Do you know any Hoarders?

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pxdf9i5cmoavkz

How old was the guy?

I'm curious because my old man was a hoarder and just like you, it was not something I would have expected but after his death I had to clear out his place and it was quite a shocking discovering.

In my opinion hoarding is a mental illness.

I can understand the value of sentimental items and holding onto things "just in case it is needed tomorrow" but at a point in time the brain simply cannot process the number of things lying about and just blocks it all out.



Not as bad as what you described.

There is one upside to hoarding :pac: Going through the stuff can yield some interesting finds.

whiskeyman

/prints the OPs post and blue tacks on wall along with others

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Outlaw Pete

Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.

LirW

Yeah, one of my partner's uncles is. He lives in the late parent's home that was inherited to all siblings. They'd love to sell. Difficult situation, especially because the house is deteriorating.

Lady Spangles

Yeah, my neighbour in an old apartment block was a chronic hoarder. We used to see her rummaging through the bins out the back of the building, rooting through all the stuff people had binned. She retrieved an old, half-empty tin of paint I'd thrown out and showed it to me (unaware that it was once mine) and complained about wastefulness. We lived on the top floor and she commandeered the "attic" space that we weren't supposed to have access to, and used it to store all the junk she collected. She also collected up junk under the pretence of donating it to charity shops. She just hauled it into her "attic" and kept it there.

I always had her down as eccentric. But she was hospitalised for a knee-op and she asked me to feed her cat while she was away and left the key. Seriously, the whole flat was floor to ceiling with great mountains of junk. She had three washing machines (none plumbed in) in her bedroom. A set of wooden steps (that she'd made herself) led to the attic, where she was keeping all her "charity shops" goodies. She'd formed pathways through the old newspapers, junk and detritus. There was a small space around the sofa, but I have no idea how she accessed her bedroom because it was completely blocked with utter tat she'd collected. I didn't mean to snoop, but the apartment was small and all the doors were off their hinges (getting in the way of her precious tat, I suppose).

Later on, the landlord gained access to the property and just started filming it all. When it became obvious they were starting eviction proceedings, I helped her go through a lot of it and get it binned. It was extremely difficult for her. I don't think she's ever been wealthy or well off, and that played in to her reluctance to throw anything away. But her hoarding had long turned pathological.

She's still there now, so I assume she has gotten the problem sorted. At least in the short term.

tara73

sorry, don't know why, this thread made me laugh a lot. Maybe it was so funnily and figurativly written. And I think everybody can relate to the situation not expecting such a scenario and then you have to pretend everything is fine and 'normal' while finding your way through the rubbish:D:D. comedy.

I agree it's a mental illness. One were I can not relate to in the slightest I have to admit.

I once had a boss, he was an alcoholic but sure nobody mentioned it. And he was just drinking a few glasses of wine it the evening (or so we thought..).

His desk was positioned directly at the entrance of the basement. Sometimes he went there for a short time. I never went into this basement, was kind of an unspoken thing this was 'his' area.

But one evening it was just me and the office assistant in the office. She came up to me and said: I wanna show you something. She led me to the basement and the whole area was a labyrinth of bottles. Bottles everywhere with passages through it. It actually had some kind of arty feeling to it. But the most shocking thing for me was that there not only were wine bottles but many, many hard liquor (Korn, Schnaps:P) ones to. That changed my outlook on the boss..

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Grayson

Jon Quiet Hydrant wrote: »

How old was the guy?

I'm curious because my old man was a hoarder and just like you, it was not something I would have expected but after his death I had to clear out his place and it was quite a shocking discovering.

In my opinion hoarding is a mental illness.

I can understand the value of sentimental items and holding onto things "just in case it is needed tomorrow" but at a point in time the brain simply cannot process the number of things lying about and just blocks it all out.



Not as bad as what you described.

There is one upside to hoarding :pac: Going through the stuff can yield some interesting finds.

I lived in shared accommodation where there was a room that looked like that. Except with about 50 bin bags full of crap as well. One guy who'd lived there ages just started using one of the downstairs rooms as a "storage" area. He used to also camp out in the sitting room with his desktop. literally no-one ever went into the sitting room but him.


The guy was just weird in general though.

tara73

I wonder how the poor children will come out of it. Will they ever feel at home in an ordinary, tidy room ..??:D:D

Donald Trump

Ipso

Facebook Einstein was right.

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kylith

My OH has a touch of it, as do most of his family. For some it’s habit, for others it’s a mental illness which can be set off by feelings of loss or abandonment.

