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What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder?

135 points by toufiqbarhamov 8y ago

crb002 8y ago
More disposable income and larger living space.
- Proven 8y ago
  Exactly. Not a problem but a luxury. But how can I, a healthcare professional, monetize that? Let’s declare it a disorder and get some tax-funded monies to “treat” it.
- Casseres 8y ago
  That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate everything'. Buying junk to fill a house that's too big is not the same as hoarding. Please read the article.
  - Supermancho 8y ago
    > That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate everything'. My fiancee's grandmother (from a post-Great-Depression era) wasted a fortune (~$500k) on ordering from late night infomercials and anything else they could buy (buried in the hoard were total gyms and horse saddles, stacks of unread subscriptions piling for decades, etc). Their house was a veritable hoarder home that only stopped filling when they ran out of money. I'll counter your "nuh-uh" with "uh huh".
    - stordoff 8y ago
      That doesn't counter "That alone". A single example doesn't prove that that alone may may cause it - even within that example, there may be other factors at play.
      - Nasrudith 8y ago
        The multiple unused copies sounds like impulse control issues coupled with memory problems.
        Supermancho 8y ago
        There was no issue with memory. The subscriptions were each individually fulfilled. It was just a mass (stacks of individual magazines monthly). It was fueled by relatively disposable assets plus anxiety. Storage space is a function of assets, which is why hoarders end up with renting storage for housing their junk.
drannex 8y ago
Consumer capitalism caused by an infinitely exponential increase in advertising compared to any other era of human history.
wvenable 8y ago
I have a family member who has mild hoarding habits and the most striking thing is the emotional attachment to the stuff. Throwing out something is felt as though it is a personal attack and a loss almost equivalent to tossing the family pet. To blame income, capitalism, live space, etc misses the point. The items don't have to be large or important. The space doesn't have to be large. The income doesn't have to plentiful. If there is an increase in hoarding, it's probably due to an increase in stress and anxiety in life.
- stordoff 8y ago
  > The items don't have to be large or important. I have OCD (which isn't hoarding, but manifests in similar ways), and it's as if there is not filter. _Everything_ is of equal value. That wrapper I just discarded, or this photo of my parents - they're of equal importance. Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought process).
  - mirimir 8y ago
    > Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought process). Hey, I know that "wrapper" is intended to induce eye roll. But I do save some bags and packaging. For example, laminated packaging with an Al layer + Al tape = temporary repair of a cracked roof slate.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      I only recently threw away a (unused) Starbucks paper cup from ~2010. Life circumstances around the time it came into my possession made me particularly attached to an image printed on it, and thus the cup changed apartments with me twice before I finally realized it's just a dust collector and I don't care about it that much anymore. People are weird. Myself included.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        Yeah. My wife has a couple PBS "Downton Abbey" paper cups in the cabinet.
wufufufu 8y ago
My untested hypothesis is that hoarding is a symptom of depression. That coupled with there are just "more things" to hoard these days.
- tomnipotent 8y ago
  > symptom of depression Not all hoarders are depressed. Or have OCD. Which is why it has it's own classification (from tested hypotheses).
- Geee 8y ago
  I think there's difference between stuff piling up because you're depressed and hoarding as a disorder.
ummonk 8y ago
I tend to feel guilty throwing away stuff that can't be recycled (and even recyclable stuff, knowing that recycle recovery is nowhere close to 100%). As a result, I often end up hoarding stuff that I wish I didn't have, before finally getting fed up and just clearing out a bunch of stuff by throwing it away. As the article mentions regarding perfectionism, I have to be fed up enough that I'll just quickly throw away stuff instead of second guessing whether I might be wasting material that I might have a chance of finding a use for. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is lots more to hoard today (massive amounts of junk mail, swag at every event, and product packaging getting ever fancier). I think akin to how many people suffer from a paradox of choice, I suffer from a paradox of abundance, and actually sort of wish goods and materials were scarce enough that you could put time and effort into making the most of what you have without getting overwhelmed.
- antoinempl 8y ago
  I often do the same. Especially with plastic categories that are recyclable but not in all facilities / areas. I've found a local government app (in Qc) that indicates what to do with that. So for plastic category 6 i'm literally saving enough for a trip to the eco-center (not sure how it's called elsewhere). But the really liberating thing for me is to reduce how much waste I have to get rid of. Right now this means going to shops where I can bring reusable containers for all liquids (drinking/cooking/washing) as well as avoiding places that are overly wrapping with plastics. In Montreal some places are even starting to give discounts if you bring your own containers.
