Are You A Hoarder?

JupiterKid

Do you tend to hoard objects? I was watching some of those extreme hoarder shows on TV and its shocking how some people live in rooms stuffed with assorted junk and yes - filth.

I recently moved (downsized) and I find I have some stuff that is taking up unnecessary space in my spare room and my own bedroom. Is it worthwhile looking at putting it into storage? Is self storage pricey? I'd want to be certain of safety, especially after the fire at the storage facility in Ballymount a few months ago.

So, do you hoard? Or do you store?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Yes, but not as bad as I used to be. I have a ridiculous amount of art supplies I'll never use but am too scared to throw out...

fleet_admiral

Funny, the wife was just watching of them hoarding programs. Im not but she is in a way, especially plastic bags

Junkyard Tom

I hoard the broken dreams of my vanquished enemies.

seenitall

Yes, I am, although to be fair it is isn't quite the extreme hoarder proportions but I do have to do a clear-out once in a while, which never ends up being as big as I'd like it to be, all because of that damned internal dialogue:

"OK, this batwing top is definitely going, I've had it since the '80s - hmm, but there's a reason or that, it's very pretty - no, it needs to go, when do I wear it anyway? Never! - but BUT!, Timmy from the Book Club said he'd have an epic '80s party at the end of the month, I HAVE to have it for that - hnnnn.... oh ok then, it stays."

CatFromHue

As an Engineer I never delete anything, I just archive them!

pow wow

I have a lot of stuff but I'm not a hoarder. Don't put stuff in storage as it's just an expensive way to delay the inevitable in terms of getting rid of things you don't need. Try youtube for some encouragement in parting with your stuff. Because that's all it is - stuff.

Breaston Plants

JupiterKid wrote: »

Do you tend to hoard objects? I was watching some of those extreme hoarder shows on TV and its shocking how some people live in rooms stuffed with assorted junk and yes - filth.

I recently moved (downsized) and I find I have some stuff that is taking up unnecessary space in my spare room and my own bedroom. Is it worthwhile looking at putting it into storage? Is self storage pricey? I'd want to be certain of safety, especially after the fire at the storage facility in Ballymount a few months ago.

So, do you hoard? Or do you store?

You're a hoarder of ****e threads......

JupiterKid

Breaston Plants wrote: »

You're a hoarder of ****e threads......

That's your opinion. So, do YOU hoard?:pac:

whatdoicare

I'm not but my husband is!

I never realised until we got a house how bad he is as I always had access to a large bin in whatever apartment we rented that I could just dump stuff and he couldn't retrieve it.

Now we have our own bin he can just pull whatever I throw out back out again and argue its case or hide it in his shed.

In a desperate bid to stop the house closing in on me from the absolute rubbish he keeps bringing home (I'm talking crap he finds on the side of the road), the paperwork and old bills he cant throw out, clothes that have large holes in them, socks I can see his feet through and his large collection of half used/eaten junk and jars hes saving for, I can only assume, the zombie apocalypse, I have taken to smuggling small bags with me to Aldi or Lidl and dumping it.

When I eventually die,if he outlives me and I resist the urge to smother him in his sleep long enough, I can totally see the house becoming like those shows.

I have fantasies about renting a skip and fu(king everything into it while hes at work. I hate mess and junk. Id nearly pay for him to go on holidays for like a week so I can fill a few skips and empty out the shed too.

cormie

My mam is a hoarder and keeps all sorts of crap, I think it kicked me into being the absolutely opposite. As soon as I don't need something, I pass it on.

They say you shouldn't have anything in your home that isn't truly beautiful or useful and I agree.

I do furniture removals and the amount of absolute ****e some people keep is unreal. Often customers need stuff taken to and brought from storage and I'd often ask them if they missed any of it while it was in storage and the answer is always no.

There's far too much "stuff" in the world, unnecessary novelty crap that people think they need and end up never using and a lot of it will just eventually end up in landfill.

So to answer your question, if you're looking into self storage for storing stuff you don't need just to get it out of the way, yes it's expensive, if you don't need the stuff, you don't need to pay to keep it. If you're moving house and require temporary storage to keep useful essentials like beds and furniture and fridges while you're in temporary accommodation, it's definitely worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

Badly Drunk Boy

fleet_admiral wrote: »

Funny, the wife was just watching of them hoarding programs. I'm not but she is in a way, especially plastic bags

Like this? (From about 40 seconds.)

