Boy, i'm glad I am not a hoarder. i recently gave up and felt something just let go. i decided to sell my antique furniture. no sense on holding on to it. no one else loves it but me. perhaps hoarders love their things and just need to finally be able to let go.

As a licensed mental health professional, I wish it was just a matter of clearing stuff out. Hoarding has been recently added to the DSM-V (the diagnostic manual for insurance purposes used in the USA)--and it is often treated medically much like clinical depression.

This situation is so sad cause she's educated, her relatives have tried to haul stuff out(she hauls it back or finds more to add to it), the house is non-livable now--front door falling off, stuff piled all around the house, vermin, etc (she said is used to have a snake in the house that just moved in and wish a black snake would move in again to take care of vermin!). She is unable to bath, uses businesses' bathrooms (although most are resisting on that as she smells so badly), and is wearing clothing typically seen on homeless(dirty & layered). She obviously needs mental health support but unfortunately resources for that in our state have dried updue to our state budget being almost bankrupt because of tax cuts to businesses.

Oh me too! It makes my skin crawl to think of living that way and I get anxious and start cleaning. Poor people!

Hoarding is a disorder in which many of those affected are replacing a significant loss (to them) by holding onto things where they were unable to hold onto the person they lost. Very sad, but much like those who become addicts.

Jan in VA

Very, very sad. I too, become attached to my belongings and periodically I have to force myself to box up my treasures and donate them, hoping they will find their way to someone who will treasure them like I did.

We had a neighbor that hoarded everything from empty gallon milk jugs to newspapers to empty envelopes. She filled her house AND her car. When her car got so full, she would park it and go buy another one to drive and fill up. When her house got full, she lined the milk jugs up on the hood and bumpers of the car. My brother is a mechanic, and once she needed some work done (wanted an expensive repair done free, but my brother said nope). Anyway, when he tried to get in the driver's seat, he couldn't because of all the paper and stuff on the floorboard, then couldn't push the seat back because of all the junk behind the seat. She only had a dinner-plate sized hole in the windshield to see out of, but she never had an accident. I remember as a child going into their house because her youngest daughter was a good friend. At least there was a path from one room room to another, but you couldn't see over the stacks of junk on either side of the path. I don't know if she was a sewist, but I'll bet there were some sewing machines in there. We were living in another state when she passed of cancer a few years ago.

Well said!!!:thumbup:

My dad grew up in town during the Great Depression. He said he wore holes in his pants and the holes were mended and the mended parts got holes and those were mended. He collected a lot of stuff, but most had a way to be re-purposed. Not that he always did that. It was security for him to know how to fix or build anything and have stuff to use that he already had. At least he wasn't out in the bars or any of that. I miss him and his stuff. He never let his stuff into the house, but had 4 buildings of it. He always knew where things were, too.

I shared a horse barn with a woman that the info was shared with me that she was a hoarder. Her behaviors led me to believe the info was true. She has a college degree plus a Masters. She also works in the Mental Health field, met her husband thru her work, he has mental health issues and cannot work. Scares me, her job includes teaching/rehabbing persons living and daily skills. A woman with obvious mental health issues teaching others with disabilities to function ??? Scares the crap out of me. I left the barn due to her ability to latch on to things that were not hers. She was just Creepy!!

Halo, I agree with what you wrote. I too have a bad habit of collecting items that I might use one day and the day never comes. When my daughter comes over, she has been telling me how much better the house looks. I have had to clean and when I clean, I ask myself, do I need this? what for? If I can't give a logical answer, it gets packed up and off to the good will it goes.