Inspired by last night’s episode of “Wife Swap”, I was wondering how many people out there have grown up with a parent who is a packrat/has OCD? 1. How bad was the situation? 2. Did it effect the way you run your own household? 3. Has your parent gotten better with age?
When I was growing up, my dad could not throw out a magazine or box. He had piles of Time and National Geographic in the basement. He labeled his boxes and kept them for years on end. Even though we had decades of unused magazines, my brother and I were not allowed to use them for school projects. When I tried to throw out one of my dad’s boxes, I was punished. Nothing in my house was organized. Every seat was used as a table. When I was in high school, my father and brother almost came to blows about organizing kitchen - that’s how nuts my dad is.
My brother and I both are neat-freaks now. We’re so bad that when we visit our parents. we end up cleaning. At my home, the only thing on my couches/chairs are cushions. Magazines are regularly weeded out. Having a neat living space makes me feel saner and more relaxed. Going to visit my folks now, puts me on edge. The living room is usually covered in stacks of newspaper and I need to move a mountain to find a place to sit.
Dad is not better but he now acknowledges that he’s a little OCD. He’s aware but doesn’t change his behavior. For example, on my latest visit: if you have a Dunkin Donuts cup you want to throw out you have to stack it with the others he’s collected. If I’d like to move anything, I have to ask permission beforehand. Apparently, all the piles over the living room are categorized and organized in my dad’s head.
My father (from whom I have been estranged for other reasons for the last 20 years) was a packrat. Despite the estrangement, I have definitely inherited the tendency. Dad was an organized packrat - he’d save bottletops, but they were all in a coffee can; he saved magazines, but they were all alphabetized and sorted by date. Nothing was out of place or messy, but he really had a problem throwing stuff out.
I have what I call HSD - Horizontal Surface Dysfunction. I stack stuff on pretty much every flat surface. I’m messier than my dad, but I’m a good deal less disorganized than my husband thinks I am Unlike my dad, I CAN (and do) throw away trash, but I have a bit of that “well, you never know when this might come in handy” problem.
After my grandparents past away we had the task of cleaning out their 3 story home that was just packed with everything. They just never threw anything away.
My mom attributed it to their generation. They had lived through the Depression and were taught that everything was valuable and could be reused at some point and if you threw it out you were being wasteful.
My dad was so disgruntled about the whole task of cleaning out their house that he swore he would never do that to any of his children. Their home is also 3 stories but they never collect anything. I swear he walks around his house figuring out what he can get rid of next.
Now if I could only get my in-laws to do the same thing.
My Dad was a packrat but his holding area was confined to the garage. Occasionally my mother would get him to spend an afternoon in the garage in a vain attempt to have him get rid of some things. It was almost guaranteed that after about 2 hours one would find him in the garage reading an old newspaper that an item had been wrapped in for years with nothing thrown away.
Aha! Now I know what my wife has (funny enough she’s from the Chicago burbs).
I haven’t seen the top of our dresser in years. I’d like a chair in the bedroom to sit on when I put on my shoes but I don’t dare because it will take about a day before it’s stacked with clothes. Both our coffee table and dining room table are covered with stuff. I’ve cleaned them off numerous time to no avail since they get recovered within a day.
It drives me bonkers since I’m a clean freak and she describes my habits “anal” and I must like “living in a museum”.
My mom and her sisters have what I think of as the super-mega-ridiculous-sterile-clean disorder. Their bathrooms are so clean I feel bad about peeing in there. There are no magazines in their living rooms unless they are arranged perfectly in some sort of holder for them. The dishes must be washed immediately after use. They are the kind of women who maintain rooms that they don’t use because of the expensive furniture, etc. They may have gotten this from living with their mother who was raised during the depression and was a packrat but also had the sterile-clean thing going on.
I think I’m a bit more relaxed about it. I have to be, I have a dog.
Just reading the responses has lead me to wonder whether the packrat thing is generational. My dad grew up during the Depression and WWII in Europe so that may be why he developed packrat tendencies.
I married a packrat, and I tend to be an ordinary-level clean person. I do have a packrat tendency, but that is solely related to hobby stuff, and she’s crowded my hobbies out of the premises.
I am not without sin.
When we moved to Virginia, I had a partial collection of model railroad magazines that spanned 40 years. I trimmed that back to 10 years, except for the dozen or so older issues that had articles I would not part with. The entire collection fit in a single file cabinet when I was done. I also filled a 20 yd dumpster with crap that was mostly mine. If I can part with the stuff of my own volition (no one forced me to dump what I did, then I’m not obsessive about it.
However…
My wife is a walking textbook of psychological disorders. She has undiagnosed OCD, is a classic co-dependent, and many other thing that would make this a Pitting if I elaborated. Like others described in this thread, for example, she had a fit when her LPs were pitched; no mind that they spent 8 years in an attic, were warped, and therefore unplayable.
We moved rolls and bolts of fabric that she could never use, some of which were delivered 3 days before the movers came.
She has enough cross-stitch patterns, floss, and canvas that she could open her own shop with only the rent to pay.
A fetish for office supplies that rivals her cross-stitch collection.
All of this is shoved into a 10X11 bedroom, which has overflowed into the rest of the apartment. She has what I call her nest which is centered around the recliner in the living room, and had at least a dozen different x-stitch or sewing projects piled around it at any time, plus dirty dished, old food, and spills onto the carpet.
Her mother and I organized a moving sale that was pretty even in my stuff vs. hers, and even though we made $800 over 2 days that kept us afloat until the new paycheck started, she carries a grudge to this day over what was sold.
