There was just a long thread on hoarding as a mental illness recently. Before the Plague.
Essentially though, what is mostly believed is that it is a subset of OCD. It doesn’t have to have a precipitating event but it can. It probably has a genetic basis. Two of my brothers in law are hoarders, one severe. There is a cousin in the same generation as well. I see some sketchy signs of it in my husband as well.
It seems to have some separable components, including what I call a sorting disorder (inability to rank things in order of likelihood, or of importance; inability to put like things together), a decision-making disorder, and a pathological attachment to objects once they are in one’s possessions. As I said in that earlier thread, a real hoarder (as opposed to a mere lazy slob, or an overly-paranoid prepper), feels about every pile of dirty old newspapers or broken rusted machinery the way you feel about your grandmother’s brooch that she pressed into your hand on her deathbed.
As far as I can tell, stocking up is simply buying rare commodities in reasonable amounts based on other people hoarding. If I have one pack of toilet paper and see 2 left in an otherwise empty shelf I don’t think I’m hoarding to grab both of them and leave nothing left. Vicious cycle I know.
I have 6 people in my home right now. 5 of them are adults. A normal shopping trip with only me there might look like hoarding but it really isn’t.
Hoarding means you don’t really need it, and might not ever need it. Hoarding is an irrational response. Hoarding in times of scarcity deprives others of things that they really need.
Stocking up means taking advantage of good prices or increasing supply on hand because you know you are going to need it. Stocking up is rational.
I agree with separating out ‘hoarding’ in the more recent sense of the word, not getting rid of junk because you have a mental issue with that.
Here I think we’re talking about buying new stuff. A mix of the two would be buying new stuff you’ll never need, but let’s put that one aside.
The best answer I think is that’s buying in anticipation of shortage. If you say it’s stocking up more than usual, that still gives people with lots of storage space a free pass. We tend to have high stocks of things normally, but shop a lot at Costco and have room.
That said, I don’t necessarily care if somebody on the internet would brand my buying ‘hoarding’. For example the other day, in Costco, I bought us a second 30 roll TP pack. We normally are in the process of using one of those with another in reserve (I’ve never measured out use but it could be less than 1 roll a week, maybe closer to 2? I don’t know, but 30 lasts a few months at least). Now we have a little left from one pack and two in reserve. The package was also third to last one they had at that moment. But, they might have put out more 5 minutes later, and to at least some extent it’s up to other people to look out for themselves. I wouldn’t refuse to criticize anyone for hoarding in any hypothetical extreme case, but again really don’t care if somebody on the internet wants to be the (secular, of course) holiest of holier than thou’s and say I should have left the pack for somebody else.
Hoarding it is having it for the sake of having it. Stocking up is having it for a need or potential one.
Years ago, I bought a lot of toilet paper on sale and stuck it under my sink. My sink had a leak, and by the time I found out, all the toilet paper was ruined. Lesson learned.
If you significantly change your buying behavior at the onset of a disaster, you are probably “hoarding”.
If your buying habits remain unchanged during a disaster, you are one of the surprisingly small number of people who planned ahead.
“Stocking” is what those smart planners were doing in the years prior to the disaster. Their current activity is best described as “relaxing and watching the circus.”
Well, I’m glad you don’t care what anyone thinks, but you sure should have left it for someone who needs it since you clearly don’t. There is a word for people who take what they don’t need and leave others with nothing.
Stocking up is making sure you’ve enough for a reasonable and defined future timespan: I’ve got enough food for 7-14 days in case I get the damn thing and have to quarantine myself completely.
Hoarding, to me, is loading up without much thought as to what you’re really likely to need it for. I read of one delivery driver who found one customer had ordered 120 toilet rolls. God knows what sort of intestinal apocalypse they were anticipating.
A friend posted on facebook, “I wish I’d hoarded a little bit.”
I think most of what we are calling “hoarding” these days is trying to shame people who are making reasonable attempts to prepare for the future when there are shortages and unpredictable supplies.
Yeah, the person who bought all the SpaghettiOs, despite not eating SpaghettiOs, or in general, buying stuff that you don’t actually have a use for, is hoarding in a more traditional sense of the word. And I suppose that’s related to the profiteer, who bought all the bottles of alcohol he could find with the hope of selling it at a vastly inflated price.
