I’ve been watching Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive for a while now. The programs appear to feature two different types of maladies, both being lumped under the title of “hoarding.”
The first type seems to fit the most literal definition of the word, in that the person has a compulsion to collect items (either of a specific or general type) to such a degree that they can no longer move easily through their own home, and/or they suffer from financial difficulties due to excessive spending in an effort to obtain the items they seek to collect. Domestic hygene may or may not suffer, depending on the extent of the hoarding problem and the nature of the items the hoarder tends to collect. When help is offered, the process of reducing or eliminating the hoard tends to be extremely difficult, as the hoarder is invariably reluctant to relinquish control of the items, despite the problems these items are causing.
The second type does not involve any particular compulsion to collect items; instead, it’s characterized entirely by an extreme lapse of domestic hygene and maintenance. This person stops removing garbage from their home, and does not perform any sort of cleaning that would be considered mandatory in most households. In extreme cases where the water supply has been shut off (either due to non payment of the water bill, or as an expedient way to stop leaks), the person either continues to use a non-flushing toilet, or resorts to using adult diapers (which, like the rest of the trash, tend to accumulate within the house). This person typically does not exhibit any emotional connection to the accumulated filth, and does not protest when help is offered with cleaning up the house.
In both types, the common link seems to be that the sufferer has lost sight of what’s normal and healthy. But beyond that, are these two types rightly both considered to be “compulsive hoarding?” Do the treatments for each of these two types bear much similarity?
When my wife and I watch “Hoarders” we both start to (jokingly) point fingers at each other: she tends a little bit towards the first type you describe (shopaholic) and I tend a little bit towards the second type (slob).
The spendthrift. They buy more and more things because they like the thrill of a new item. They never throw anything out because they see money in their objects. They’ll sell things, however, but usually want more than is realistic, so they just stock up and stock up. They can’t throw things out because that’s like burning the Mona Lisa.
The worrier. They keep things because they’re afraid they’ll need it if they get rid of it. This is usually caused by some ongoing deprivation as a child, like being hungry or neglected a lot. They are continually stocking items they think they might need. They won’t let you throw out their knife-maker or crock pot because then they might want a knife or a stew, and that’s scary.
The depressed. They don’t care about the items; they just can’t summon the motivation to clean anything. If they throw out this thing, then they’ll have to throw out that thing, and then they’ll be cleaning, and they really don’t want to be cleaning. These hoarders will love to have their house cleaned, but it’ll just come back.
One group has categorized hoarders according to increasing degree of squalor. (That page also links to another group’s multi-factor clutter scale, but when you click on the link, it tells you that the requested material cannot be found. Shame on me for finding that so amusing.)
I think there’s a common thread of perceptual distortion, an inability to see that one’s living conditions are unacceptable or unhealthy.
I’ve thought the exact same thing as the OP; I’d draw the lines just like he/she has. There are active “hunters” and “clingers” (more classic “hoarding” to my intuition) and there are passive accumulators
I have made a similar distinction for much lesser degrees of squalor, too. I draw a fundamental difference between “cluttered” and “dirty”. This was never more apparent than when I had a roommate in college. I was pretty untidy, with a slight element of “pack rat” thrown in. My bedroom (and my half of the common area mess) was littered with papers, books, gadgets and their accessories, boxes, etc. The kind of stuff that I just couldn’t be bothered to organize or discard. My roommate, on the other hand, was the type to have geological strata of dirty dishes in his bedroom, to leave half-drunk beer bottles around like a microbiological experiment, garbage that didn’t get taken out until it reeked, and stuff like that. The difference wass that my “mess” didn’t make you want to take a Lysol shower after you touched it.
I know that’s not quite the same thing as the OP; I wasn’t actively collecting anything (though I did hang on to too much stuff out of a sense of “maybe I’ll need that one day”). But it was a meaningful difference in my mind to think “I may be untidy, but I’m not dirty.”
I collect stuff, but not to the point of hoarding. I do it out of passion rather than obsession. But even so, I notice that when in collecting mode - at home with my stuff and enjoying or taking care of it - my personal hygiene will grind to a temporary halt.
Those hermit tendencies are real, and not necessary related to the physical state of your home. I don’t put records in the bathtub or musical instruments in my bed. But it becomes a private world, an insulation from the real world. You always have to keep one finger in the real world - keep aware and open to it, in any case - to keep from getting walled in.
I pretty much agree with the OP but note that there are some shades in between. Sometimes there is some attempt to make the piles neat or organize them somewhat, but they also include some fairly benign trash (empty shopping bags perhaps).
