Both my parents were packrats (both raised just after the Depression) and every instinct I have says I should save everything but I have gotten much better at tossing things. At one point I had literally almost 10 years worth of several different magazines and some of the magazines were weeklies!
Now the only thing I can’t bare to get rid of is my books. I love my books and I’m keeping them! Getting a kindle a year ago has helped reduce the clutter but I have rooms that look like the guy from Seven lived there.
Just make darn sure the person who is getting it NEEDS it, otherwise you are just conserving hoarderism. In other words another hoarder ends up with it. END THE CYCLE!
Alternately, I have seen many actual hoarders (both on the reality shows and with an in-law) get stuck in “but so-and-so can use this” and not ever get around to giving it away. If you have grand ideas of giving away this, that, and the other thing to charity but end up with boxes and boxes of stuff that you intend to give away any day now, you might never get out from under those. In that case, start throwing away until you get motivated to actually get rid of things in other ways, promptly, rather than continuing to make excuses.
I had a sister-in-law who lived in the upstairs apartment of the two-flat my husband and I still live in. She was evicted for (unbeknownst to us) not having paid rent for something like 5 months. Her money was apparently going towards buying more stuff. She had packed her half of the garage, the back porch, parts of her apartment, and a good chunk of the basement with clothes, toys, household things, and (it turns out) bags of garbage (I think none of it was actually anything that could rot) that I think she was too cheap to pay extra to the trash company for disposal, but who knows?
She held garage sales - even getting stuff from her family to sell and adding it to her stash - and failed to promote them well or sell much, while continuing to buy from other garage sales and resale shops. She got the idea to start a from-home decorating/seamstress business and filled a couple storage rooms in the basement with empty shipping boxes and packing material. She kept all of her daughter’s old toys and clothes, and those all went on the back porch and got damaged by exposure and insect/rodent actions.
My husband and I wanted to toss an old artificial Christmas tree? “Oh let me give that to my friend so-and-so, it’d be great for her apartment” - and it goes down to the basement and stays there. Same with two different futons - one an old ratty college student special, the other one nicer. And it’s not like those would necessarily have gone to the landfill - at the time, they probably would have gotten snagged by people who drive around right before garbage day and grab stuff put out on the curb. Of course she left all that behind when she got evicted, and years of age in a basement have not been kind. I have had to throw out so much mildewed, water-damaged, musty-smelling stuff, and she continually passive-aggressively refused to clean out the back hall or basement of her own old stuff (like we’re the bad guys for wanting often-literal garbage out) claiming no time.
So yes, it’s a great idea to not send things to the landfill - just don’t let your home become a defacto landfill because nothing ever leaves.
True, but the cost might not be the same for everyone. And a bunch of little costs can add up in ways that aren’t immediately apparent.
I move fairly often. Every two years on average for the last decade. I’ve gotten rid of almost all my books. The second time you pack up a box of books that you haven’t opened in the last two moves and have to carry it up a flight of stairs, the cost of keeping that book starts to look pretty silly. I keep my books at the library now.
This is the problem. It’s better to donate than to throw away, but it’s better to throw away than to hoard. Someone who hoards may be willing to donate or re-gift the junk they have no use for, but throwing it away is psychologically untenable. Then they put off organizing their donatables and getting to Goodwill so long that the item becomes forgotten again. And *nobody *(not Goodwill, not your kids) wants to sort through an entire houseful of junk after you die, of which an unknown percent might actually be in legitimately donatable condition.
We need a reality show about compulsive throw-awayers. These people live in stark, drab, empty homes, constantly walking around with a blank stare looking for a hole punch, or something to read, or something long and thin to fish their car keys out from behind the refrigerator. Their lives are empty because they throw everything away. They have nothing to prop up a table leg with, their doors swing shut because there is nothing to hold them open, on New Years Eve they can’t even find a scrap of paper to tear up to make some confetti.
In the show we’ll buy them things, and help them keep the box and the styrofoam. We’ll designate a junk drawer where they must keep little things. We’ll fill their empty closet shelves, and stop them from reading magazines over the trash can where they can just drop them when they finish reading. Bit by bit these peoples homes will become full of useful materials and the living memories of their conspicuous consumption.
I find that I use my three-hole punch more often now than I did 20 years ago!
