Hoarding...

iwakuralain16 · Post by **iwakuralain16** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:17 am

Hello all!
I know i am a bit of a lurker... I don't contribute much(and I have been REALLY busy as of late)... but I thought I would take the time to try to start a new topic for us to talk about. LOL non cel topic.. kinda..

Anyways. I was at my fiance's house tonight and I seem to only watch TV when I am there... I was flipping through the channels and stumbled upon this show called "Hoarders". The show is awesome O_O
http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/
And it also made me cry a bit... I am sappy alot. haha

The show made me think of this thread that more or less died earlier this year on rubberslug:
http://www.rubberslug.com/board/showthread.asp?T=2229

My grandmother was a hoarder... not to the effect that she had tons of stuff all over the place... she contained it rooms... she even turned her dining room into a place to hoard. When she ran out of room, she bought storage sheds and put them in her backyard(she had a HUGE backyard) to store stuff in. When both of my grandparents died earlier this year... it took my dad and his siblings MONTHS to clear out the house... and the storage sheds...

I know alot of us have pretty large collections... collections that take up ALOT of space. Does anyone else maybe feel like they have too much stuff? Maybe they are heading down this path? I have... so much stuff... stamp,s furoku, fruits basket, yuu watase, The Beatles, World of warcraft miniatures, baking supplies and etc... type collections. LOL Thus why I was trying to "trim down" my collections for when I move in with my Fiance. Cels were the last things I wanted to go... other stuff would take too long to take pictures of and scan... (i may end up donating some stuff in the end.. non anime stuff)

Nothing near as bad as my grandmother... or crazy insane like the people in the show... but anyone else know someone or think they may become a hardcore hoarder? o_O

beatrush · Post by **beatrush** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:28 am

I am guilty of hoarding many things. I collect aside from cels, GI Joes, Transformers, Final Fantasy Figures, misc action figures and RPG video games. I also own a public storage shed which I pay $100 a month for.

I am downsizing my GI Joe and Transformers collections somewhat and reducing buying for all my collections in general.

Drac of the Sharp Smiles · Wed Nov 25, 2009 3:05 am

I always ask myself one question: Is the thing in question interfering with my living space or health/safety? As long as the answer to that is "no", then there's no problem. On the other hand, if I'm tripping over things all the time, unable to access exits in case of emergency, unable to find specific things, have left large areas of the house uncleaned because "I just can't get back there", am unable to use rooms for their given function, etc, then there IS a problem and you could be looking at a hording situation.

The thing I think has come closest to being a problem (by my standards) is my large stuffed animal collection. They make it more difficult to have a guest over, since I have to clear them off the bed. They collect dust, to which I'm allergic, and are difficult to clean, so I don't clean them often. The large number of pieces (about 500 animals now) also present a very real risk of producing signifigant amounts of radon gas, which is odorless and not a big problem in the small amounts generally given off by cloth/stuffie type things, but which in larger amounts can be detrimental to your health at BEST. At worst, I think it can be fatal.

However, I went out and got radon detectors, and I built special shelving to keep the majority of the animals organized up out of the way, etc..... With those modifications, I've currently assesed my stuffies as "still not a real problem". ^_^

As far as what you leave for people after you're gone..... I find myself not too worried about that. I'm much more concerned with enjoying the things around me (both natural and material) while I'm alive, than I am with worrying that someone might have to take a little time getting rid of them after I'm dead. I've taken time occasionally to "get rid of" other people's things, someone else can do the same for me. LOL

It's a fine line to walk, how much "stuff" is too much stuff. People have varying degrees of want for "stuff" around them and will always be ready to critique the amount of "stuff" someone else likes. ^_^

iwakuralain16 · Post by **iwakuralain16** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 3:13 am

Drac of the Sharp Smiles wrote: The thing I think has come closest to being a problem (by my standards) is my large stuffed animal collection.

I can sympathize with you there... I have never been a HUGE fan of stuffed animals.. I try not to buy plushies and etc because they take up too much space...(this is why I do not like them) but whenever I got my first job and bought my first car... I became mildy addicted to claw machines. LOL I know.. it sounds crazy... but they had one at work and I would get bored on my breaks or after work and would just play. I became fairy good at it and slowly but surely my trunk became FILLED with stuffed animals. Stuffed animals from different holidays(becuase they always changed them out) and I did not like them enough to bring them inside.. but I did not want to throw them out? I love claw machines O_O LOL so one day... my bf at the time mentioned how my tires were needing to be replaced... I then realized "huh... if i have a blow out.. my tire is under the cardboard mat thing in my trunk... its going to look INSANE for me to dumping out all of these stuffed animals on the side of the road.. to get to my tire so I can replace it" So i ended up donating all but a few... and stopped playing the claw machine.

