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Hoarding...not just on TV

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  • sjprmc01
    sjprmc01 Posts: 917 Forumite
    Hey folks!

    Just checking in, once again!

    Not been on in a while, have been ill (cold/viral type thing) working and getting sorted for Xmas.

    I was in my neighbours house yesterday. She was clearing out. Didn't look like she had much to clear out tbh but I guess that is coz she keeps on top of it! Her kitchen bunkers were clear and cupboard tops too, mine are piled with 'stuff'......more realisation that this is just not 'normal'

    I cleared a kitchen cupboard myself yesterday, ad to chuck quite a bit of well past it's use by date food.....such a waste, you think you are stocking up when something is on offer but in reality you are just wasting money as it ends up in the bin anyway. :(
    No more unnecessary toiletries Feb 2014 INS: 24 UU: 13. Mar 2014. INS: lost count, naughty step for me! UU: 8
  • lostinrates
    lostinrates Posts: 55,283
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    edited 4 December 2012 at 2:40PM
    oldtractor wrote: »
    I really dont understand hoarders. I think it must be [sadly] a mental illness and they need help. Why else would anyone hang on to cheap tat, packaging,newspapers and so on? Its utter trash cluttering up their lives.
    My late MIL hoarded. Utter rubbish, old clothes of her deceased husband were kept old kids toys you name it she filled the house with it. Was miserable and selfish all the time. What a way to live a life.

    Because to us it's not cheap tat.

    For example, a neighbour of mine told me my two retired old horses (one in her twenties the other in her forties) let me down, impaired my reputation and after all 'they are worthless'. Luckily the vet came a few days afterwards for a client and reassured me I was not being selfish and cruel and that if most of his clients horses in their twenties looked as ok as mine in her forties he would be out of a job. To her she sees cheap tat and worthless meat I am feeding while doing without. To me I see the girl who taught me to play one equestrian team sport like a pro, and the one who I won red and blues in our first game and played at two other sports in, who taught my husband to ride, who still wants to 'play' and be ridden though her shoulder is still and arthritic......To some these are beats I am hoarding, clearly tat and rubbish, to me they are love, responsibility and a debt of kindness and care owed for as long as they can stay with me.

    My boxes aren't filled with 'rubbish' they are filled with memories. I don't 'do' photos. I don't really remember things in that way. I do ' the surfing earringof the set I wore at my first proper ball, the fabric I had as my nursey curtains, my bedroom curtains when I was nine, my mother's kitchen curtains when I was twelve, the funiture I used to play with and pretend it was the cupboard to narnia, or a treasure box on a desert island....
  • blossomhill_2
    blossomhill_2 Posts: 1,923 Forumite
    edited 7 December 2012 at 6:22PM
    oldtractor wrote: »
    I really don't understand hoarders. I think it must be [sadly] a mental illness and they need help. Why else would anyone hang on to cheap tat, packaging,newspapers and so on? Its utter trash cluttering up their lives.
    My late MIL hoarded. Utter rubbish, old clothes of her deceased husband were kept old kids toys you name it she filled the house with it. Was miserable and selfish all the time. What a way to live a life.
    Have you tried? Have you read the thread? Maybe you should because it is not "them" it is "us" and you could become one in an instant.

    Maybe you are not the best person to be advising anyone about anything.

    I don't drink or smoke - it would be very easy for me to say to drinkers or smokers "just stop" - but it wouldn't help them in the slightest, Just like you are not helping.
    You never know how far-reaching something good, that you may do or say today, may affect the lives of others tomorrow
  • alec_eiffel
    alec_eiffel Posts: 1,304 Forumite
    Thanks folks, you're all so right.

    LIR, you're right, it's not worthless or useless when you need it in your life. In the end my boxes were stuffed with useless tat when I looked at it in an objective way but our things aren't cherished because they're worth something objectively are they? When I could make a distinction between the stuff and my thoughts, memories and feelings about them they were worthless. But for a long time they were worth more than anything because I thought they were necessary for me to be me and have a role in the world. If I'd had a house full of diamonds would I have been any less bonkers?

    We all have pain and loss at one time or another, we deal with it in different ways. Our way just involves something socially unacceptable which makes it easy for other folk to judge in the way they wouldn't make comment about other ways of dealing with stuff.
  • Goldiegirl
    Goldiegirl Posts: 8,805
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    I'm very new to this board, but have seen several TV programmes about hoarding.