I’m awful for being tempted to keep things ‘just in case’, so I keep an eye on myself.

AlphabetCards

I moved in to a nice new build house with three other PhD students a few years ago, and what started out as a great experience deteriorated, and was hidden from me until about six months in.

As we all shared an office, a lab and a house we all knew each others comings and goings, however a girl started acting a bit odd early on. She would leave the house at 1am with a ruck sack, and not be seen. She would leave work abruptly and come home and lock herself in her room by jamming stopper under her door. People are odd, life has taught me, so I just assumed she was a bit eccentric.

Eventually a smell arrived in the house, and cutlery pots and plates started disappearing. Then things escalated - a small wine collection started shrinking. Items from my desk in work and my bedroom went AWOL. Clothes from the drying room would go missing... List goes on. The other two roommates were grand, we got on OK but they acknowledged that something was really off. Dirty Housemate had not opened her curtains in months, a smell emanated from under the door that smelled like a microbiology fermentation experiment gone wrong, and we could here things running around on the floor constantly in her room. She stopped going to work, and any time she did come in she was obviously incredibly ill. Reaching out to her didnt work, as she ignored housemates and staff alike. She had one friend who would come over and stay a few nights a week and the bed would rock for hours.

One weekend she went away, and I couldn't stop myself. She had opened a window in her absence and it was blowing the smell from her room into the reat of the house. I opened the door, and was greeted with mountains of guinea pig ****, tissues, waste food, food cartons, dirty clothes... An unflushed toilet in the ensuite full of ****, a shower covered in thick viscous multicoloured mould... Used tampons and panty liner things, bottles of piss, library books that I had signed out... List goes on!

I got my camera out and started filming, as I knew I'd have to report this to our property management company. Amongst all this disgusting **** was my wine bottles (unopened), my shirts, my workout tops (used), my vests, my ping pong balls, my knives, my mugs, my lab keys, squash balls, and a LOT of things I would only have missed years down the line. All stored in corners of her room. I was reluctant to take anything, as I wanted to talk to her, tell her I had an inkling that she had taken it and that she should respect me enough to give me back anything she might have..... All i got back was the wine the following monday when I spoke to her.

Two weeks later, and she calls me into the garage. She 'confided' in me that she had spotted some of my things in another housemates kit bag. OF COURSE IT WASN'T ALL OF IT!

I'll attach photos later when I clear the exif data from them. You wouldn't believe it, honestly!! The letting agent was grateful for us bringing it to his attention, and let us break contract early with no penalty. We all went our separate ways, each haunted by the sight of her room, the smell of which will forever be etched in our memories.

Donald Trump

AlphabetCards wrote: »

I'll attach photos later when I clear the exif data from them. You wouldn't believe it, honestly!! The letting agent was grateful for us bringing it to his attention, and let us break contract early with no penalty. We all went our separate ways, each haunted by the sight of her room, the smell of which will forever be etched in our memories.

Snitches get stitches

AlphabetCards

Papa Trump you don't understand, sharing them will be cathartic!

beauf

I've never found people with cluttered desks, to be anything other then very disorganized.
They are the same with their computers takes them an age to find anything, if they can find it at all.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/02/clutter/

That said some people are good at order, and some aren't. Every one is different.

corks finest

Yes a great mate,cleared his gaff at least 5 times over the years,back to normal within 2/3 weeks,and when I say clear,I should state as in clearing a path through his house,I gave up, every room,all table space,stairs etc chock a block,

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beauf

Indeed. There are always exceptions to sweeping generalizations.

r93kaey5p2izun

Yes unfortunately my father is a hoarder and my family home looks like a house on one of those tv shows. It's a huge cause of stress and worry for me. He is elderly but fully fit mentally and physically but I fear what will happen when he's not and I will be responsible because he's a nasty violent bully.

ArnoldJRimmer

I live in the States, and an Irish lad was out for the summer a few years ago to play GAA (probably on a J1). Lived with a mate of mine, who said at the time that he was quite odd

Anyway, in the space of three months, he managed to accumulate so much junk that he started to pay for a storage space. My friend told me that he had stacks of papers, in some cases including Burger king wrappers and paper bags. Arrived back last summer to sort through it as he could no longer afford to pay for the storage facility. And basically see what he could take on a plane with him. Not sure how that worked out, but felt really bad for the guy

Donald Trump

Ipso wrote: »

Facebook Einstein was right.

He was a genius alright.




