Oh, my, I think we’re related. Pitched my beloved 35mm Olympus and assorted lenses, for the same reason.
Its kinda like people who pay off their credit card statements every month. Again if a significant percentage of the population in the US starting doing this, Visa and Mastercard would go belly up.
Actually, that isn’t true. A “credit” card that’s always paid off is called a debit card and Visa and Mastercard make money off of debit cards from the fees they charge retailers who take them for payment. Overall, they make less from debit cards than credit cards, but it’s still a profitable business.
So you’re certain that you’ll never take another picture again, or is it just that you’re rich enough to be able to buy a new one every time you want to take a picture?
No, I’m dumb enough not to realize that at some point I’ll be thinking “damn it, I wish I had that camera now”.
Well, I also have a camera on my phone, and I very rarely take pictures anyway. Also, let’s be honest, most of the pictures I’ve taken in my life I never really needed to take in the first place (part of this whole thing is that I always end up deleting the pictures anyway). I’ll survive just fine without a camera, and I’ll most likely be happier that way.
But, yes, the larger point remains: I have at times thrown out or otherwise rid myself of stuff that later would have been nice to have around, and then I kick myself for discarding them. That’s why I wonder if this behavior, at least partly, and at least in my case, might be on a disorder level.
Most of the time I don’t miss the stuff, though, and, of course, mostly I’ve just stopped accumulating things. I guess it’s only a problem when it’s a problem.
I’m going to go with “purge”, or bulimia of possessions.
Potlach (Northwest Coast Indians) originated because in the days before money, what did you do with wealth? When a clan lord or clever person accumulated more clothes, blankets, wood chests, or decorations than he could possibly use then the logical thing was to give them away. There was no point, for example, in keeping a five-foot stack of blankets. The Indians of that area had a very rich lifestyle, food was plentiful, lots of leisure time to produce other goods. They even were developing a hierarchy, where they had slaves and the regular members of the tribe gave to the chiefs. When the white man arrived with guns and metal tools the problem got worse - you could do bigger and more woodwork, build canoes faster, shoot more game sooner… So what better way to prove dominance and show your generosity and power than to pull a Great Gatsby and give away the accumulating stuff in an orgy of partying and giving?
Where this grew to epic fail was that the white man also brought money, and with it the chiefs could sell wood, fish, and meat to the white man and get a huge amount of money. There’s a picture I saw of the potlatch goods seized by the RCMP which included washing machines from Sears, stacks of manufactured (not locally made) blankets, tools and guns, lots of dishes and other household goods, along with traditional native work. It was a culture clash. The natives who moved occasionally did not understand the concept of accumulating “stuff” long term, and the white man, especially missionaries, did not understand people who would not work and save what they accumulated.
Yes, credit cards also charge the merchant 2% to 4% depending on the card and its benefits. This is one of the complaints of Canadian small businesses - rewards cards make up the difference with a much higher fee, up to 4% - but the merchant does not know how much he’s hit up for until the statement comes in much later.
IIRC there were major complaints when conress threatened (or did?) limit debit fees. Debit card fees were pushing 25 cents per transaction, which is why many merchants had signs like “no debit under $5” or applied a fee to debit. Congress IIRC wanted to limit this to 12.5 cents.
A “debit card” is against your account - money comes out of that account immediately. A credit card keeps a “balance owing” and you either pay it off or pay interest. If you pay in full, typically you pay no interest except on cash advances. If you don’t pay in full, you pay interest, on most cards, going back to the day of the purchase. So banks prefer people who pay ludicrous 12% to 24% interest on running balances, but they don’t lose money anywhere in that system.
This is my fear - I have piles of junk. We just cleaned out a small part of my parents’ house, and my wife makes comparisons every time I keep something. However, I find that when I throw something out, I need it the next week - that RS232 adapter or stereo cable or funny hook, or something.
Our society doesn’t help. One tax requirement years ago was “prove you lived there last year”. I mentioned to a co-worker this included things like utility bills, phone bills and she said “who keeps last year’s phone bills???”
But generally, the opposite of hoarding is purging - deliberately ridding yourself of anything useful to the extent it becomes obsessive. If you do the same with cash to the neglect of old age security, it is even more of a failing.
Of course, most behaviour is normal and fine unless taken to an extreme where it has negative impact of current or future life.
