All Khmer's keep sacs of rice but it isn't hoarding. It isn't hoarding when they use it to feed their kith and kin and give some away communally. You need to have disposable income to hoard, you need disposable income to even have just a little bit more which the actual poor rarely have.

Compulsive hoarding (or pathological collecting) is a pattern of behavior that is characterized by the excessive acquisition of and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that would seemingly qualify as useless or without value

There. That's the definition. Rice which is being used everyday doesn't qualify. Neither does having a book case full of books one has read and keeps. Hoarding is by definition EXCESSIVE. That means you have to have the ability to keep, not utilize, keep an abundance of something that you cannot possibly use.

*Sigh*

It is not just "excessive acquisition"..

It is also being unable and unwilling to discard anything at all.

This is like beating one's head against a brick wall.

They looked at OCD from many countries and hoarders falls under that description. The occurrence in society is the same everywhere, regardless of culture.

If you can stop obsessing about Khmer's hoarding rice and the really annoying manner in which you get pissy and type in upper caps if anyone dares disagree with you for one second, you would see where I am coming from. Hoarding, like my husband's aunt, can include food, but not always large amounts of it. Just enough to get by in case there is ever a time when there wouldn't be enough food. It doesn't have to be large sacks of it, Lucy.

You are applying hoarding as to how Westerner's do it. It isn't always like that. What you see on TV are the extremes. Most are not like that. Most do it quietly, on the sly.. No one even notices. Were you even aware that there are meet-up and help groups set up for hoarders and packrats in Cambodia?

It is a psychological problem and it isn't always like the excessive way Americans do it as one might see on TV. It is usually little things, like plastic bags, nails, screws, used batteries, hair pins, hair, pieces of cloth, scraps of dried food, crockery, cutlery, etc.. Stop applying the Western way of doing it and you might actually see where I am coming from. Where people are scavenging for anything and everything and holding on to it in case there is ever a need for it in the future.. And so it builds up.. and then they are unwilling to get rid of it. They hold on to it because some day, they or others might end up needing it.

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Right and if something is being used everyday, if its being used by all who need it then it cannot be considered hoarding. Rice under the circumstances I gave cannot be hoarded. I am saying that hoarding can only exist in a specific kind of society, a society where there is excess, where there is waste and where the individual is not intricately tied to community and extended family and where there is excess income. You cannot hoard food if its being used, and it is JUST excessive acquisition, otherwise it isn't hoarding is it? I think its you who are confused about what constitutes a hoarder and under what conditions someone is able to hoard. To wit "The symptoms result in the accumulation of a large number of possessions that fill up and clutter active living areas of the home or workplace to the extent that their intended use is no longer possible." DSM And you're telling me you can do that in a communal environment? Not.

[Repo Man]

I knew a hoarder who lived in a group home, and got around on his bicycle. I worked as a bicycle mechanic at the time, and I had to do minor repairs on his bicycle several times. His bicycle was always covered with rubber bands, feathers, the little plastic curlicues that you get from opening plastic beverage jugs, and other such debris that he would find as he rode around town. I would have to rearrange some of this build up in order to be able to clamp his bicycle into the work stand. He had so much of this stuff on the stem shifters that they could not be used; I think changing gears might have only caused old Ed some confusion anyway. I don't know if he hoarded anything other than the stuff that I would see on his bicycle. My hunch would be that he wouldn't have been allowed to.

[seagypsy]

Mrs. Lucysnow, if communal living prevented hoarding then teens in large families would never hoard. Hell I hoarded to a degree when i was a kid. I thought I could fix anything. I would find broken stuff and bring it home and try to fix it. The only reason stuff got thrown out is because my mother came into m y room and discarded things while issuing threats. Being stopped from hoarding doesn't mean the psychological disorder that causes hoarding isn't there. Hoarding is often caused by anxiety. Something that runs in my family. My sons attempt to hoard as well. I have been through a crap load of stress the past few years myself and the more stressed I am the less likely I am to throw things away. Even now I know I need to get rid of half of what is in my house and it isn't even at the level that anyone would call me a hoarder. But knowing the lady I know who is severe, constantly keeps me aware of early warning signs in myself and I know I can't keep bringing stuff home. Freecycle is probably my worst enemy. Just this week I picked up 5 broken down computer systems with the justification that I can fix them for my kids. In reality, I know I will never get around to fixing anything. The first step is looking through my house and picturing the condition the other lady I know lives in and then looking at everything in my home and deciding at least, whether or not I really need it. BTW, I have 5 kids in my household. Maybe food doesn't get hoarded so easily but everything else does. Actually I have about 20 lbs of rice and no one in my house likes rice. Dry beans as well. No one in my house will eat dry beans but I have at least 5 lbs of that. but at least if we are completely broke we have about 3 days of food to survive on.

[Ripley]

But it's not exactly called an illness for the super-rich—cars, jewelry, art, shoes. BBC: A global super-rich elite had at least $21 trillion (£13tn) hidden in secret tax havens by the end of 2010, according to a major study. The figure is equivalent to the size of the US and Japanese economies combined.