The extreme organized collector end of the spectrum I noticed was a lady whose home was stacked to the ceiling with labeled boxes and plastic bins, and she seat-belted herself to the toilet to sleep because there was not enough room anywhere else; another we just saw defined the filthy extreme, with hypodermic needles and sanitary pads and food waste piled like Sierra snowdrifts everywhere and dizzying hoards of roaches making them twitch and writhe.
So, here’s something good the Hoarders show did: I had quickly moved a bunch of shop materials in bins into a pile in the middle of the floor to clear another room as an impromptu guest room, and left the pile there for years. After watching my first episode, I cleaned it all up - and the garage, and the barn…
I suffer from this form of ‘hoarding’. I’m caregiver to my mother who has NPH, for over a decade she was housebound and had to be watched constantly - she refused to believe she had anything wrong with her and would attempt to carry on as normal, then she’d fall, and I’d have to pick her up (I should have been given a hoist, but my nurse didn’t bother telling me this…). She’s not an easy person to pick up. She thrashes around as you try to lift her; get her to sit up, go behind her, hands under her armpits, lift - you get her two inches off the floor and she starts flailing around - I’ve dropped her more than once… anyhoos, when you’ve braced yourself to lift something and it suddenly starts moving yehargh!!, for 3 years I was in constant pain from a back injury (well two really), and couldn’t do much - the nurse just kept saying “oh well you’ve two brothers” (both of whom were living abroad at the time).
Upshot of it was, the house went to hell in a handbasket. Laundry wasn’t done - or was only done on a desperately needed basis, no dusting, no vacuuming, no tidying.
I have tried tidying, but it’s hard going - it’s not helped by the house being of minimalist styling (ie there are no cupboards or any other form of storage bar a too small wardrobe), furniture is bloody expensive, has already cost €3,000 and I still seem to have nowhere to put anything (and yes, I have thrown stuff out - lots of stuff, and I currently have four garbage bags full of things that are waiting to go to a charity shop).
I have thought about hiring a cleaning company for the day to come in and help me sort everything out, and there is a ‘box room’ that could be converted in to a walk-in wardrobe cum tack room (I have a horse and all the associated tack and rugs), the’ wardrobe’ (which is really an alcove with a door on it) could then be converted into a bookcase/DVD storage. Which by my estimate would clear up 99% of the mess.
I was going to start a post, but then I realized: hey, I’m friends with Matt Paxton of Hoarders, I’ll just ask him! When/if he writes back I’ll let you know what he says.
I’m really surprised a bigwig psychologist hasn’t made the connection between the Hoarders on the TV series and the Extreme Couponers or the Doomsday Preppers.
After you’ve watched a few episodes of Extreme Couponers, you’ll find just about every person featured had some emotional upheaval, usually somebody lost a job. And because of the ability to “make money” by couponing, they cannot see the cost in time and energy they must invest to achieve this money stockpile. The stores, the sales, and the coupons are all managed electronically. But are their stockpiles in any kind of database with the expiration dates noticed? Do they get alerts telling them, “Hey, use up twenty cans of spaghetti sauce this week!”
The Preppers are another animal entirely. There is usually a seminal event: a family tragedy, a lost job, or just the threat of September 11th, and these folks are convinced there is a looming end of the world scenario waiting to happen. Their stockpiles resemble those of the couponers, and frequently include home canned foods as well.
From what I’ve seen of the Prepper stockpiles, they don’t appear to be rotating the products, and there are some foods in standard wrappers or containers that are not suitable for long-term storage.
I posted the following in my online blog:
"Hoarding is selective, though. If you collect trash and junk, you are a hoarder. If you collect machine parts and scrap metal, you are a mechanic. If you collect fabric and thread, you’re a crafter. If you collect paper, cans, and bottles, you are a recycler.
There were some apocalypse preppers that caused my jaw to drop…in admiration! :eek:The house they lived in was a thing of beauty, made out of scavenged materials and shipping containers. They could run off battery power alone if they had to, it was amazing.
And canned foods last longer than you think, certainly longer than the expiration dates on the cans.
Oh, canned goods will probably outlive us all, as long as the seal is unbroken.
But stuff needs to be store optimally, to insure best taste and nutrient preservation.
We have our home in NE AZ, and we travel back and forth to our daughter’s home in SCal. I had quite a few canned goods stored away, and circumstance kept us from returning for over a year. That meant the contents of the house went through the extreme temperature variations of NE AZ, from below freezing to 100-plus.
Any tomato products were edible, but their color and texture and taste had changed. If I were starving, yes, of course, I’d eat them. I tell ya, though, the vibrant red color had deepened to almost black, and that rather subdues the appetite.
~VOW