Since I’m sometimes too lazy to throw away stuff in my living space and things tend to gather and accumulate around me, I find that guy’s spartan lifestyle awesome. I don’t see the problem.
St. Francis of Assisi was an example of the OP. Ironic that one of the most yuppified cities on earth is named for him.
The other problem I see is our disposable society. I have the digital camera I bought in 2000 for $1200; it sits in a box downstairs with the one I bought in 2003 for $600 and the one I bought in 2007 for $400. Basically, these are junk, not even close to the handheld underwater-capable camera bought 2 years ago for $400 or the DSLR and multiple lenses (soon to be obsoleted by the mirrorless version…) OTOH, they are perfectly good cameras, if 2Mp or 4Mp is a good enough picture (which for many purposes, it is.) The same applies to computers, and now TV’s. I had the one TV from 1985 to 2003; since then I’ve bought 4 TVs even though we only use 2. The one from 2003 does not have HDMI and is effectively junk.
To someone with my hoarder mentality, who grew up with very little and poor, the idea of throwing out stuff I paid good money for seems painful. (My dad still has his 486 computer sitting in the basement, and I would not be surprised if he has his 286 there as well). We just live in a much more disposable society, which grates on some.
I suppose the purger mentality comes from the opposite. They had rich backgrounds, they never had to want for anything, when they needed something they could just go get it, they did not become attached to possessions, possibly because they did not associate something with “this represents X weeks of work to acquire”, so they could discard when necessary.
Is there some reason you need to throw this stuff away as opposed to giving it to someone how might want it? Goodwill, even? Because, if that’s the case, I suspect some sort of disorder is involved.
I can relate to both, I have a strong tendency to hoard but at the first sign of things becomming overly cluttered I tend to get rid of too much. I find myself driving the alleys looking for good stuff I can take apart and make something out of. It doesn’t take long before I can’t put things away anymore so I start throwing things out or giving them away. It never fails that I throw away too much. Never ending cycle.
May I suggest Wastrel?
(Although the connotation isn’t quite the same.)
And I totally agree with John Mace. That’s unusual.
I have several friends who fall into that “opposite of hoarder” category, and I find this irritating. The voluntarily carless are giant pains. “Oh, drive me to that restaurant,” which is 15 miles away. Or, “You can take a taxi from the train station.” Why would I? I have a perfectly good car, although I do hate to drive in the city. These are also the ones who are forever borrowing Crock-Pots, asking to buy a piece of meat from your side of beef, don’t cook (or cook abysmally) because they don’t want little boxes of spices cluttering up their kitchen, or have atrocious foot odor because they only own one pair of shoes.
Sorry. I’ve stored this up for a long time.
Visa & Mastercard make millions of dollars off of the 75% of people that don’t pay off their credit card balances each month. The over 20% interest charges these people have to pay is where the real money is. Merchant fees make these companies good money, but not as much as the money they make off of people who don’t pay off their balances.
This is so true.
At what point do you throw away little Johnny’s Kindergarten project that he was so proud of? How about little Mary’s swimming trophy that she won in sixth grade? For heaven’s sakes, they both just graduated from college.
I think you are right about this to an extent - it’s easier to forgo something when you know you can go buy it later if needed.
But I also think it is possible to move beyond this post-poverty mentality. I grew up working poor - we had enough, I didn’t go cold or hungry, but there wasn’t much excess, either.
Now I have a middle class job, lifestyle and house full of stuff. When it gets on my nerves and I get rid of it, sure, there is a “poor” part of my mind that wants to quote what I paid for it or what I went through to find it or haul it home or whatever. But, the same part of my brain also knows I DON’T NEED IT. After all, I got by for years without it. This is an advantage the poor have over the manor born. People raised rich have a different set point, if you will, where the norm might be that you would never think of raising a family in less than four bedrooms and three baths. (I don’t mean the wealthy can’t get past these ideas - just that they would have some extra steps to take). I think the poor/formerly poor are in a good position to assess needs vs. wants (not that all poor people are good at doing this, either). After all, we have a good data set to work from.
I can relate to that. While I will probably never be minimalist like the OP, after helping my Mom to clear out a bunch junk from her storage 2-3 years ago, I’ve sworn never to become a pack rat like that.
