I don’t know if it reached the level of “hoarding”, but whenever I would visit my mom, I’d always be surprised at how jam-packed her refrigerator and freezer were. For someone who lived alone, that woman had a hell of a lot of food. But it was never to the point where she bought more food than she had room for. It was just… always a tight fit.
My husband still rereads his tattered Feinman Lectures from his undergraduate physics days, four decades later.
After a while, I had to admit that my textbooks were so outdated that they were garbage. I still took them to Half Price Books to trade and got a few dollars for a couple of them.
Getting rid of books was definitely the most heart-rending part of downsizing. I ultimately dumped about 2/3 of my collection. Some, I handed off to people that I knew would appreciate but most went to Half Price Books. They, in turn, give the books they don’t want (and are still readable) to a charity shop that is known locally for books. So they didn’t all get recycled. And, I got some (not much) cash money to spend on more books.
Oddly, no one wants Philip K Duck collections in their neighborhood library hutches. Old math books, yes.
That’s desthhhpicable!
Regarding #3: Some people are e-hoarders, and collect data on multiple computers. That can also be a problem.
I had a friend who became a hoarder, probably as an offshoot of untreated major depression. Her life hadn’t turned out the way she wanted it to, whatever that might mean, and this was how she reacted. I moved away for a job, and a couple years later, she became my ex-friend when I came back for another friend’s wedding (they don’t know each other) and she surmised when we met up that he was just marrying her to have access to her two daughters. :eek: It was one of those things where I knew at the wedding that the marriage wasn’t going to last, and it didn’t but this wasn’t why.
A couple years earlier, she “lost” a cat and thought he had probably run away, until she found what was left of him in the basement a few months later. That place was a fire hazard, among other things.
I have since moved back to the city where she lives and we used to work together, and see her around sometimes, most commonly at estate sales. She’s in her 70s now, and I was surprised she was able to retire because I knew she had little or no savings due to her “hobby.” (I suspect that her retirement from the grocery store pharmacy was not voluntary - that she was fired due to poor hygiene, something she didn’t have when I knew her, but her house was headed to a point where she couldn’t have taken care of this.)
Can you say Beanie Babies? :dubious:
Threadjack: A while back, someone donated a painting to the library I volunteer at that had its original price tag on it - $550, from the 1960s. Because we couldn’t figure out its value, we sent it, along with a lot of other things, to an auction house we use, and the owner said he could tell just by looking at it (he was probably familiar with the artist) that it was no longer worth $550, even taking inflation into account. He ended up selling it for about $100, which was still 100% profit for us.
We occasionally get donations that were probably from hoarder houses. If it smells like urine and has black mold all over it, that’s probably the case.
I have hoarder-ish tendencies, but I regularly donate to the Vietnam Vets now, so that’s kept me on a regular cycle of purging and donating.
I have a ton of books, but I’m continually making the choice to get rid of some that I’d decided to keep before. If I read something I want to keep, it’s now the “new one in only if an old one goes out rule.” I also have an Amazon seller account and sell ones with any value. I probably have more clothes than I need since I’m retired. That’s the next major weeding project for me.
There are a few things I specifically collect:
- bear-related items
- dachshund-related items
- Heintz Art Metal items
- vintage/antique typewriter ribbon tins
- Weller burntwood and claywood pots
I also have a lot of art. I just like having things around to look at. I do not have piles of “stuff” … everything is arranged in an attractive manner…but I do have a lot of it. Minimalists would go crazy in my place. But, then, I’d go crazy in their places.
Having a regular pickup of discarded items really helps. That way, I’m always reevaluating what to let go. Keeps me on my toes.
I enjoy watching those “reappraisal” shows, too, but I’d say a good 50% of the time, the value has either held steady or gone up (sometimes dramatically so). I’m pretty good on guessing up, down, or no change. Yeah, something like Beanie Babies are an obvious one. I actually have a couple, but one was a gift because I collect dachshund-related things, and it was a dachshund Beanie Baby. I bought a bear one, because I collect bear items, and I bought a dragon one because I like how it looks displayed with my Harry Potter books. I certainly never had any ideas about them funding my retirement!
Similar thing with my mom - she has 2 refrigerators and a big chest freezer, all full. Plus 3 shelving units full of canned goods and pasta and such. I’m sure this is a carryover from the days when there were 7 of us at home and Mom would stock up when things were on sale. But now it’s her and my youngest sister. And they eat out frequently. Old habits die hard, I guess.