The reason- all my manuals come in electronic form. If I want a printed copy, I have to make it myself, which means printing it on my laser printer, and then punching it and sticking it into a binder.
And of course, all the fabric I have stashed is NOT a hoard, because you never know when you’ll need that perfect piece of fabric. I just know it’s somewhere in the basement…
I am a committed declutterer. I also have a lot of stuff.
How does that work, you say? First off, I don’t keep things that I will never use or that I am done with. I have two small shelves in my bedroom for keepsakes that will not fit in a binder and one binder full of paper type keepers. All of this is carefully displayed and organized so I can look at it whenever I want.
As for other stuff, I DO have some things I only use once a year (giant turkey pan for Christmas, Hallowe’en decorations, etc.) and those things get hidden in a cupboard under the stairs.
Everything else in my home is in a location that who’s accessiblilty is directly proportional to its use. So, drinking glasses are on the closest shelf to the refridgerator, Cabernet glasses are on the top shelf in a distant cupboard).
I have office supplies galore (in small quantities). I have enough books that if we have a blackout, I won’t lose my mind.
The big thing is that I have a respect for my stuff. It all has a place in my home. I can find anything (except my car keys which I swear have become ambulatory) at any given time.
So, if I want new stuff, I will need to get rid of other stuff pure and simple. If it has nowhere to go, it doesn’t get past the front door.
And that’s what really gets me about hoarders. While I can feel sad for the person who obviously have a problem, I feel more sad about the things that really ARE of value to the person that they can’t find in all that mess.
Sometimes, even if the recipient doesn’t need it, she takes it home anyway. It’s lots easier to keep my mom’s house culled by filling up the truck every time we go visit. We went Monday, and I came home with lots of mostly useful stuff that will go to good purpose here (new mattress pad and sheets for The Boy’s bed, a handful of nice kitchen utensils, and a crap ton of food - pantry stuff that Ma buys for my dad, then he eats it twice and the fad is over, a small cooler full of yogurt and juice that Grandmother never consumes at the nursing home, but it’s brought twice a day, regardless, a bunch of canned goods, cooking oil, and baking supplies - Grandmother said to go over and clear the shelves at the home she’ll never return to.) The impractical items? I’ll go donate them. Mom won’t change her habits (“bargain” shopping, stocking up for the apocalypse,) but the stuff doesn’t accumulate. And food sure as hell doesn’t go to waste at my house - I have a teenage son! (Plus a couple of spare boys all this week. Grandmother will be gratified to know that all those baking supplies are providing homemade brownies for growing boys.)
I would so record this show on DVDs and save them to watch sometime in the future!
I’m with Mrs G (at least in practice). Magazines contain useful information that I might need someday. I have a hard time tossing them out. This makes absolutely no sense; I have Mother Earth News’ DVD archive and I still keep the magazines themselves. I hereby resolve to discard all of my duplicate Mother Earth News magazines. It’s a start, right?
Ha! I actually went through this. We tried to throw away the old metal trash can. They didn’t pick it up. I put it in a different trash can, and they didn’t pick it up. I put a note on it that said “Please take”, and they took the note. I know they were just messing with me. I stomped the can down to the size of a beachball and stuck it in a Hefty bag and finally it was gone.
Another thing to remember is that hoarders don’t just keep old books and hole-punchers, but plastic bags, empty cardboard boxes, expired food, broken appliances, etc. Stuff that is literally garbage.
My grandmother’s starting to get a wee-hoardish in the last few years. Like some people gave her some toys to donate to a rumage sale at her church, and instead she kept them down the basement, claiming she was saving them for my cousin’s kids. They’re all teenagers, and rarely visit. My mother finally convinced her to allow her (my mother) to take them home and give them to one of her teachers for the classrooms. We had to take out an old fan and cut the cord off before tossing it, because she’d probably drag it back inside.
It’s not a “Great Depression” thing, because she never used to be like this, and she’s not senile (even though she’s 93). Who knows?
I know someone who actually is a compulsive thrower-awayer. He has spent tens of thousands of dollars rebuying stuff he got rid of because he didn’t want anything around, but still needed items. At a garage sale, someone made an offer on the coffee pot going to provide coffee. He sold it, pouring out the rest of the coffee first. Sold it for a few bucks, then had to go out and buy a new coffee pot, since he didn’t have one anymore. That’s a sickness, too.
