I feel terrible for calling him a “big baby”. He was on his own at a very young age. I still look forward to seeing the follow up.
Does anyone suppose there might be an opposite disorder - people who can’t bear to keep anything, no matter how practical, useful, or valuable?
I’m not talking about ascetics or people who take vows of poverty for religious, political or other “higher” purposes, but people who “pathologically” can’t keep things just as hoarders “pathologically” can’t discard things.
Ever known one?
My Mom is a good example. I have had to endure her throwing out items that could be reused and sometimes she throws away valuable things. When I was young we got a summer cottage and she is a neat freak and didn’t like the musty smell. Cottages are supposed to smell musty! This cottage came furnished and was owned by two elderly sisters from New York that died. I loved all the old antiques and books and maple leaf dressers, etc. Little by little she threw out the books. Some were first editions! Right to the dump along with all the other antiques. I don’t understand her need to throw away perfectly good things when she could donate them or give them to charity? She once threw away a box of silver platters and candle sticks? She chucked real Tiffany lamps?
It may be considered a disorder or just that she would rather get rid of any clutter even in a wasteful way? She was raised in a poor home but my parents did well for themselves. Still it does make sense to throw away valuable things you could sell?
As a child she would bag our bedrooms when we were at school. Things came up missing and she most likely chucked them out.
I just don’t get it? She is also neat to the point of making herself sick cleaning. She gets a very bad poison oak rash every year from raking the back yard but refuses to let someone else do it? So she gets a bad rash requiring medication yearly? She hurts herself at 70 by her non stop activity. I worry about her.
I just call it her Ism’s. It is almost as if she can’t relax?
My ex was like this, but only with other people’s things. His things were sacrosanct, mine could be tossed on a whim if the item was in his way. I don’t think he even stopped to notice what it was he was tossing. I’ve even heard him complain later that he can’t find it. . . He would even do it to his Mother’s belongings while visiting at her house.
Confronted, he would simply throw out an agreement to buy a new one, and change the subject. He almost never followed through though.
To give you an idea, while I was in the hospital giving birth to the Celtling, he threw away my dining room chairs! Except for two. Because we didn’t need so many, and they were taking up space. In a three bedroom apartment with a separate dining area. and an eat-in kitchen.
He also threw away a box of baby shower cards and such, which contained about $350.00 in gift cards and checks. More importantly, the envelopes contained the addresses I needed to send thank-you notes. I’m getting mad just thinking about it.
Yes! My mom threw out stuff faster than she replaced it, including my clothes. Her house is very organized; she organizes the garage on free weekends even though nothing has changed since the last time she organized it. It doesn’t make me want to call a shrink, but…
I don’t think my Mennonite grandmother was actually all the way into pathological throwing stuff out, but she had her ways - for example, my mom tells me that she would cut the heads off peony flowers before they bloomed because they made too much mess. Her house was always spotless and spartan; my mom also told me that she had three dresses - that was all her clothing. I don’t know how much of that can be attributed to being a Mennonite farmwoman who always made do with nothing, re-used everything, and was expected to live a simple life culturally and religiously, and how much was a possible pathology. I’m guessing it would be hard to separate the two.
What amazes me is that this show is available on DVD! Channel surfing and getting sucked into an episode (or even a marathon), like watching the aftermath of a car wreck, I guess I sorta understand. But who in the world would want to revisit these stories again and again? :shudder:
My grandma is Amish -> Mennonite farmwoman and I can tell you she doesn’t have a problem with throwing too much away. She definitely re-uses everything (you should see their collection of plastic bread bags, plastic food containers and foam meat trays!) She also loves knick-knacks and is quite sentimental about keeping and displaying everything.
She works at a Mennonite secondhand store and every damn time she visits she’s got a bag of crap for us that she saved from the store. You can tell she is torn between money going to the church and cheap “useful” things coming into her home.
Oddly enough, her house is quite tidy and dust-free. Just a lot of knick-knacks - nothing spartan about it. I suppose if it wasn’t a 4-bedroom farmhouse with a humongous kitchen and a basement, it would be in pretty bad shape.
Hmm, must have been my grandma’s particular quirk, then. Aside - I call re-used plastic food containers “Mennonite tupperware.” 
Nice! I’m going to tell my dad that one (embarrassed son of two Mennonites) - he’ll love it!
My mother. One time when I was a kid she threw it out a Christmas present from my Grandma the day after I got it (before I had a chance to use it) because it “looked messy” or something. (It was a leather-working kit.) She also liked to give away my stuff without asking. “The housekeeper was feeling sad today, so I gave her your stereo.”
Another hoarder tragedy, this time in Las Vegas: News, Politics, Sports, Mail & Latest Headlines - AOL.com
Was this individual features on the show?
No.
What’s with all the question marks?
“Our own messes never bother us; other people’s messes are unbearable.” (My parents to each other, over one of them saying to the other or to a kid “take your [insert item here] out of there!” when the complainer was being a worse offender)
Heh. As I’ve mentioned on these boards before, my in-laws are both hoarders. My FIL is a retired electrical engineer. As such, he cannot bring himself to throw out old TV’s that no longer work (you never know when you’re going to need a part from one!) and has at least 17 non-working TV’s in the house. He also will not hear of a microwave being thrown out. “Hey, don’t throw that out! I might need the magnetron!” He suffers macular degeneration, and his eyesight has gotten so bad he can’t work on his electronics anymore. But that doesn’t stop him from hoarding the crap he has or accumulating more! My MIL is a great collector of, well, collectibles. She has thousands of sets of candlesticks. She’ll buy candlesticks she doesn’t like because she ‘doesn’t have a pair like that’. She also used to be a wonderful seamstress (she made my wedding dress!), and even though her hips have gotten too bad to climb the stairs to her sewing room (not that she could get into the room if she got up the stairs), she still keeps buying bolts and yards of fabric she likes!
So, anyway, about 12 years or so ago, they got robbed. The first thing they noticed was the lack of a TV in their bedroom, but they figured maybe their youngest son had borrowed it for some reason. Then, the next day, my FIL went to his desk to write a check to pay a bill, and couldn’t find his checkbook. He chalked it up to not remembering where he put it. The day after that, my MIL noticed her sterling silver spoon collection was not hanging on its accustomed wall. But it wasn’t until the following Monday, when their bank called them about all kinds of forged checks, that they realized they had actually been burglarized! :eek:
Perciful hoards them?
The second one!
Another thing - clutter builds up sometimes when there’s no easy or quick way to get rid of stuff. I’m serious. It’s easy to say, “throw it out” but when there’s so much, it’s not so easy. We are limited to what we can throw out on trash night, everything has to be in trashbags in a trash can. There are some things they just will not pick up (rugs, paint). If you have to put it in a car or truck and find a dump to take it, then pay the dump - easier to just let it sit there. And then there’s the recycling - stuff has to be sorted, and for some people, they really just don’t get it.
The vast majority of people manage to have a house that isn’t so full of crap that you can’t find a dead body in it (or so full of crap that it kills you!). I have tons of compassion for hoarders; it is obviously a psychological condition, because I don’t think anyone would live like that if given a choice, but what you’ve listed here are excuses, not reasons. In just about every hoarder’s case, the problem is not only with things going out, but also with things coming in. Part of the money they use to buy new things to add to the pile of crap could be used to rent a truck and visit the dump, if we were going to talk about some solutions to their problems (which they wouldn’t be willing to do, because of their disorder).