- rb808 8y ago
  Just say no swag. I have enough tshirts already.
- UnFleshedOne 8y ago
  Every time you throw something away, remember it when you are about to buy something similar and then just don't. Hard to do with packaging and containers though.
tylerjwilk00 8y ago
Hoarding feels similar to over eating. We need to eat but some people can't control the quality or quantity of food consumed. Similarly, instead of collecting an appropriate amount of valuable and useful resources, they collect random nearly useless items and attach much value to them. Could be a case of an ancient survival strategy that is no longer valid in the current environment.
- maigret 8y ago
  You can't "control", but you can create an environment that's better or less for healthy eating. Look at the BMI difference between Japan and the US. In the US, the lobbies for processed foods have long been very strong, and it had its effects.
  - tylerjwilk00 8y ago
    Sure. Perhaps we generalize them both and say that: Modern capitalism exploits (perverts?) natural human behavior and can lead to maladaptive behavior in our current environment.
nowicleanpoop 8y ago
The only people I know who have profoundly cluttered homes filled with much more stuff than average had war or famine/poverty as a part of their personal history. I'm sure this doesn't account for all cases and my sample isn't representative. When I notice the extra items in the homes of hoarders I know, they're nothing that I haven't or wouldn't have acquired in one way or another -- they're things I would've thrown away. I see no evidence in the article that a possible increase in (more likely recognition of) hoarding is a result of increased consumption and yet that connection is implied in the article again and again.
- wsc981 8y ago
  I seem to recognise this behaviour in my girlfriend (Thai nationality). She was from a very poor family, they didn't even have shoes to wear some of the time. Food was also very limited, sometimes she'd share a single egg with her brothers and sisters and her mother wouldn't eat. Or her father wood kill a raccoon and they'd eat a raccoon for dinner. Now our 1.5 year old daughter probably has 20-30 pairs of shoes and every other week my girlfriend buys a new pair. Same is true for toys. Our daughter definitely gets a few new toys every month and most of it is sadly of crappy quality. For clothes it's the same. My girlfriend has many old clothes in the drawer and buys new clothes for our daughter every month - she doesn't buy too much new clothes for herself though. I do try to make her change this behaviour, but it's not easy and I don't want to fight over it. I am a bit worried our house will be cluttered with crap in the coming years.
- clan 8y ago
  Around here we have a term for that which directly translates to "warchild" (or "child of war"). Mainly used for people who grew up in scarcity around WWII. My girlfriends grandmother is often referred to as such. She has a high perceived value of things because the scarcity is ingrained in her.
- gambiting 8y ago
  Yep, my parents who grew up in communist Poland used to collect so much stuff it's unbelivable. And then I can't really blame them - during the communist times if you wanted a new washing machine or a radio you had to wait for a special coupon to buy one, or maybe you had to figure out how to get some foreign currency to buy one in special shops that sold foreign goods(the irony being that these shops sold goods for US dollars, but you couldn't legally obtain US dollars anywhere, you could only get them if someone sent them to you for instance or if you had legitimate business with the West - for which of course you had to get a special permit that was difficult to get). So yeah, of course we always had several of everything, because "what if it breaks and you can't buy another".
nowicleanpoop 8y ago
The only people I know who have profoundly cluttered homes filled with much more stuff than average had war or famine/poverty as a part of their personal history. I'm sure this doesn't account for all cases and my sample isn't representative. When I notice the extra items in the homes of hoarders I know, they're nothing that I haven't or wouldn't have acquired in one way or another -- they're things I would've thrown away. I see no evidence in the article that a possible increase in (more likely recognition of) hoarding is a result of increased consumption and yet that connection is implied in the article again and again.
im3w1l 8y ago
Smaller living space means that you can't save the thing you will need once every five year anymore. A previously adaptive behavior becomes poorly adaptive. Cheap disposable items. Where before you would have a few hand made item of high quality, you now get a lot of lower quality items. This is partially related to technological advancement. If things become obsolete fast, it doesn't make sense to build with quality. Anyway a consequence is that it's easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before. Anti-landfill propaganda. We are guilt-tripped for throwing stuff in the garbage. We are told to dispose of things in very complicated ways and then it may be easier to just not dispose of it. Breakdown of community and family. Before we might keep things around by giving them away to relatives or friends. There is a satisfaction in passing the torch. But this option isn't as available anymore.