    One thing that has struck is that people caught in a hoarding situation desparately want to free themselves, and how unhappy they are about living in their current situation.

    I can definately understand how it starts. My parents died in quick sucession, and I brought a lot of things from their house to mine as I wasn't ready to let them go just yet.

    However, in the last three years I've tried to generally declutter my life, and several of my parents possessions have now gone via eBay. It pleases me to know someone else is now enjoying them.

    There's no easy answer to hoarding, but I am very sympathetic to people who are prone to this
    Early retired - 18th December 2014
    If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough
  • lostinrates
    lostinrates Posts: 55,283
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    Thanks folks, you're all so right.

    LIR, you're right, it's not worthless or useless when you need it in your life. In the end my boxes were stuffed with useless tat when I looked at it in an objective way but our things aren't cherished because they're worth something objectively are they? When I could make a distinction between the stuff and my thoughts, memories and feelings about them they were worthless. But for a long time they were worth more than anything because I thought they were necessary for me to be me and have a role in the world. If I'd had a house full of diamonds would I have been any less bonkers?

    We all have pain and loss at one time or another, we deal with it in different ways. Our way just involves something socially unacceptable which makes it easy for other folk to judge in the way they wouldn't make comment about other ways of dealing with stuff.

    I do not associate my tendancy witha traumatic event, nor has dh, until later in his life, when hoarding stuff was well established and inherited from his mother, and her from her parents.


    Except in times of upheaval its rare people would come in and say 'woah, those people are hoarders of junk' they might say 'its six of one and half a dozen of the other whether their house is tidy or not' or ' they have too much stuff' but not...wow, those hoarders....

    Their are many shades of hoarder. From the person who is always a bit over prepared but never has the right thing at the right time to the Richards of this world.
  • Hello my beauties. Jo Jo Im so sorry about your cat and hope you are feeling ok and enjoying snuggles with remaining pussters!!
    Loving the kitchen pictures- thank you so much for sharing :)

    I am home alone again (well bar 4 kids lol) as DH is off saving the world again. However I am using my time wisely- I have (with the help of my sister) moved the bedroom chest of drawers down to the alcove in the front room i wanted it in and it looks FAB! All the dvds and Wii and Xbox games are tucked away in drawers and the bookcases have gone upstairs. The downside is the clothes that were in the drawers upstairs are now in heaps all over bedroom but this should mean that DH will actually carry out his plans to put up rails/shelves..... I live in hope!
    I also now have another charity bag filled from the drawer emptying mission and the ebay pile is ENORMOUS and will all be put on tonight on a 5 day to end Sunday so I can post it all Monday and guarantee Christmas delivery. I am having a mental block about ebay again but I know once I start I will be grand- there is a lot of good stuff and I could do with a bit of extra £££ this month (who couldnt!)

    Oh and OldTractor- thanks for the observations. I bet posting that little insight really added depth and meaning to your day. Maybe if you had a hoard to focus on youy wouldnt be bored enough to post inflammatory posts online. Im sorry you are jealous.
    Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

    £117/ £3951.67
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008
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    edited 4 December 2012 at 6:28PM
    Goldiegirl wrote: »
    I'm very new to this board, but have seen several TV programmes about hoarding.

    One thing that has struck is that people caught in a hoarding situation desparately want to free themselves, and how unhappy they are about living in their current situation.

    I can definately understand how it starts. My parents died in quick sucession, and I brought a lot of things from their house to mine as I wasn't ready to let them go just yet.

    However, in the last three years I've tried to generally declutter my life, and several of my parents possessions have now gone via eBay. It pleases me to know someone else is now enjoying them.

    There's no easy answer to hoarding, but I am very sympathetic to people who are prone to this
    :) Welcome aboard, hun.

    I'm sorry to hear of your bereavements and I think you were so right to take your time about handling their belongings. It's generally recognised that for a year or so after a loss, people should try to avoid making big decisions as their grieving will impair their judgement, and maybe cause regretable decisions.

    I think things need to be worked through at their own pace.

    I had a LBM moment about something I found in my parents' attic; the cot, dismantled in pieces tucked under the far side of the eaves.

    When we moved to that house, we kids were 6 and 4 but Mum was pregnant and lost the baby, largely due to the stress of the move, we think. Parents decided not to try again. It was ages afterwards that the penny dropped and I realise that when she'd packed the cot at the old house, she expected to be using it again in a few months, for my younger sibling who never was. No wonder she was in no hurry to drag that particular item into the harsh light of day and process those emotions.