Just not a stable genius

endacl

Adelina Young Shepherdess wrote: »

Yes unfortunately my father is a hoarder and my family home looks like a house on one of those tv shows. It's a huge cause of stress and worry for me. He is elderly but fully fit mentally and physically but I fear what will happen when he's not and I will be responsible because he's a nasty violent bully.

If he’s s nasty violent bully you can choose not to be responsible.

AlphabetCards

beauf wrote: »

That said some people are good at order, and some aren't. Every one is different.

Not true, it can be learned. Up until I was 25 I was extremely untidy, disorganised and frequently tardy. Few years later and I'm fairly disciplined.

squawker

I would be a self confessed Datahoarder

Hitting nearly 400 Terabytes

wexie

squawker wrote: »

I would be a self confessed Datahoarder

Hitting nearly 400 Terabytes

of what?

Hammer89

wexie wrote: »

of what?

Hoarders.

squawker

wexie wrote: »

of what?

Linux distros of course

wexie

squawker wrote: »

Linux distros of course

ArchXStanton

My mother,I don't know how people can live like that surely all that clutter has to affect your mental health

wexie

ArchXStanton wrote: »

My mother,I don't know how people can live like that surely all that clutter has to affect your mental health

I think it's probably more a case of the mental health affecting the clutter.

corner of hells

I used to install intruder alarms years ago as nixers , myself and mate got asked to fit an alarm in a house belonging to the parent of a friend.

She never bothered telling us that her father was a hoarder. He had books all over the house stacked up to shoulder height with narrow passages leading from room to room.
Every single room was full of books with the sunlight blocked out .
Poor 'ol guy lived like this for years .

I can't abide hoarding, which is something very distinct from collecting. Hoarding is suffocating and can be very dangerous. And I checked years ago and it is classed as a mental illness, understandably enough.

Hoarding Disorder

wexie

corner of hells wrote: »

I used to install intruder alarms years ago as nixers , myself and mate got asked to fit an alarm in a house belonging to the parent of a friend.

She never bothered telling us that her father was a hoarder. He had books all over the house stacked up to shoulder height with narrow passages leading from room to room.
Every single room was full of books with the sunlight blocked out .
Poor 'ol guy lived like this for years .

I don't know if there's much of a difference from a mental health point of view but for me personally I would find it much less distressing if it was just all books.

Somehow seems different (and yes I appreciate there may well be a bit of bias there).

My personal story would be that I've had to clean out the house of a close family member several times. After the first 2 times she no longer had cats which made a big difference thankfully. But it was upsetting nonetheless.

Sort everything out, organize and clean everything, clean the whole house.
She was delighted every time and full of good intentions. Just never lasted too long

wexie

Deleted User wrote: »

I can't abide hoarding, which is something very distinct from collecting. Hoarding is suffocating and can be very dangerous. And I checked years ago and it is classed as a mental illness, understandably enough.

Hoarding Disorder

Yeah maybe that's a better word for someone who has a house full of books.
Although from that description there may well have been some dysfunction involved just the same.

lilmissbee88

Wexie. he hoards all the ‘thanks’ on here.

Rubberlegs

My neighbours were away recently and asked me to go in and feed their pets while they were gone. I had never had cause to be in their house and couldn't believe the state of the house when I went in. Bags and bags of stuff on the stairs and under the stairs, so much so that a bare few inches of the staircase is free to walk on. Every surface in the kitchen, table, counters etc is covered with bags of stuff. The sitting room is full of bags of wood, and the whole place is covered in a layer of grime, thick ropes of black cobwebs hanging down from the ceilings. They even still have the old style light switches from the 70s. I felt like I was crawling with dirt coming out of there and vowed never to worry about my slightly chaotic house ever again. My fear is the place would go up like a tinderbox should the worst happen. Thank God no kids live in there.

Greyfox

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Hoarding Disorder

Well today's been interesting... I'm definitely a hoarder and this thread makes me think it could be serious. I'm dating someone 4 months and she hasent seen my room yet due to this although it's nowhere near as bad as in some of the other posts here. Throwing things out is hard as iv a good bit of stuff I would use if I got my act together, the hardest part is keeping clothes organised as it's now a wardrobe full of black bags of clothes. Need to stop procrastinating and get stuck in.... one day

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pxdf9i5cmoavkz

AlphabetCards wrote: »

I'll attach photos later when I clear the exif data from them.

FYI: Exif data is cleared on upload to boards.