LOL When I buy a home... I am so buyinig a claw machine so I can play how ever many times I choose to play... and for free. LOL I like the thrill of the game... but seriously.. who drives around with a trunk full of stuffed animals? o_O They have a HUGE claw machine at Dave and Busters... I now give away anything I win to any little kid that is watching me(and there usually is one) so I don't end up taking the animal home.. and hoarding it. LOL I only play maybe once a month... if even that... *sighs* lol

iceman57 · Post by **iceman57** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:43 am

beatrush wrote:I also own a public storage shed which I pay $100 a month for.

I'm slowly thinking to do the same to avoid to turn my home to a hoard.
(Otherwise next option would be divorce

)

Not because anime cel take vertically some storage space, but frames, hell yes ! And there are only 4 walls in a room

ginga123 · Post by **ginga123** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 8:01 am

One of my relatives is somewhat of a hoarder. Stacks of stuff and papers in each room that she keeps putting off to get rid of, after much goading. She'd get so mad if you cleaned up the house and moved a pile of letters that were on the table just to dust underneath. Now, I just clean around that table and she's fine with the rest of the rooms that are clean but tells you not to touch specific rooms.

graymouser · Post by **graymouser** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 8:13 am

My mother is a hoarder so I tend to go to the opposite extreme.

I live in a condo. Admittedly it is relatively large condo (backyard, 2 floors, garage, etc), but there is still a limited amount of space. I have a 2 year rule. Anything that is not used in 2 years is either thrown away, donated, or sold. After living in the same place for 15 years, I have filled only about 30% of my cabinet storage space and about 50% of my closet space.

I do have 2 collections, anime artwork and edged weapons (knives, swords, etc). Even then I try to put limits to them. Nearly my entire artwork collection fits inside a small hall closet. The remainder are framed pieces hanging on my walls. In my cel collection I have a 3 character rule. I will only have 3 cels of any singe character (not counting transformations/chibis). If I go over that number I make myself put the extras on my trades page or sell them outright. Hmmm.... OK there are 2 characters I violate the rule on, but that is mainly because they are group cels containing other key characters.

I also have limits on my weapons collection, but that is a topic for a different board.

Post by **JWR** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:01 am

As with everone else I have my fair share of items collected over the years.

Over the years I have at different times collected :

Baseball cards 1968-72

Comic Art 1975 - current

Firearms 1978 - 2004

Watches 1998 - 2002

Los Angeles Kings signed Hockey Sticks 1992 - current

H. P. Lovecraft 1st publications (many pulp magazines from the 20's & 30's) 2001 - current

Things I would collect if my wife would let me :
More Cats!

Oh and if you really want to know how much stuff you actually have , try moving

ReiTheJelly · Post by **ReiTheJelly** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:12 am

Over the last 10 years I have seen many scientific articles about the strong argument for hoarding to be genetic. Here is one that I could find available online with full content: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/con ... /164/3/493

Although my views on psychiatry are somewhat skeptical, I cannot help but see parallels to my own family. My great aunt/uncle were hoarders of the worst variety -- so much stuff they had little maze-like walkways through all the junk in their VERY large house. My aunt and father are also compulsive hoarders, which doesn't bode well for me and my brother. I already show slight compulsions when it comes to my hobbies.

iceman57 · Post by **iceman57** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:23 am

lol , like the ReiTheJelly notes... reminds me my grandfather 15 years ago, he had TONS of classified electronic chips and 1950s radios.

Nene · Post by **Nene** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 11:10 am

I think it's sad when hoarding to the extreme takes over a person's life so much so that they live in squalor inside their own home because they can't bear to get rid of literally anything. I've seen documentaries on the TV in the past and it can get pretty bad.

My mother has always been a form of hoarder but when we moved a couple of years ago I had to be firm and throw out a lot of random junk that had no value (sentimental or monetary). Although the hard part is when someone has an attachment to absolutely everything, even a piece of paper or clothing they'll never wear again. When it came to getting rid of stupid things like that, I just had to be brutal and clear it all out as it had taken over the one spare room we had. Her favourite phrase is "but I might need that".

I think having a hoarder as a parent makes you more prone to being tidy and getting rid of things you no longer need. Getting rid of old things I didn't want before the move was actually very cathartic and liberating for me but I could tell with my mother it was absolute torture. So much so that she didn't do any packing herself, it was left to my dad and I.

I think collecting and hoarding are two different things though, psychologically speaking. You can have many well-loved collections without being a hoarder.

Drac of the Sharp Smiles · Wed Nov 25, 2009 1:01 pm

Nene wrote:Her favourite phrase is "but I might need that".

Oh, how familiar I am with that one. My mother has, oddly, become a severe hoarder in recent years (over the last decade) after having a very clean house for as long as I can remember. I don't know if it is something NEW, caused by some event, or if it was just contained before. When I was little the basement/attic were always crammed full of crap that no one ever touched, so maybe the hoarding has just finally spilled out to the rest of the house.