- tjr225 8y ago
  Anti-landfill propaganda? Do you have any evidence whatsoever that anti-landfill propaganda exists in any capacity? I'm being totally sincere and I'm not angry at you whatsoever...this is just the first I have ever heard of anything like this.
  - erik_seaberg 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_waste There are cities and companies whose stated goal is to have no garbage service and (somehow) recycle literally everything.
    - tjr225 8y ago
      I'm failing to see how this ideology has invoked any sort of propaganda to suit its goals? They seem like pretty decent goals, too- though my opinions on this aren't really relevant towards whether or not propaganda is being employed.
      - vibrato 8y ago
        Reduce reuse recycle
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
My parents grew up in the Great Depression. My dad still hoards stuff, because he remembers when you simply couldn't get stuff. For example, he talks about re-using thread, not because they had no money to buy thread, but because there was no thread to buy because the thread factories had closed. I wonder if the Great Recession had a similar impact on people. Staring the ruin of the financial world in the face may have left a mark on some people.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  My parents did the same, but the stuff they kept was very different to what we see from a modern hoarder. They'd been through the depression, war, and rationing. My dad remembered his childhood in the 30s where there simply weren't enough clothes and shoes to go around between him and his two brothers. None of what they kept was consumer stuff. No crap. They didn't hoard records, magazines, electronics, clothes or what have you. Financially they were comfortable and had no need whatsoever to do so. They kept screws, bolts, string (in the string tin), paper bags (neatly folded), plastic bags. Then they were reused and repurposed. Mum unravelled old jumpers and knitted or crocheted the wool into socks, scarves, blankets. She'd darn socks and mend rips. When she watched a soap opera there was always the background noise of knitting. There was enough food in the cupboards and freezer for a month, yet they'd shop weekly and always replenish stock. Mum baked and cooked for the freezer too, which had the added advantage of being 1,000x nicer than any store bought bread or cake. Dad kept an Aladdin's cave in the garage from old broken electricals and mechanicals. He could repair most things from what was in the cupboards and tins in there, and almost always did in preference to buying another. Clearing it after he died took forever, but was an education of an age when things were more substantially made. Every thing. Their environmental footprint was a tiny fraction of me and my peers, though knew nothing of "environmentalism". I never quite understood why they didn't spend more, especially in retirement. I don't think they saw the point of spending, except trips and holidays. :)
towelr34dy 8y ago
The article mentions something in passing that I think is important: Potential and Value The article only mentions it once. We live in an increasingly globalized world where our individuality can have an ever smaller impact on the enormous system. I think this drives a lot of people to have a feeling that they are living up to less than their potential and their value isn't that high. Maybe the whole system is living up to less than it's potential. But there is a lot of hopelessness about being able to influence it and our value within the system. The reality is that much of what is horded has potential or is tied to something that had/has (like lost relatives mentioned in the article) It seems like hording, like compulsive behaviors, allow us to create a small sense of agency in a world that constantly strips us of it and define potential and value by our own book.
- slfnflctd 8y ago
  Yeah, according to most of the world's apparent value systems, I am essentially human garbage as a middle aged person with no degree and a bunch of partial skills but no specialties who works menial jobs for a bit above minimum wage (or below, depending where you live). On some level, I know I have tremendous potential, if I could find the right place to plug in. But the many complicated steps, obstacles and potential pitfalls awaiting me in that search are more than a little daunting. Also, how many of these workplaces really deserve me at my absolute very best? In my experience, rather few. Oh well, I still have my cozy spot with all my stuff, and my niece seems to think I'm okay, so that'll have to do. Just need to keep the main rooms clear so she doesn't trip over anything. When the world's values and your own aren't aligned, pick whichever rates you higher, I say.
mirimir 8y ago
I'm clearly a hoarder. As a child, I collected WWII stuff. Some, I found myself in battlefields. And some, I got through trade with other kids. And a lot of it got disassembled. Both out of curiosity, and for parts. So I had quite the collection. Basically, weapons, ordinance, hardware and electronics. And now, I just keep broken stuff, or parts of it. Just about every display, for example, comes with a power cord (or now, brick) and data cable. Ditto with computers and keyboards. So I keep the best ~five of each that aren't in use, and donate the rest to a reuse center. I also have quite the fan collection. But I no longer save RAM, because it so rarely matches. I also have lots of hardware. Metal stock, fasteners, etc. And scrap wood, left over from projects. Sure, it takes up space. But I have a closet for that, and it's reasonably well organized. And if something breaks, or if I need to hack something, there's a pretty good chance that I'll have what I need.