The last time I lived in a consistently clean and organized place, I was single. I was so proud of my houseworking talents that one time when my mother came for a visit, I purposefully did not clean for a week just to show off.
I was fortunate to grow up with parents who didn’t mind getting rid of stuff, donating, recycling, shredding, trashing, etc.
But a friend of mine, who still lives in her parents’ home, has the cluttering/hoarding OCDs so badly that she can’t bring herself to throw out a singel envelope, old chocolate bar, or almost anything else. When her mom was still living in the house and I stupidly agreed to look after her for a couple of nights, it took me two damn hours to make a simple breakfast because I had to move so much crap out of the way and then hunt for things as well.
I refuse to go back into that house in its current state. It has not been cleaned in at least five years, and some of the rooms cannot be entered because there is no place to walk.
My friend can’t even sleep in her own bedroom anymore because she can’t get to the bed, which is piled up with stuff anyway.
Sorry to rant and hijack, but this subject is a sore spot for me. It is very sad to see anyone living in such conditions, but they are the only ones who can do anything about it, no matter how much the rest of us might want to go in there with a bulldozer and a couple of Dumpsters.
My mother is a pack rat. She has stuff everywhere. Her place is kind of small but it is so cluttered with “garbage” that there is literally just a path that runs from the kitchen to her bedroom/office. In some places stuff is stacked on stuff that is stacked on stuff. She has a role top desk in there somewhere but there is so much “stuff” that you can not see it much less use it and I am sure that every drawer and nook and cranny in that desk is crammed.
She is also not a clean person. Dirty dishes and over flowing ashtrays are everywhere. There is also discarded containers on the floor that she lays down for the dog or cat and they remain there for weeks. I rarely go over to her place because of the smell and the garbage.
I have tried to talk with her about it but she gets immediately defensive. I know she can’t get around very well but I look at it as if you can get to the kitchen to make dinner than why can’t you carry the dirty lunch dishes to the sink with you and you could wash those said lunch dishes while your dinner is cooking to avoid the pile of dishes that completely fill the sink and counter. I am not even sure how those dirty dishes get there as there are piles in her bedroom/office area.
I am guessing she must do a whole pile and then fill it all up with the dirty ones again. She must have 10 times as many dishes and cups as I have cause my household can not go an entire day with out at least doing the dishes once a day or we would have to start eating off Tupperware lids and drinking from measuring cups.
She lives alone so there is no one to blame the mess on but her. I work full time and have two kids (16 and 14), a family friend (20), 2 dogs and 6 cats and my place never even gets even remotely close to as bad as hers.
I am not this way in the least. I am no clean freak by any means, a little dust and dirt does not bother me but I want to see my floors/counters/sink/chairs and bed. I do not like clutter. I don’t mind things being out if they are stacked neatly. I can not stand an ashtray with more than a couple butts in it. I throw stuff away when I find no use for it or I have lack of room for it. I figure I can buy another if I truly need it later.
I don’t know if that is an OCD or not. She was somewhat like that when I was a kid but I think that is only because my father bitched about her mess so she would clean more often and she had us kids to help in the cleaning. Her father was a pack rat and I am told her mother was not a very clean person. I see the same traits in my son. I am always reminding him to bring dirty dishes to the sink. He would leave stacks in his room and at the computer if I let him and leave dropped items on the floor instead of picking them up.
I always blamed my mothers tendencies on a mix of procrastination and laziness but maybe she does have some disorder but I would have no idea what it would be.
Hoarding and cluttering can be symptomatic of OCD; sorry, I should have clarified that.
http://understanding_ocd.tripod.com/hoarding.html
And here is a support group:
The friend I mentioned earlier would have to truthfully answer yes to at least 16 out of the 20 questions. But I have never mentioned any of this to her because she would get on the defensive as well, claiming that she has no time to clean up the place. She manages to find plenty of time to be out and about so she won’t have to deal with what’s at home.
My late father-in-law was a terrible packrat. He had the original box for nearly every appliance and power tool he ever bought. Once my MIL told him if he didn’t straighten up his piles of paperwork and magazines, she would throw them out. Then, one day, she did. I think that was the time they didn’t speak for 3 weeks. Years later, after she died, and when he was ready to move to a smaller place, we cleaned out his garage. He had at least two of nearly all his tools, and there was a pickup load of lumber and pipe.
Statistically, we’ll never know for sure just how many people are engaged in these behaviors, because we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors unless we’ve seen it for ourselves.
I've thought about the Depression Era business, but a lot of older folks don't clutter or hoard, and a lot of younger ones do. It can run in families, though.
You are the second person to say this and I don’t think the depression has anything to do with it. My mother grew up in the depression and she systemically got rid of things.
My wife has a mild case of being a packrat. Her worst problem is with newspapers which she insists on reading entirely before throwing them out. The solution has worked just great. We don’t take the paper. [sup]saves money too.[/sup]
I want to Thank You for these links. IMO my mother could answer yes to at least 15 of those questions. I have read through some of this information and it truly fits her. Of course I can never bring this information to her or even suggest it because she will get extremely defensive. At times we do not have the greatest relationship and telling her this information would of course make it worse. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that.
As I stated before I thought it was more procrastination and laziness and although that seems to be a part of it from what I have read so far it obviously is much more than that. It will help me try and understand her better.
Unlike my dad, I CAN (and do) throw away trash, but I have a bit of that “well, you never know when this might come in handy” problem.
guess I needed to rant
[sup]saves money too.[/sup]