On the other hand, if someone drops in unexpectedly, they’ll be fed. 
And apart from the food, she’s been giving stuff away for the last few years. I think she doesn’t want to leave a lot of stuff for us to deal with when she dies. Or she’s tired of dusting stuff…
IIRC, they’re renting the house to a nice family. Except for the fridge and a freezer, all of the stuff was non-organic. Lots of dust, and maybe bugs and mice, but nothing rotting. Well, except for the fridge and freezer and those were hauled away.
He was asked if he was worried that there might have been something in the freezer that was worth something. He said he’d considered the possibility, but it just wasn’t worth it to touch them.
At least one aunt. She’s got a garage and three sheds on her property and doesn’t know how many storage units she has (or had, by now, probably). Two years after her husband died, she still had his mobility scooter in the carport. I asked her about selling or better donating it, and she teared up and said she “wasn’t ready.” When her kids and I were cleaning out crap and packing her stuff to move, she caught us putting stuff on the curb and started taking it back. Her daughter would take a carload “to the storage unit” and track down the nearest dumpster.
Her sister, who spent decades trying to reform Aunt 1, just hoards nicer stuff. For a while she and her husband turned an extra bedroom into a large, overstuffed clothes closet. Double racks all around and standing racks in the middle. She bought a B&B, the perfect excuse to hoard antiques. BTW, she abandoned but still owns it after fifteen years, and it’s still stuffed with antiques.
My favorite Aunt 2 story was the time she hired a local, small-town teenager to help clean up. The girl was given the task of sorting a three-foot stack of periodicals, the catalogs from the magazines. She got mad that the girl couldn’t tell which, for instance, J. Peterman is.
The Four Duck Flock of Palmer Eldritch:
Huey, Dewey, Louie and Donald.
-Daisy was too upper crust for them.
I’m reading this thread and thinking of all the ways people don’t need to save stuff. Thanks, gang, you may have saved my self-respect (or at least my marriage).
So I’m now inspired to purge! Take my old CDs/DVDs/books to Half Price Books, or to Goodwill. My textbooks, too; I’m sure if I have a Complex Systems 401 class question (and really need that 1975 perspective), I could find the same info online or from a library.
I have been accused of being a hoarder. But I try to reach a balance between saving stuff that might be useful in the future with stuff that was saved, but never used. 'Tis a puzzlement.
My grandpa can be pretty bad, but not anywhere near as bad as the show. The general living areas of their house and perfectly organized. It’s the garages (they have a 3-car garage, plus a very large garage for a motorhome that hasn’t been taken out in years and isn’t licensed anymore) that are bad. My grandpa hates throwing stuff like newspapers and plastic bags out (and I mean way more than what most people will keep on hand). Not that I like to think about him passing at all, but he’s in his 90’s. It’s going to be a lot to deal with someday, and my grandma will need the whole family’s help.
Did you ever clean out a hoarder’s house when they weren’t there? If so, how did they react? Can this lead to a complete mental break down?
Eldest bro was pretty much a hoarder of computer hardware, when he operated a mail-order store out of his two-bedroom apartment. The only rooms where he didn’t keep any inventory was the kitchen and bath.
Some of that inventory was junk; he’d dumpster-dive for salvageable components and eventually took all dead hardware to recycling companies.
I’ve only done that in the case of a landlord doing a clean-out on a tenant’s unit. As the tenants in question were deceased they did not, of course, react.
For live hoarders, though - yes, in some cases doing a clean-out without warning or permission can lead to a breakdown. It does depend on why the person is hoarding and what else might be going on.
For damn sure, if you do that you will forever lose the trust of the hoarder and probably any shred of goodwill. Hoarders tend to react VERY negatively to people taking their stuff. Indeed, most people tend to react negatively to someone taking their stuff without warning or permission, we even have a word for it: stealing.
My mom had hoarding tendencies. Once, she was in the hospital, and after I visited her I was hanging out at her house with my brother. Her counter was covered in old ketchup packets, napkins, and paper salt and pepper packets from McDonalds - all years old. Trying to help out, I cleared it all away and scrubbed the dirty counter.
She was MASSIVELY ticked off when she returned home. She had been saving all that stuff in case she needed it! I don’t need to mention she had ketchup, salt and pepper in the cupboard already.