- StefanKarpinski 8y ago
  Does not sound like you meet the DSM criteria for hoarding mentioned in the article. It sounds more like you are someone who likes hardware hacking and hangs on to a lot of hardware bits and pieces for that reason.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Maybe so. But my wife would disagree ;) What did sound familiar was the sense of overwhelm. And the pattern of "don't touch my piles, because I know where everything is". Some years ago, when we were living in an ancient farmhouse, I had a basement full of stuff. Bits and pieces of all the stuff that you need to keep an old farmhouse working. I also maintained collections of books and documents used in research, for reference in case anyone asked. Now, at least that stuff is all on disk.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > and donate the rest to a reuse center. > But I no longer save RAM, because it so rarely matches Then it's not hoarding. Hoarding isn't "I have a lot of stuff, and it's poorly organised". Hoarding is "I have too much stuff, and it's overwhelming, and I am unable to throw it away because I experience distress at the thought of getting rid of things".
shard 8y ago
I hoard digital media. I have thousands of e-books, movies, TV episodes, music, and games that I will never be able to consume in my lifetime. Not to mention all the time I spent obtaining the media. It does make me slightly uncomfortable to get rid of the ones I know I probably won't consume, but that feeling is mitigated by the fact that I should be able to easily re-obtain the items if I change my mind. I don't know if this is related to physical hoarding, since I am an anti-hoarder when it comes to physical objects -- I prefer to have fewer things as opposed to more things, and have a strong aversion to what I call "cheap plastic crap".
- ip26 8y ago
  As long as you don't wind up spending extra money for more storage, and you don't waste lots of time organizing this media you'll never consume- well, it makes no difference whether the disk holds zeros or a movie.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  Hoarding digital media has become kind of pointless with the advent of streaming services though. As a former DJ with eccentric tastes, I spent tons of time looking for, buying and cataloguing obscure music, then eventually digitizing it. But now I just listen to Spotify and Soundcloud, which already have virtually everything I ever collected and then some. Of course, there are some gaps and the niggling sense of unease that something I like today might not be there tomorrow because of licensing changes or whatever -- but that's what cheap cloud storage is for.
  - Tor3 8y ago
    I'm "hoarding" web sites with technical information. I've got TBs of disk where I mirror things. Because I started to notice that things just.. disappear. And they're not on archive.org, or their mirror is very incomplete. I'll never need 99.99% of the stuff that I copy. But just yesterday somebody on a forum looked for information and mentioned a web site that apparently had that info at one point.. but had disappeared. Completely. Except that I had a copy and could hand it over.
ggm 8y ago
I think there are multiple root causes which are society-wide. One, is that the boomers were a post WWII generation and there was a huge need to keep everything, because people lost everything and much of it was unreplaceable: My parents were teenagers in London during the blitz and lost book collections, possessions being bombed out. They subsequently had kids, across the boomer window: Guess what culture we grew up in: a hoarder culture. We experienced the 1970s oil crisis. So we kept candles and suger. We experienced periodic food and supply shortages. So we kept bulk buying. We kept paper. We kept things. We kept old cars. We kept old electrical items. We repurposed them. But then consumer society moved to replace, not repair. The problem is we didn't get our brains re-wired. The other societal pressure is affluenza. We're under a huge amount of social pressure to keep buying stuff. If the rate of acquisition exceeds the rate of consumption, you can wind up accidentally in hoarder mode, stacked up with purchases "just in case" Thirdly, social anxiety levels are skyrocketing, especially amongst the young. Anxiety feeds hoarding, because the pleasure moment in getting things is matched by the pain moment in shedding things. Its a cycle of emotional states feeding a buy-keep mode. Fourthly, we're drowning in choice. Its a classic experiment, to offer three jams for breakfast, or twenty (if you offer twenty, people often avoid jam because deciding which is too hard). If you have too many choices, you wind up making bad choices to get "all the things" to avoid having to decide which to get. So you get two kinds of screws from the wall of twenty, or a box of twenty kinds? I went the twenty. Then, we have the choice problem disposing: which to keep and which to chuck? Fifthly, the "dont be wasteful" moment works to stop buying but if you HAVE the thing, "dont be wasteful" says don't dispose of it. Dont "throw things away which are useful" Disposal stores, Op-Shops, Charity shops, don't take electrical goods any more in OZ (safety risk) and don't take shoes and bedding (health risk) so these things stack up because adding them to the waste pile is "wasteful" Society is hard sometimes. Its judgemental, and it adds pressures. These pressures feed hoarding. Marie Kondo may be helping unwind it, but the back pressure is huge. She is a bit cult-y and maybe others have noticed what I see: people are disrespecting cleaning up, cutting down, going to 'wasteful' and 'disposable society' messages. Yes, its wasteful to buy unwanted things, and throw them away. But we have the things, and if we stop buying the economy tanks. What do we do?