Sir Osis of Liver.

We have recently adopted a policy of if it hasn't been used in over a year,sell it or fcuk it out.

Slowly but surely ,we're ridding ourselves of years of collected sh1te and making the odd few bob from it too.

BreadnBuddha

whatdoicare wrote: »

I'm not but my husband is!

I never realised until we got a house how bad he is as I always had access to a large bin in whatever apartment we rented that I could just dump stuff and he couldn't retrieve it.

Now we have our own bin he can just pull whatever I throw out back out again and argue its case or hide it in his shed.

In a desperate bid to stop the house closing in on me from the absolute rubbish he keeps bringing home (I'm talking crap he finds on the side of the road), the paperwork and old bills he cant throw out, clothes that have large holes in them, socks I can see his feet through and his large collection of half used/eaten junk and jars hes saving for, I can only assume, the zombie apocalypse, I have taken to smuggling small bags with me to Aldi or Lidl and dumping it.

When I eventually die,if he outlives me and I resist the urge to smother him in his sleep long enough, I can totally see the house becoming like those shows.

I have fantasies about renting a skip and fu(king everything into it while hes at work. I hate mess and junk. Id nearly pay for him to go on holidays for like a week so I can fill a few skips and empty out the shed too.

If I were him and found out you were doing that, I'd throw your shoes and bags in a bin out back and burn them.

Azalea

Very much not. Can't stand clutter/loads of unused things gathering dust.

Menas

I am fairly brutal when it comes to throwing things out. But still have an attic full of crap.

Up there at the moment we have about 200 cassettes of old music, 50 VHS video tapes and a VCR, Rollerblades, a canoe, wetsuit, life jacket, some of my school/uni copy books.....and God knows what else.

Out of sight out of mind.

Whitewinged

No im not but i do have this weird thing where i always have to have a tin of peas in the press. I dont even really like peas but for some reason whenever im doing the shopping im like "oh i better make sure i have some peas"!

Capt'n Midnight

Menas wrote: »

I am fairly brutal when it comes to throwing things out. But still have an attic full of crap.

Up there at the moment we have about 200 cassettes of old music, 50 VHS video tapes and a VCR, Rollerblades, a canoe,

A canoe, in an attic :eek:

Obviously I can see why you need to put a canoe in an attic,

But how ??

The_Valeyard

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

A canoe, in an attic :eek:

Obviously I can see why you need to put a canoe in an attic,

But how ??

Extreme paddling.

tuisginideach

whatdoicare wrote: »

I have taken to smuggling small bags with me to Aldi or Lidl and dumping it.

Very civic-minded - not!

DEFTLEFTHAND

It must be hell to live with of these people. If you ever watch the hoarding programmes on tv there always seems to be some long suffering spouse in the equation.

Menas

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

A canoe, in an attic :eek:

Obviously I can see why you need to put a canoe in an attic,

But how ??

Ah, sorry, misuse of terms.
An inflatable Kayak would have been the proper term to use.

Must stick it up on adverts some day...for the inevitible offer of 'swap ya for three playstation 2 games'....

lawlolawl

I throw away pretty much everything that i don't use on a regular basis after a short period of time.

My latest thing is that i hate physical media. Don't want to own any paper books, CDs, DVDs etc. I'll take it all digital thanks.

Don't want to clutter up my house with things that can be replaced 1:1 with data on a relatively small device.

Whitewinged

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

It must be hell to live with of these people. If you ever watch the hoarding programmes on tv there always seems to be some long suffering spouse in the equation.

I think those ones on tv are so extreme. I remember one woman who couldnt let go of a rotten pumpkin. The whole house was full of crap. Anyway she took seeds from the pumpkin because it killed her to throw it out.

There was another really sad one i saw about a man who hoarded rats. There were thousands of them and the house was practically torn apart to get them. They were in the walls and everywhere. His hoarding escalated when his wife died.

