Do you have a bit of 'hoarder' in you?

fuzzybuddy

fuzzybuddy

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The Sticks, Northeast PA.
I happened to watch a bit of "Hoarders", where some over fill their homes with junk. I looked around, and it dawned on me, everything in my home is what I carried in through the front door. Damn, I was a busy beaver!!! Have you ever looked around and thought, "Yup, I'm the one, who dragged in all this stuff, in here"?
Do you have a bit of 'hoarder' in you?
 

fuzzybuddy said:
I happened to watch a bit of "Hoarders", where some over fill their homes with junk. I looked around, and it dawned on me, everything in my home is what I carried in through the front door. Damn, I was a busy beaver!!! Have you ever looked around and thought, "Yup, I'm the one, who dragged in all this stuff, in here"?
Do you have a bit of 'hoarder' in you?
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I am the opposite of a hoarder, when I watch that show it freaks me out. I am an extreme minimalist. I literally have just what I use every day and need. Having less brings me peace.
 

I try to keep my knick knacks, etc. limited to only things that have a special meaning to me. Like certain items from my mom or souvenirs my daughter has given me, who has been all over the world in the Air Force. Other things are strictly for decorating purposes. However, I must admit to collecting a lot of elephants. I have a couple shelves dedicated to them, one elephant which is actually from Africa (thanks again to my daughter!).
 
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Yes...I'm an orderly hoarder. :ROFLMAO: We have lots of stuff because we buy in bulk. I simply find more ways to store them. Luckily, although this is considered a small space (around 700 sq ft, not counting closets), there is plenty of closet, cabinet and shelf space. I have several junk and what not drawers too. Some are in rolling carts, a couple in my dresser. I also got creative by using two hassocks and cute linen totes that match my living room furniture for storage. I've started the process of purging many times, but have not finished the job.
 
I hate clutter and tend to put things away or in their place. It is when I run out of places that I begin to realize I have too much stuff. Then I do a clearance that often goes beyond what I had planned. And, then there once again is too much open space. One of my failings is that when I find a bargain for something I usually buy much more than a single item. Then I am stuck beneath the pile of extras until I use it all up. Crazy behavior.
 
Jackie23 said:
"Do you have a bit of 'hoarder' in you?"

No, not a drop......I'm not a minimalist, but clutter drives me crazy. Some of my favorite YouTubers are people that clean....hoarders, yards or houses..whatever.
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Oh me too, @Jackie23! I love the Midwest Magic cleaner and the ones who mow down all the weeds and find a yard underneath. Thanks to viewers like us they're able to do it for free for people who are old or disabled.

I love the Hoarder shows, but they always make me want to sort out and throw away things and I'm already down to too little.

No, no Holly I wouldn't be uncomfortable in your house at all. I love looking at other people's collections! I just don't want them to be my responsibility. I want to see your shoes!
 
I guess I am a bit. Thrift stores are relaxing for me and since I don't socialize, it's what I like to do. I can be much more selective in what I buy now though. But with holiday stuff rolling out and if it's a deer...

I have some things in boxes including cat figurines I've bought thrifted and flea marketed since I was young. I keep having the hope I'll move and one thing I'd buy is another china cabinet. I don't need anything else. Keep things safe from the cats.

I like the idea of minimalism. It's not for me.
 
I watch the Hoarders shows and after every one, I go look for something to put in the charity shop box I keep in the garage.

However, some of the people in those shows I don't think can be called "hoarders". I know it's a mental illness but some of those folk go far beyond hoarding. Can you call living on six inches of animal and human waste hoarding? Can you call having to walk through two feet of discarded food cartons hoarding? That's not hoarding, that's deep, deep mental illness.

I like the show and the professionals involved seem to be very caring people, but I would love to know the "after-stories" of all the hoarders on there. They had a bit of a follow-up show once that featured a few of the hoarders and their success stories but I feel that the majority of them probably ease their way back into hoarding.

It's like alcoholism. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. You can be a "recovering" alcoholic who never has another drink in his/her life, but you're never an EX-alcoholic. I imagine the same thing goes for hoarding......"well, I'll just keep this ONE thing!"
 