Haga 8y ago
It's a Symptome of schizophrenia. Not everyone with it runs around as hobo rambling. Instead you have plans, a myriad of them, and each item you got is justified by its usage by the recombination disease.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  While it can be a symptom of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, hoarding itself isn't really a symptom of schizophrenia when by itself - just like you can have hallucinations and delusions caused by mental illness without having schizophrenia.
0x8BADF00D 8y ago
Ultimately, it comes down to a lack of sexual intercourse. When one is sexually deprived, they will attempt to substitute sexual activity with something: whether it is accumulating goods, or overeating for example.
- pravda 8y ago
  Very Freudian! It all comes down to sex. Sex is why we gamble, sex is why we drink, sex is why women have babies!
  - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
    When you don’t have a fulfilling sex life, it will make you go crazy. Anecdotally, I have seen this with both married, unmarried, single, in a relationship, etc. You substitute your sexual energy for another pursuit. See the concepts of lingam and yoni. If as a culture we could have a mature conversation about sex, you wouldn’t see these types of disorders.
  - belorn 8y ago
    While the comment has been flag killed, the article did actually tangentially support that claim. > The psychological understanding is that objects are gathered in a futile attempt to fill emotional emptiness—piled up like a barricade to protect oneself against an uncertain future. Ie, a theory is that increased loneness and lack of emotional connections with other people causes a raise in hording disorder. In a uncertain future we either need social connections to protect against the unknown, or we substitute it by building up a defense layer through objects. It is a survivor strategy that can become maladaptive.
    - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
      Thanks for keeping an open mind. I’m not even sure why it was flag killed. Having open minded discussions (no pun intended) about how the mind works is beneficial to all. It is something I think about all the time, in order to better build the things I’m building.
bayesian_horse 8y ago
And how can hoarders actually be helped?
atomical 8y ago
Why is this page using 100% of CPU?
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  That seems unique to you. I'm not experiencing that, and I'm running vanilla chrome without an adblocker.
et-al 8y ago
No one's mentioned marketing? We're probably bombarded with more marketing than we ever have before. In addition, it's so easy to buy stuff with 1-click shopping with 2-day shipping. It's known that web sites want to be addictive for people, but it's so they can ultimately sell people something.
- wink 8y ago
  Not sure that's really a deciding factor I think, at least not in the majority. Not all hoarders buy all the stuff they get. They just sweep up stuff that's free or some of them just keep candy wrappers or old newspapers. Sure, if someone is easily wooed by marketing and likes (or feels pressed to) buy stuff, this can exacerbate the problem, but from all hoarding stories the only thing that matches this was "Oh, this mustard is really cheap, better buy the whole case of 48 glasses" which was then discovered years later in the basement...
superkuh 8y ago
The unstated premise is that there is a rise in hoarding and that hoarding is a disorder. As this very article states at the beginning it was only within the last 5 years that it has been recognized as a psychological disorder. It's just as likely to be removed again depending on the profits, or not, of those seeking to exploit the idea of hoarding being a disorder.