But mostly that’s not who is causing shortages. The shortages are mostly caused by actual supply-chain interruptions (apparently Canada, which supplies a lot of the pulp for US toilet paper, is feeling pissy about Trump ording 3M not to sell PPE to Canada. Who would have guessed?!) and by people making rational decisions to try to supply their own needs in the face of supply chain interruptions.
That makes no sense. If am a person who stops at the grocery store every day after work and buys what I need to make dinner that night, but under these circumstances I switch to buying 2 weeks of groceries at a time to minimize trips to the store, it’s a totally unfair slander to call me a “hoarder”.
I’m not that person, really, but I know a lot of people who are, and it works for them. They aren’t bad people because they have adapted their behavior to the current situation.
ETA: Also, honestly, I am not breaking into my actual emergency food supplies now, when groceries are still freely available. That would be stupid. The point of emergency supplies is for when regular food is not available. So even people who plan ahead are likely still shopping.
I don’t think that sort of change in buying behavior qualifies as “hoarding” - you’re still buying two weeks worth of groceries in two weeks, just in fewer trips. It’s the opposite sort of change in behavior that qualifies as hoarding - the people who are buying ( or trying to buy ) a month’s worth of something every week or a week’s worth every couple of days and actually are increasing the number of trips they make to the store. And they do exist - I know people who used to shop once every week or two who are now going to the supermarket every other day and buying toilet paper or tissues every time they see a pack on the shelves, even if they bought a pack two days ago and three packages last week and normally buy a package every month or two.
Do I have this straight: you already had something like six months’ worth of toilet paper at home, you know that there’s currently a general shortage and some people don’t have any, there were only three left on the shelf, and you took one of the three despite already having at home what, short of the entire collapse of society, is more than enough to last you until the shortage no longer exists?
I don’t know if that’s hoarding, exactly. But I’ll call you on it; even at the dreaded risk of being called “holiest of holier than thou”.
Sure, maybe they’d have put more out five minutes later. Maybe I can run the red light and there won’t be anybody coming. Doesn’t make it a good idea.
To me, “stocking up” is purely something you do just because of your needs.
“Hoarding” is when you buy stuff in consideration that other people might buy it first and you won’t get any. So you buy just not for your immediate needs, but to “game” other hoarders.
It’s like the fidget spinner mania a while back. If you bought 5 just to have 5 without thinking that later they might be hard to find. I.e., that just what you thought you would need, that’s stocking up. If you bought 5 because you knew those sold out quickly and you wanted to get something that at the time was hard to find, that’s hoarding. (And a couple months later there was a glut and stores starting discounting them and still couldn’t sell them.)
There’s one aspect of what I’ve seen called hoarding during the pandemic that I don’t see represented here: people who bought it up because they thought they could then sell it at a higher price. That’s what I’ve seen most people assuming about those who actually hoarded toilet paper.
Oh, and if buying stuff in anticipation of outages is hoarding, then hoarding is smart. How many of us wish we’d bought stuff that is now nearly impossible to find? You have to anticipate your needs based on what will be available in the future. To do otherwise means you are now forced to go out and shop when we’re supposed to be holing up.
Boy do I wish I had a stockpile of stuff. But, somehow, despite everyone saying that this was known to be a potential problem in the future, I never heard about the risk. If I had, I’d have saved up and “hoarded” those long term meal kits, and the supplies I might need if I couldn’t easily get them.
I’m paying a huge premium in time, risk of infection, and money I don’t have to get things now. To say trying to avoid that is “hoarding” is to say “hoarding is good.”
I haven’t needed or thought to check about the TP situation in my local supermarket in a while; went to one on Sunday and found a good supply of TP rolls (single rolls, not packs of 8, 12, or whatever bulk quantity), by virtue of the fact that management was limiting it to no more than two rolls per paying customer. Since two rolls would probably last a normal household at least a week, that’s more than sufficient for legitimate need and has evidently ensured a ready supply for people who are actually in immediate need or close to it.
I think a part of the difference is also how protective you are about your stockpile, For example if you’ve stocked up on tp and a neighbour came to you and asked to borrow a pack because they’ve run out and the local stores are out of stock would you give them some or would you flatly refuse to give them any of your supply even though you have several month’s worth on hand
As an asthmatic who hasn’t set foot in a store in nearly a month, and who has found it literally impossible to order TP from Costco or from any other grocery store online or for curbside pickup, this attitude is part of the problem. You are hoarding, and it’s keeping people like me (and my 77-year-old immunosuppressed mom) from being able to acquire necessities.
I bow to your moral superiority.