Wibbs

I'm becoming more a curator at this stage…

NintendoGirl

No, im not sentimental at all, so if I havent looked at or used something in a few weeks or months I get rid of it.

dandyelevan

I use to be a hoarder, just like my father before me. (His motto was - 'Keep everything for seven years, and if you don't use it, keep it another seven, just to be sure')
Me...I kept everything, my old school books from the 1950s, suitcases full of junk, broken and burnt out tools, newspapers, ornaments, old trophies, old Army boots, shirts, socks, towels, and civvie clothes that were fashionable in the 60s; winkle-picker shoes and flared hipster trousers.
Yep, but... ole Dandy eventually ran out of room and hired a skip. It took a week to fill it because I kept climbing inside and taking stuff back out, only to be ordered (by new wife) to throw it back in!

Diamond Doll

Nope. I lived with a hoarder for a couple of years, and it was absolute hell. He insisted on us renting a three-bed house and it was the most horribly cluttered messy kip with all his stuff. Now that he's left, my stuff and my son's fits very neatly into our two bedrooms, absolutely no mess or clutter anywhere else in the house. The two of us will be moving into a cosy little apartment very soon, and I can't wait - it's all the space we'll need. Would never live with someone like that again - it's just not healthy!

PucaMama

I think I would be if I lived on my own! I do tend to keep things that don't really need to be kept.

boobar

Not a hoarder, but I have a habit of not wasting anything.

For example my TV is about 15 years old. I'd really like a new one, but won't get one until this one "breaks". I can't wait for it to break.

cantdecide

I know someone that is your classic hoarder and I think it's just really really sad. It is a very subtle mental illness IMO. She just refuses to see how unhealthy it is. It's not so much the clutter, she's very stealthy about her hoarding.

She has a process. She picks up magazines, books and pamphlets, knickknacks, bits and pieces from the church or wherever and they just lie around on the kitchen table for a few days and then she 'cleans' up for maybe Sunday dinner but she really just packs the stuff into neat piles. Soon, the pile is in the way so it gets packed into a plastic bag and the bag is placed neatly into a cupboard or other nook or cranny. After a few of these places become untidy, she'll move some of the bags to some other place like into the bottom of a wardrobe or an unused washing basket in the shed and so she has ended up amassing tens or hundreds of thousands of scraps and misc. items that never see the light of day after being consigned to a plastic bag.

Eventually, when the countless bags had infiltrated every useful space in the house and every storage area groaned and after years of complaining, commenting, cajoling, pleading and putting up with pockets of neglected misc. everywhere, her family had enough and intervened. She still doesn't believe there's anything wrong with what she does and she still behaves exactly the same she did before.

Qiaonasen

I moved apparment recently. The amount of books I had to carry down 7 flights of stairs at one side and 5 flights of stairs on the other side was annoying. I rarely reread books so I decided enough of this ****. From now on I will bring already read books to the bookshelf in the city where other people pick them up and use them. Much better than sitting taking space in my room.

I use ebooks too but not everything I want to read is available in ebook format and paper books are just better and second hand paper books are dirt cheap.

XplaygirlX

fleet_admiral wrote:

Funny, the wife was just watching of them hoarding programs. Im not but she is in a way, especially plastic bags

I'm just like me da!

XplaygirlX

...and ya never know them plastic bags can always come in handy at some point!

Spanish Eyes

Look up Kon Marie method.

Hoarders will not like it. lol.

JupiterKid

I tend to hoard books but I do have enough (just about) space for them. The hoarders you see on TV must have serious mental health issues - houses packed full of junk, rotten and putrid food, overflowing bins etc. Basically a filthy kip.

Hoarding has been classified as a mental illness. I must learn to toss out things I don't use. We humans actually really need very little in terms of possessions.

sligojoek

I was tidying out the shed the other day. I found a box with 12 Nokia phone chargers. 2/3rds of them are the old (large plug) type. The charity shop wouldn't even take them.
I'm looking into a way to convert them into android tablet chargers. I won't get rid of them just yet.

whatdoicare

BreadnBuddha wrote: »

If I were him and found out you were doing that, I'd throw your shoes and bags in a bin out back and burn them.

You would burn my one handbag that you bought me and my three pairs of shoes because I threw away rubbish you found on the side of the road and socks that are thread bare.

