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

Della said:
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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my one storage problem is my attic. It's full up with a few of my things ( some records, my DD's childhood things boxed, and some luggage , but mostly the estranged o/h's stuff.. heavy stuff , tools car parts, .. I can't get these things down . it would be far too dangerous for me to negotiate a ladder and try and bring those things out of there... but it prays on my mind all the time. I've asked him on several occasions to remove the stuff, but he just ignores me... so at some point i'm going to have to hire a loft cleaner..
 

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We used to put metal & other things out at the end of our drive & junkers would come by & pick them up. Haven't seen one in the past year, but we found a man through someone at our local watering hole who came & picked up some metal we have been wanted to get rid of. He came, we loaded his truck up & took it free. He's retired & this is how he spends his free time to make a few bucks. Win-win for both of us.
 
I've unknowingly and unintentionally became somewhat of a hoarder. I'm not ashamed of it either. I have bought lots of clothes of differing sizes as I was expanding. So I have lots of clothes going back to when I was smaller and all the way up to my size now.



I guess I am prepared to lose weight whenever I get into that mode.
 
When I was younger I had a big house and got into collecting antiques. 14 years later I got a job out of state after finishing graduate school and we could only take what would fit into the biggest Uhaul truck. There were 5 of us and I had 10 days to accomplish this .

My husband was working out of state and all 3 kids were in various parts of the state with their own activities. I only slept about 3 hours a night. My mom ran the moving sale and a friend came over some days to help. That cured me of collecting things.

My third husband gradually became a hoarder. Anytime he went out of town I threw away much of his crap. When we divorced I spent 8-10 hours daily for a month hauling his crap out to either the front yard to be given away or to a trailer for the dump. I also had a big moving sale. The house sold immediately and the new owner wasnā€™t going to close without the junk in the basement, garage and shed gone.

I ended up paying the kid next door to take
everything out of the shed and basement and put it in the backyard and patio so my ex could sort it. My stuff fit into 60 plastic bins of various sizes. My clothes fit into a few cardboard wardrobes. I have a permanent injury to my left shoulder from it.

I am not a minimalist. I have 3 closets and my son is using half of one. I also have a small closet on my balcony. I like to have some decorative items but thereā€™s only so much I want to clean and itā€™s important for my house to be clean.

The condo I bought is 855 sq ft which is perfect. I donā€™t store anything under the beds because itā€™s unhealthy to have items there to collect dust. I practice the one in the one out method to keep things at an acceptable level.
 
I guess I'm a selective hoarder. I find some things difficult to throw away. I have every camera that we have owned, even though almost all of them are obsolete. I have every calculator that still functions. I have tossed a number of computers, but I have my first two, a TI 99/4A and a Commodore 64. I have three short wave receivers, even though there's nothing to listen to now. I have about a half dozen rods and reels and haven't been fishing in years. And, I have over 30 airbrushes as the result of once having an airbrush review website.

I hate to discard anything that might be useful, so there is an assortment of boards and other materials in the garage, but neatly stacked.

I feel a little guilty about this because my sons will eventually have to deal with it. I've told them to just toss it all in a dumpster.
 
Grampa Don said:
I hate to discard anything that might be useful, so there is an assortment of boards and other materials in the garage, but neatly stacked.
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You must be related to my husband. He always says it doesnā€™t matter as long as we have room. Itā€™s all neat and tidy. He has started getting rid of lots of other things in the basement.

I buy too many of something I like, especially containers. What if we go on a trip and I need one or 20.
 
Grampa Don said:
I guess I'm a selective hoarder. I find some things difficult to throw away. I have every camera that we have owned, even though almost all of them are obsolete. I have every calculator that still functions. I have tossed a number of computers, but I have my first two, a TI 99/4A and a Commodore 64. I have three short wave receivers, even though there's nothing to listen to now. I have about a half dozen rods and reels and haven't been fishing in years. And, I have over 30 airbrushes as the result of once having an airbrush review website.
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You stoked an old memory... My father also was a selective hoarder when it came to certain things.

In the early 70s, I was a student without a lot of money, and owned an old Sunbeam Alpine that was nickel and diming me to death. So many repairs... When the starter began going south, I'd park on hills whenever possible to bump start (standard shift), or ask someone for a push. Mentioned it to my father, who like most of his generation was familiar with what went on under the hood of most cars.