    I had a bit of a guilty moment when I was looking through old photos of my Grandma, who died when I was still quite a young girl. I saw a shelf behind her chair in this one picture and on it was a little patterned jug, which we'd kept and I'd decluttered to a charity shop. I hadn't realised that it was hers as I was too young to have remembered seeing it at her house.

    Anyway, I felt like a barbarian for getting rid of one of my lovely Grandma's things then I paused and got some perspective. Imagining if I died tomorrow and my family cleared my flat; would I expect them to have a deep emotional bond to anything and everything I owned at the moment I died, for them to demonstrate to themselves and each other how much they loved me?

    It seems silly when it's put like that, doesn't it? My love for Grandma is in my heart and mind, not in a small pottery jug or any other knick-knack. I wouldn't want anyone to hoard any of my stuff as a shrine.

    :o Actually, looking around my immediate surroundings, not sure they'd find much to bond with here.

    Stuff is complicated because it represents more than the sum of its parts. My stuff is my stuff but I could probably process your stuff (in the completely-unlikely circumstances that we were together in RL in each other's homes) without a qualm. And vice versa a stranger processing my life.

    All righty, need to process some supper and then I have a murder mystery to read and will enjoy my first night at home in three nights. Early bath and bed for this tired little camper.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • RAS
    RAS Posts: 32,538
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    Because to us it's not cheap tat.

    As a child, we moved 7 times in less than 2 years and much of what we had was left behind for various reasons; there are for example very few surviving photos even though a lot were taken. That scrap of paper and the simple pot are amongst the few I have to remind me of a much earlier life. neither would pass muster with anyone else.

    Because I have lived so many "lives" and the people in them have had such different perspectives of the same facts, tangible elements of the past were very important when I was trying to make sense of what happened, proof that I did not entirely dream it up. A lot of these I can now let go because I have moved on.

    At another level, it was only when I was clearing my mother's house that I found a few old letters that enabled me to understand some of the practicalities of what happened. I doubt if she even understood some things because at the time she was dealing with so many problems apparently eminating from different sources. It was only looking at components at roughly the same time from the distance of years that I could see the pattern.

    I loathed clearing the house but I am glad I had the opportunity to understand, which would have been denied me if she had not hoarded.

    And lir, I learned to ride on a 33 year old; fat as butter and as sleek as anything, in much better condition than her slightly younger companion. They were respected and loved by their owner but neither would have "earned their keep".
    The person who has not made a mistake, has made nothing
  • Jojo_the_Tightfisted
    Jojo_the_Tightfisted Posts: 27,228
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    edited 4 December 2012 at 7:27PM
    oldtractor wrote: »
    I really dont understand hoarders. I think it must be [sadly] a mental illness and they need help. Why else would anyone hang on to cheap tat, packaging,newspapers and so on? Its utter trash cluttering up their lives.
    My late MIL hoarded. Utter rubbish, old clothes of her deceased husband were kept old kids toys you name it she filled the house with it. Was miserable and selfish all the time. What a way to live a life.



    It is, IMO, a mental illness.

    Yes, to someone without the emotional investment (or illness), it is utter trash. And yes, it does clutter up lives and relationships.

    And yes, people who hoard can be miserable and selfish (and outright mean), just as people who don't hoard can be. Or kind, sweet and caring (the type we have here, :D). Many will have a trauma they can relate to, some, there's no apparent reason for it.


    Your MIL may have been horrible - but those clothes may have represented the one person she was happy and kind towards, and cuddling up to him when he wore them. The toys may have represented the days when she had a small child playing. Or not. They could represent a shopping compulsion.

    ****

    I saw an English language show made in Japan a couple of weeks ago, where they looked at bedrooms belonging to a particular subculture's followers. One young woman's bedroom was perfectly normal and clean.

    But the others were absolutely jampacked with things, where they had to squeeze through rails of clothes to get in through the door, where every surface was covered by at least five things on top of each other, even food packaging was fixed to the walls and ceilings and there were triple sets of curtains with bits of ribbons badly attached to be able to glue loads of different things onto the shabby ribbons, so much so, at least one said they could never open their blinds to let sunlight in.

    One of the presenters said something along the lines of 'Wow. You'll never be alone in that room'.


    *****

    I'd rather have people in my life than boxes and soft toys to make me feel I'm not alone. But to some people, the Stuff is a substitute for company. For some, it's better than company.
    I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die: I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by.
    colinw wrote: »
    Yup you are officially Rock n Roll :D
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