Really?? Like, you'd light a fire in a bin in our back garden and burn my stuff? And what? You'd think life would carry on happily from then on? Id be so sorry for not letting you fill the house with sh1te and forgive you burning my things and then, like get the dinner started?

I think if you did that id be showing you the joys of single life where you can hoard away to your hearts content. You could squirrel away all the paperwork from the divorce.

JupiterKid

Hoarding is a phenomenon that seems to be getting worse. Perhaps it's our consumerist culture, or people are just over sentimental or just plain
lazy. But do you admit to being a hoarder?

I admit that I tend to hoard books. I love reading and hate to part with good books even though I may never read them again. It's not got to the point where the books take up 80% of my home but my spare bedroom has become a quasi-library as such. Ideally, I would have a house big enough to have a room function as a library/study. Being an academic must have something to do with it. I'm also an adult fan of Lego (yes, we exist!) and I need space for my creations.

Do you hoard? Clothes, sundry items, furnishings etc? Do you allow your dining table to pile up with letters, bills, documents, magazines or are they all neatly filed and stored away.

Has your hoarding got to the point where you can barely move in your place because of all the accumulated stuff you just can't bear to part with?

Do share...we won't judge. Honest!!

qo2cj1dsne8y4k

Maybe clothes but not really anything else

Dave_The_Sheep

I was going to say no, but my backlog of Steam games calls me a liar.

So yes.

frag420

Outlaw Pete

Nope.

Got into that Feng Shui nonsense many years ago but some of it's principals kinda stuck with me and I hate to have things gathering dust or even piling up in drawers.

I actually own very little. Clothes, projector, laptop, sofa, bed and kitchen utensils... that's about it.

johnnyskeleton

JupiterKid wrote: »

Hoarding is a phenomenon that seems to be getting worse. Perhaps it's our consumerist culture, or people are just over sentimental or just plain
lazy. But do you admit to being a hoarder?

I admit that I tend to hoard books. I love reading and hate to part with good books even though I may never read them again. It's not got to the point where the books take up 80% of my home but my spare bedroom has become a quasi-library as such. Ideally, I would have a house big enough to have a room function as a library/study. Being an academic must have something to do with it. I'm also an adult fan of Lego (yes, we exist!) and I need space for my creations.

Do you hoard? Clothes, sundry items, furnishings etc? Do you allow your dining table to pile up with letters, bills, documents, magazines or are they all neatly filed and stored away.

Has your hoarding got to the point where you can barely move in your place because of all the accumulated stuff you just can't bear to part with?

Do share...we won't judge. Honest!!

Whats the difference between a collector and a hoarder? Having a load of different books that you read and keep is not hoarding, whereas having 200 copies of abbey road might be.

Yes, I tend to collect stuff. Can be records or books or tea spoons or anything really. I suppose it gives me a modicum of control over an otherwise upside down incomprehensible universe.

mansize

I dispose of stuff I don't use/broken quickly.

my mum, is def a hoarder!!!

jonon9

Nope I only keep stuff I use anything else gets the boot.

Temptamperu

*looks at pile of old equipment.


please dont tell anyone how I live.

NickNickleby

For me, its more down to hatred of waste. That's why my shed contains:

washing machine hoses, hinges from kitchen cupboards, kettle power leads, phone chargers, 3 different types of laminate flooring leftovers (in case we ever damage the floor - I've no idea how i'd get the floor up and the damaged planks replaced). Oh and a pine kitchen table and six chairs. Plus all the other stuff.....

Recently I chopped up and delivered 2 beds to the recycling centre. They were perfect, but I couldn't get anyone to take them. I suppose that's to be expected really, but it killed me to destroy perfectly good furniture.And they would'nt fit in the shed:D

Then there's the other shed....... aaaarrghhhhhhhhhh!

andekwarhola

I'm an inveterate hoarder when it comes to keepsakes, mementos and other small sentimental things but not for general stuff. With the latter, I regularly comb through clothes, household stuff and other possessions and either give them away or throw them out: it's quite liberating to declutter.

Thephantomsmask

I hate waste, I always have the might need it one day voice in the back of my head. I try to do a purge every few months and give things to charity shops but I still accumulate things and find it hard to part with them.

Noveight

For the most part no, I'm not. However if I have something which I currently do not use but may see use for in the future I will certainly hang on to it.