In addition to the line you put, others she has are: "This is worth SO much!" and "That belonged to ___________." Now, I don't advocate getting rid of EVERYTHING you don't immediately use. I DO believe in saving things for later generations, however, when I say that, I mean (for example) grandma's silver that aunt soandso bought for her in Italy and look here are her initals she scratched into the bottom of the serving bowl because she always brought it to church dinners....... I *don't* mean every pair of pajamas someone had.

People have to be honest and ask themselves "where is my interest in this item?" That's why my mother's "This is worth SO much!" line really irritates me, especially when she has no other interest in the item. I keep telling her "it's worth NOTHING because you're not selling it." I showed my mother a couple of my cels once. I never did again because all she kept asking was "what's this worth?" "this must be worth a lot, what's this worth?" with no other appreciation or interest for the pieces themselves. It's left me convinced that true hoarders might actually have a deficit in ability to quantify the value of items. Which, interestingly, might tie into the theory of it being genetic.

Several times I've worried what would become of my cel collection if something happened to me, simply because I think it would be dumped in a heap in the corner of my mother's overstuffed living room and left to rot there for no other reason than (1) I owned it and (2) "it's worth SO much!"...... This bugs me because I would want it redistributed to other collectors where it could continue to make other people happy. At some point, I need to talk to my sister about it and give her signed, notarized instructions for what to do with it, since she's the only one who will stand up to my mother about these things anymore. (My dad gave up years ago.) Since many of us have families that wouldn't know thing one about our collections, it makes me curious if anyone else has created written instructions like this?

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 1:58 pm

I've had some problems with hoarding through the years. That's why I try to avoid bringing new material into my room - it might become difficult getting it out.

About ten years ago I had have four or five stacks of newspaper in my room. At the time I figured that I didn't want to throw it away because I hadn't looked through it thoroughly yet (why waste it?). On the other hand, I didn't feel like going through it because it was too time consuming. It was a catch-22.

For me I think the main aspects of it were:

1. I didn't want to throw things away because I felt I still might be able to make use of it later.

2. I didn't want to throw things away because I had too much personal connections to the item. I felt the item connected me to the other person or the personal memories I had to an event.

3. I didn't want to deal with throwing things away. I diverted my mind to more pleasant topics. I was avoiding the issue.

4. This only made the stuff build up more while little got done.

The way I got out of that cycle was to ask myself:

1. What's the likelihood that I'm ever going to actually use this? If it's very unlikely just throw it away.

2. Have I ever even used it in the last 3-5 years? If not, it's a good candidate to be thrown away.

3. What's the likelihood that I'm ever even going to read this? That was another good away of identifying trash.

I know most people easily deal with this every day, but for me it was difficult. My sister had so much stuff in her room that anyone who went into her room had to walk on top of paper and stuff. It was completely covering the floor.

I'm glad I never reached that point.

And yeah...I good way of staying cleaner is to move your residence more often. Unfortunately though I've lived here for twenty two years. I'm going to have dig through all those unimportant bags of papers I stuck in our tool shed when our house was fumigated four or five years ago. There's a leak in the tool shed roof and everything is getting damp problems, but I haven't found in in myself to go through there much yet.

My 2000 and 2001 anime calendars might in there getting damp and moldy.

One reason I'm hesitating is because I don't want to bring stuff BACK into the house.

aethel · Post by **aethel** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:24 pm

When I was younger I used to be quite bad for this myself. (I suppose it is no surprise in a forum for cel *collectors* there are a lot of us prone to hoarding..)

Somewhere in my later years of being in a small college dorm room and my semester of study abroad, I realized that I wasn't really missing any of that stuff my parents still complain is stuffed in their cupboards, or the boxes of comics under my bed. In fact most of it I hadn't even looked at in years.

Honestly, that's been my primary motivation in selling off a lot of my cel collection too.

That realization pretty much broke the habit, and I sort of gravitated towards to the opposite extreme. These days I am very reluctant to make any non-essential purchase at all. I always ask myself "am I really going to have time to enjoy this, or will it just sit around?" Most of the time I realize the answer is the latter. (My husband says it makes me a real pain to shop for!)

ReiTheJelly · Post by **ReiTheJelly** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:10 pm

aethel wrote:there are a lot of us prone to hoarding

Yep.

When I look at my immediate and extended family's habits, I try not to be so asinine about what I keep. The one thing I'm really bad about, though - fabric. I quilt. I costume. I tend to keep every somewhat decent sized scrap of fabric or trim I have, on the off-chance that I'll be able to use it somewhere down the line since fabric is actually rather expensive. It's a terrible habit. I've literally got boxes and boxes of fabric and trim...