[Fraggle Rocker]

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.

My friend won't do that. She has to sort the stuff and put it in well-labeled boxes. Summer sweaters in this one, Hello Kitty paraphernalia in this one, stationery in this one. She's actually tried doing it and I've helped. But the place is so crowded that there's no room to work. You can't have more than about four boxes going at once, and you can't make any progress that way. I insist that we should just pack the boxes randomly, because once everything is in boxes we can pile them up neatly and there will be plenty of accessible floor space. Then we can go through the boxes and sort everything into new boxes. I know that will be much faster than sorting everything the slow way, but she's not convinced. My way would take about six months (given the time we have). Her way will take 20 years.

Besides, I have a friend who put all of her grandmother's things in storage when she died. There were some really nice things there, not to mention the sentimental value.

She had a heart attack and was in the hospital and missed a payment. When she got out and ran down there, they had sold it all. She has never gotten over it.

I couldn't do that to anybody

But it's not exactly called an illness for the super-rich—cars, jewelry, art, shoes.

The definition of hoarding requires that the hoarder never (or extremely rarely) uses or looks at any of the stuff except incidentally while piling more on top of it, or reorganizing it so more will fit into the space. People like Jay Leno who have huge car collections are happy to show them off. Ditto for art. There's a guy right here in Maryland who's trying to turn his home into a museum so the public can see his art collection--for now he just has private parties, but if you plead with him often enough for him to believe you're serious, you'll eventually get on the guest list one night. His problem is that there are no sewers in that rural part of the county and his neighbors don't want the county to build one. It would be almost impossible to build a large enough septic tank, but he's working on it.

As for jewelry, sure people have jewelry collections and they might discover that they have twenty pieces they haven't worn in twenty years, but that's hardly the same.

Shoes? I am reminded of what a friend of mine said after having a quarrel with her husband over that very topic.

"A man needs one pair of black shoes, one pair of brown shoes, and one pair of sneakers." (Obviously this was many years ago. Today most men, and even some women, have at least two different pairs of sneakers.)
"A woman needs one pair of shoes for every outfit, every day, and every mood."

BBC: A global super-rich elite had at least $21 trillion (£13tn) hidden in secret tax havens by the end of 2010, according to a major study. The figure is equivalent to the size of the US and Japanese economies combined.

I very much doubt that. The man who is universally acknowledged as the world's richest, Carlos Slim of Mexico, has $69B. You're talking about a figure 300x that size. That's a significant portion of the total wealth of the entire human race. Just how much time, effort and organization would it take to amass that much wealth? It would take several generations and we'd all know about it, unless you're a world-class conspiracy theorist like David Icke.

If all this wealth is in the form of money rather than factories, railroads, telecommunication firms, etc., it would be a major perturbation of the world economy. He could buy Bulgaria.

I ain't buyin' it. I've always been more skeptical of the British press than even our own.

[Promo]

I ain't buyin' it. I've always been more skeptical of the British press than even our own.

This hasn’t just been reported through the BBC, you can find multiple links with various reporting’s about the 0.0001% of people that have 32 Trillion dollars saved in off shore accounts.

[KilljoyKlown]

This hasn’t just been reported through the BBC, you can find multiple links with various reporting about the 0.0001% of people that have 32 Trillion dollars saved in off shore accounts.

Damn! Why did I not open an offshore bank before it became popular?

[Promo]

Damn! Why did I not open an offshore bank before it became popular?

I'm sure if you were part of the "in crowd" your lawyers or investors would have notified you. I feel like rich people don’t like to share their secrets.

[R1D2]

There. That's the definition. Rice which is being used everyday doesn't qualify. Neither does having a book case full of books one has read and keeps. Hoarding is by definition EXCESSIVE. That means you have to have the ability to keep, not utilize, keep an abundance of something that you cannot possibly use.

Wait my wife was wrong?!? I gave up like over 30 books. I donated them to the Lybrary. My wife was saying I was hoarding to many! I didn't even read all of them... That was almost all of the books I had saved. But I am not wanting to donate my CONAN books an I feel she will want me to before long... I have close to all of them.

[scheherazade]

Wait my wife was wrong?!? I gave up like over 30 books. I donated them to the Lybrary. My wife was saying I was hoarding to many! I didn't even read all of them... That was almost all of the books I had saved. But I am not wanting to donate my CONAN books an I feel she will want me to before long... I have close to all of them.

The CONAN books could be called a 'collection.'

[KilljoyKlown]

Wait my wife was wrong?!? I gave up like over 30 books. I donated them to the Lybrary. My wife was saying I was hoarding to many! I didn't even read all of them... That was almost all of the books I had saved. But I am not wanting to donate my CONAN books an I feel she will want me to before long... I have close to all of them.

Are we talking Conan the Barbarian here?

[R1D2]

Are we talking Conan the Barbarian here?

Yes. Why do you ask? They are copy righted from the 60's to the 80's I think, an I also have Arnold's Conan movies.
My wife wants me to get rid of most of MY movies. She don't have many. I have several. I have VCR tapes DVD's an Blue Ray. An the players.