I’ve been an executor to three estates, have went to countless auctions and garage sales ,and have moved many, many people through the years.
After you’ve filled up dumpster after dumpster with prized possessions that have no value, monetary or emotional, you realize that most material goods are a burden.
I am a minimalist. Not an ascetic, but definitely subscribe to an uncluttered life. Think of all the time you spend earning, shopping, acquiring, cleaning, maintaining, disposing.
What defines hoarding as a mental disorder is that it can cause harm to people (or animals):
The fact that you don’t like the way a hoarder lives has nothing to do with whether it’s a mental disorder. It’s the fact that there are things like beds, couches, baths, sinks, refrigerators, ovens, tables, chairs, etc. that can’t be used. It’s the fact that a fire could start and be impossible to put out. It’s the fact that animals or people could be hurt by the clutter, the dirt, or the neglect.
On the other hand, you would have to show that this anti-hoarding that you’re talking about has some specific harmful effect. “It grosses me out” is not such an effect. If you can’t show a specific sort of harm, I don’t see how it’s any of your business.
It sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it? But it’s true. Being rich does not equate to having a lot of stuff. You’re only really rich when you can afford to own nothing.
I think I’ll have to admit that there is an element of this involved in my own case. Not that I’m rich - I’m not. I constantly have money problems that I wish I could be without.
So, I’m a lot more attached to those things that I know that I* can’t *afford to replace. I mentioned my nice chair and my laptop. There are a couple of other things, too: My cell phone, and my guitar (although both of those are on the cheaper side of the quality scale as well). Plus a few other things.
Also, as I said, I also only have the bare minimum of furniture, clothes and kitchen utensils. But when I’ve purged my stuff so that I’m down to that stage, I become *really *protective of that minimum.
When I do find myself with some money to spare, the feeling I get isn’t “hurrah, I can afford to buy more things”, it’s “hurrah, I can afford to get rid of more crap and own less!”
BTW, I like “purger” as the opposite of “hoarder”. I think I’ll be going with that as a name for it.
It’s called obsessive-compulsive spartanism. Most of the time it’s relatively harmless, but sometimes the victim will give away the possessions of others. An example would be the parent who takes the college fund left to a child by a deceased relative and donates it to a charity or a spouse who donates almost all of the family’s clothes, household goods and appliances to Good Will. Obviously this would be a serious problem.
Exactly. I keep trying to explain this to people who want to take any historical figure who was a little quirky, and claim they were autistic. If you don’t have a problem with day-to-day living, and you are satisfied with your social life, even if you don’t go to a party every night, you are not autistic, no matter how odd you might be.
There are people who give away too much and get themselves into trouble-- there are people who compulsively give all their money to charities, and then can’t buy food, but that is usually just that person’s particular manifestation of OCD, not a separate disorder in itself. There are people who have a kind of claustrophobia that makes them uncomfortable in rooms with any kind of clutter, so their bedrooms have nothing but their bed, and their kitchens have nothing that can’t be stored in the cabinets. They keep their possessions to a minimum, but it isn’t a problem unless they throw away or give away things they are going to need again, and continually have to buy new, expensive things, and get into the same kinds of problems as the people who give too much to charity.
Most people who have these traits don’t have them to an extreme, and don’t get themselves into financial trouble. The other way the traits can interfere in their lives is when they are so rigid, they can’t compromise with an SO; but if they are happy alone, then again, not a problem. The biggest trouble they can get into is if they become parents, and expect a little child to conform to their lifestyle. When a kid can’t keep their toys out of sight, and the parent becomes abusive, then you have real trouble. But, if they don’t become parents, again, no problem.
I’ve worked with lots of people with OCD and multiple phobias, so this is just from personal experience.
FWIW, hoarding also has multiple causes in different types of behavior disorders. Some people have OCD, and a symptom is not being able to throw anything away. Some people are paranoid, and worry that if someone else gets hold of something they once owned, they can “control” them. Not making this up-- knew a guy who put his hair and toenail clippings down the disposal. Then, some people just seem to be “mess blind.” You just have to get them used to a clean-up routine, using checklists, and check on them a lot. I had one guy put his completed checklists in a box, and at the end of every week, if he completed everyone, he could go out to eat any place he wanted, and he did it completely on the honor system.