_Kaiser_

My late mother would have fitted this description, but far more extreme than most described here

Literally every room except the kitchen (although it was bad enough) was piled high with newspapers, stuff that had been bought cheap from Lidl but never even opened in some cases, video cassettes from the CCTV setup, books, and so on. I'm talking ceiling heights in most cases.
The front hallway had similarly a line of junk stacked against the walls and halfway up the stairs to where it was almost inaccessible.

Now to be fair, mam had a very tough life towards the end from a health standpoint, and given that it was a lung disease it was clear the oxygen wasn't getting to where it needed to be but the house was literally like something out of one of those Extreme Hoarders shows

It took my sister the best part of 6 months to make any sort of noticeable dent in it. We cleared out the hallway and sitting room before her death (to allow the HSE to install a bed in the sitting room) and it was about 6 full-size skips alone.

razorblunt

I don't know anyone in they "dirty" hoarder sense, but I know of someone that just "collects" random things. I'd imagine it's easy to slip into the dirty stage though if anything traumatic happened.

The house is clean but they just seem to have too much of everything, the kitchen is overflowing with tupperware (clean), there are boxsets after boxsets in the living room. A mattress has been in the hall for over a year now as they haven't got it collected or dumped it yet. It's been about 18 months since I've seen the place so it may have gotten worse.

Neyite

Greyfox wrote: »

Well today's been interesting... I'm definitely a hoarder and this thread makes me think it could be serious. I'm dating someone 4 months and she hasent seen my room yet due to this although it's nowhere near as bad as in some of the other posts here. Throwing things out is hard as iv a good bit of stuff I would use if I got my act together, the hardest part is keeping clothes organised as it's now a wardrobe full of black bags of clothes. Need to stop procrastinating and get stuck in.... one day

I'm not a hoarder but I was long overdue a massive clear out of stuff. I downloaded a book by Marie Kondo and some of the points in her book helped change my mindset and be a bit more ruthless in getting rid. Now, she is a bit kooky and is an extreme minimalist so I don't go as far as she does. But I did a massive clear out of clothes and now I can actually find stuff I want which is great.

endacl

Greyfox wrote: »

Well today's been interesting... I'm definitely a hoarder and this thread makes me think it could be serious. I'm dating someone 4 months and she hasent seen my room yet due to this although it's nowhere near as bad as in some of the other posts here. Throwing things out is hard as iv a good bit of stuff I would use if I got my act together, the hardest part is keeping clothes organised as it's now a wardrobe full of black bags of clothes. Need to stop procrastinating and get stuck in.... one day

Baby steps.

Next time you buy a tshirt, two tshirt go in the bin. Take your bin items from the black bag at the back.

seamus

Greyfox wrote: »

Well today's been interesting... I'm definitely a hoarder and this thread makes me think it could be serious. I'm dating someone 4 months and she hasent seen my room yet due to this although it's nowhere near as bad as in some of the other posts here. Throwing things out is hard as iv a good bit of stuff I would use if I got my act together, the hardest part is keeping clothes organised as it's now a wardrobe full of black bags of clothes. Need to stop procrastinating and get stuck in.... one day

if it makes you feel better, I believe everyone has a tendency towards hoarding, most people could become hoarders given the right set of circumstances.

That..."I'll get to it soon" mentality is common in people. Problem is, you don't. You continue to hold onto things and before you know it, it's a year later and that piece of paper you put on the side to look at next week, never got looked at again.
Eventually you have so much stuff that the task of sorting through it will take weeks, and you keep telling yourself, "I'll get to it soon", but in the back your mind you know you'd need to take 2 weeks off work to do it. So you never do.

I eventually came up with a five year rule for myself. If I have something that I haven't looked at or used in five years, it goes in the bin. It's now worthless anyway and I've proven that I don't need it. So into the bin.

Likewise I ask myself whether I think I will need something in the next five years. If the answer is not "probably". It goes in the bin. "Maybe" is not good enough.

Sometimes you throw out something and realise a month later you need it. But that's rare. 99% of what you throw out, you never think about again. And the cost of replacing the remaining 1% is minimal.

But that's probably no help to you. Step 1 is realising you have a problem. Step 2 is getting help for it. Best of luck.

Akrasia

Everyone hoards a little. I haven't even got a CD player anymore but I still find it hard to throw away my old CDs. Same with DVDs.

I have thrown away loads of them though. I just keep the ones that I know I'll forget about unless I come across them every year or so while doing a spring clean.

My wife would keep every single picture or scribble our children have ever made if I didn't get to them first.

My rule with keeping random stuff that 'might be useful some day' is, if you don't have a place to put it where you know where it is, you might as well not have it because you won't be able to find it when you need it.

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