Well, I have original Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Marty Robbins, Roberto Delgado and James Last LPs but does that make me a hoarder? Me thinks not! It makes me a lover of wonderful music from the "good ole' days" when you could understand a singer's words and music had a nice relaxing sound to it.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I happened to watch a bit of "Hoarders", where some over fill their homes with junk. I looked around, and it dawned on me, everything in my home is what I carried in through the front door. Damn, I was a busy beaver!!! Have you ever looked around and thought, "Yup, I'm the one, who dragged in all this stuff, in here"?
Do you have a bit of 'hoarder' in you?
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Goddess No! I pack away under beds and closets. OCD with a place for everything and everything in its place.
 
jujube said:
I watch the Hoarders shows and after every one, I go look for something to put in the charity shop box I keep in the garage.

However, some of the people in those shows I don't think can be called "hoarders". I know it's a mental illness but some of those folk go far beyond hoarding. Can you call living on six inches of animal and human waste hoarding? Can you call having to walk through two feet of discarded food cartons hoarding? That's not hoarding, that's deep, deep mental illness.

I like the show and the professionals involved seem to be very caring people, but I would love to know the "after-stories" of all the hoarders on there.
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Some years ago there was a lot of hoarders shows produced for tv here in the UK.. and the crew did return to the homes a year or 2 later , and every one of the hoarders had started hoarding again.. not got to the stage of filth and decline, but definitely on it way again....as you say, a Mental illness
 
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No. I have more clothes and stuff than I need but, fortunately, I have the wardrobe space to keep everything tidy and I am a regular sorter outer. To me a hoarder is someone who has stacks of stuff, rooms filled with boxes filled with things they never use. It would drive me crackers if I didn't have space.
 
A family member passed away rather suddenly a number of years ago, at which point the family was stunned to realize she'd been a hoarder. A 4000 SF house plus outbuildings stuffed were stuffed to the gills as were two double sized storage units.

Hoarding is a terrible mental illness - can't imagine her shame over it. There was always a reason to have events elsewhere. She was a total sweetheart. Wish I would have known and could have helped her.

This was the entry way. Note the full-sized grandfather clock to the right.
A. Entry hall... note the full-sized Grandfather clock for a sense of scale.JPG

The den
B. Den.JPG

Master bedroom:
E3. Master Bedroom.JPG
 
I started to watch one episode of hoarders & made about half-way through. Husband made it maybe 20 minutes. Neither my husband & like to have excess junk around. We are always going through our closets & have very few storage boxes filled with things that we want to keep. We had to clean out my Mom's house after she passed, but it was filled with items you collect after living in a house for 65 years. It brought back a lot of memories.

A few years ago, we had to do the same with his Mom's house. Her place & things was like my Mom's. But his sister, who lived with their Mom for the past 20 years, had turned into a hoarder that was limited to her large bedroom & one upstairs bedroom.

Long story short, we had a mess to clean up with her. When we moved her to another house that had no stairs since she had problems walking at the time. She could only take clothes that she was able to wear & could fit in a 6' wide closet on hangers & in a dresser. Her trashed furniture was not going, but her Mom's clean stuff was.

Concessions were made & she was allowed to take her stuffed 20-gal plastic totes (16 to 18 of them from the basement) along with about the same amount of cardboard boxes which sat in the garage of the new place until we went through them with her. Trash went out to the curb in large amounts & what could be sold at a yard sale was. All left overs were donated or put in the trash.

Her brother told her Hoarders 2.0 wasn't going to happen at the new house & she was going to keep it as clean as the day she moved in. It was a fight, but it was kept clean.

After around 18-months at the new place, she told us this summer she found an apartment & was moving. She is now the apartment managers problem.

I really feel for anyone who has to deal with a family member who hoards. It's not easy to deal with them or the clean up.
 
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StarSong said:
A family member passed away rather suddenly a number of years ago, at which point the family was stunned to realize she'd been a hoarder. A 4000 SF house plus outbuildings stuffed were stuffed to the gills as were two double sized storage units.
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When those storage units started popping up about twenty years ago I was first amazed and then sorry I hadn't thought of it first. Build a string of cheap garages in a row and charge people a monthly rent to store the junk they can't fit in their house and never use.

I think, "I can no longer find an inch of space in my house," should be a sure sign that you already have too much stuff. Often people say a relative died and they needed time to sort through it. Well, if you had time to pull it all out and load it on a truck to take it to the storage unit, that was probably the time to take it to Goodwill or the landfill.

Even basements and attics seem like more trouble than they're worth to me. If you're keeping stuff in such inconvenient places you're probably not using it so why not just get rid of it?
 
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