He spent a few minutes tinkering and said, "You know, I might be able to help you out." then poked around in the garage and came up with a started that fit the space perfectly. Um... minor problem: it was a push-button starter from one of the small planes - a Sessna or Stinson - he'd owned in the early 60s and he couldn't figure out how to wire the starter to my turn-key ignition, but was able to wire it to the engine. I was happy anyway. Beat looking for a push or a hill, not to mention paying a mechanic for a new starter.

For the next 7-8 months (when I traded it on yet another semi-clunker) to start the car, including when I stalled out in LA's bumper-to-bumber traffic, I'd quickly set the parking brake, put the car in neutral, pop the hood, push the button on the starter, then close it all up and get going. All of this in literally 30 seconds-ish --- a one woman pit crew.:cool:

Never after that did I make fun of my father's odd garage collection of thises and thats!

I haven't thought about this in years. Thanks for bringing this to mind, @Grampa Don!

p.s. The Sunbeam wasn't my only car requiring constant tinkering. Another needed me to quickly unscrew the air cleaner to open the butterfly valve, then pop the air cleaner back on and be on my way.
 
I think I have a bit of ā€œHardware Hankā€ in me. I save any hardware materials that I think might have any future value. And in fact, they often do. It really is becoming my own little hardware store. But sometimes I do keep some items that really belong at the dump - I am getting better about this.
 
It's the decisions I find difficult. Sometimes I toss out an item and then retrieve it from the trash. I admit it. I could use help from a level headed person. Unfortunately there is no one available.
 
I once saved the burner assembly out of a leaky water heater. Why, I don't know. It sat in the garage for years before I finally tossed it.

Something in me hates to throw out anything that's still functional. Towels too worn for the house? Maybe they'll make good rags in the garage. Yeah, I have a box of miscellaneous nuts and bolts and other hardware too. It has often come in handy.
 
It amazes me how we can find we have so much in common with others here.

Caroln's post here brought this to my mind, because my daughter ( USAF vet too ) brought me beautiful things from all over the world, and I too have a collection of elephants, and Caroln mentioned an elephant she has came from Africa!

I used to volunteer at the NJ state Museum in the archeology department and our boss had been to the Ivory Coast many times to purchase wonderful things for our gift shop. I purchased many of those items from Africa and my daughter would never want me to part with them or anything else she brought back from other countries while in Military service.

The first time I took my kids to Washington DC Long ago, the original Museum of African Art was a short walk from the hotel we stayed in and of course I bought some exquisite items ,all displayed in my dining room. Two were musical instruments- one was a heavy rope that held 10 enormous beans of some type and the other was a well dried large gourd filled with seeds and both were shook to back up rhythm of other musical instruments in ceremonies.

This museum was actually in a small home when we first went, but since then they have a new and much larger African Art Museum on the Mall because they have collected so much important stuff and it is very popular with tourists.
 
DH and I are far from being hoarders, but are at the point in our lives where we own many beautiful things we are unlikely to need or use. For example, we probably own a couple dozen beautiful martini glasses, nearly all received as gifts about 20 years ago when we briefly and occasionally drank or served martinis, cosmopolitans and similar beverages at parties.

Since then, the only time they come off the shelves is when we annually take everything out of the hutches for a wash in the sink, thoroughly clean the hutch, and put it all back. As DH and I did this past Friday. A several hour chore with the two of us working together. 90% of what's in those cabinets won't come out again until next November.

I hate to simply donate them, but can't imagine who among our friends or our children's friends might want them...
 
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I'm lucky that my daughter likes the same things that I do. Some have been in the family for three or four generations & those she wants. But there are a few things that I know she doesn't want & I don't have enough room in my house for them that I have from my Mom. They are from the 1940s, but not antique.

For the things that we have that we don't want, I've been finding homes for. If run across someone who likes something & will appreciate it, I'll just ask them if they want it & give it to them. If they can't haul it, I'll bring it to them in the pick up. I've found out this runs in spurts. I still have two pieces of furniture in the garage that I'm working on finding a home for.
 

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