- btmorex 8y ago
  No idea if it's on the rise or not because it could just be reporting, but hoarding is a mental disorder no doubt. Watch an episode or two of Hoarders. People are literally breaking down for having to throw away a dirty piece of trash.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    I can't think of a single healthy behavior that is not occasionally taken to an unhealthy extreme by people with a disorder. The term hoarding is problematic because it is lacking a clear line even more than other potentially pathological behaviors, there is absolutely no consensus where having some stuff that you don't exactly use daily ends and pathological hoarding begins. Even alcohol consumption seems clear-cut by comparison. Combined with the smugness of how self-congratulatory "minimalists" will look down on everybody who has slightly different standards than them, and the unfortunate coincidence that disorder (as in chaotic) shares a linguistic token with disorder (as in mental health) it makes it incredibly hard to have a meaningful discussion about the topic. (I write "minimalist" in quotes because far too many self-identifying minimalists are not minimal at all, they are just eagerly disposing to drive their consumerism to eleven, new and shiny every time)
    - Retric 8y ago
      The disorder line is always fairly clear cut for all mental issues. The question is if it interferes with daily life not of if it’s odd.
      - 8y ago
narrator 8y ago
I think there's just been a general decline in mental health. The suicide rate has been increasing steadily since 2000.
chillingeffect 8y ago
This is an epic talk on the psychology of clutter by a very subtly brilliant therapist. [0] I re-listen every few months and get new things out of it every time. Many of her points are in this article, but also many more and more deeply and personally contextualized. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4
danielrm26 8y ago
I think the simplest explanation goes like this: 1. Hoarding is addictive behavior. 2. The Opposite of Addiction is Connection (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-the-digital-age/201509/the-opposite-addiction-is-connection https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-the-...) 3. Because we currently have less connection, we have more addiction—and hoarding is one instantiation.
- renholder 8y ago
  >Because we currently have less connection, we have more addiction — and hoarding is one instantiation. This makes the most sense to me. Connection and attachment are correlated. If there's no connection or attachment, we'll - more than likely - attempt to replace this 'x' thing missing with 'y' tangible thing. Edit: I think the problem of society always needing an enemy to attack, with the ferocity the likes of which hasn't been seen in previous generations, is only part of the problem. I'm going to refer to Bill Hicks' closing speech to give a general synopsis around this[1]. [1] - https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU
RandomInteger4 8y ago
I'm not a hoarder; I just see the potential for a future use that I don't quite know of for these cardboard boxes and paper rolls. Never know when you'll need a lot of cardboard ...
- gerbilly 8y ago
  Get some gerbils, they love to chew up cardboard! It would be like one compulsive helping out another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A (Only joking people, don't buy pets unless you are ready to properly care for them from cradle to grave!)
dasanman 8y ago
Consumerism pops into my mind. People want more and more and at the same time are terrible at getting rid of things
dschuetz 8y ago
Funny enough, in the past days I was thinking about hoarding as a neurological disorder. It has similarities to keeping a lot of things in mind at the same time and re-iterate them over and over. The are quite a few mind-hoarders, as I call them, who basically hoard ideas and concepts to the point that they forget what is actually relevant here and now. Hoarding psychical objects might stem from the same cause inside the brain which causes the mind hoarding as well. Hence it can't be a psychological disorder alone.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
My mom is almost entirely unable to throw things away. As a consequence, my parents have boxes and boxes of all kinds of stuff stored, including some of my toys from 20+ years ago. They live in a rather big house, but it is starting to encroach on their living space, and it does prevent them from using some of their extra rooms for their original intent, such as a dedicated washing room, so they could move the washer/dryer out of their downstairs bathroom. Every time my dad and I try to bring up the subject of clearing all of that stuff away, she counters with claims like "but that's our winter clothes" or "as soon as I have the time", which never happens. I've talked to her about why she tends to accumulate stuff like that, and she thinks it's because her family didn't have much when she was growing up, and her mother was a semi-functioning alcoholic. She says they often experienced simply running out of basic things, and couldn't immediately afford to replace it. So she internalized a need to keep everything around, never throw out or give away anything that still works, and always have at least one spare in storage. They have three refrigerators (for three adults, my sister still lives at home), which are all stuffed full at all times. This leads to ~monthly rituals of cleaning out all the spoiled food, and then filling up the fridges again to repeat the cycle. When questioned on this behavior, my mom argues that they need to keep all the different spreads and stuff around at all times, because you never know what people might want to eat. We try to argue that it's perfectly OK to not have every single food you would possibly like to eat at any time available at all times, but she doesn't seem to want to agree.
gaius 8y ago
Minimalism is the ideology of the rich - you don’t need to keep stuff if you know you can simply buy it again next-day shipping. Keeping stuff “in case” it’s ever needed again is the normal behaviour of normal people!
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Really the rich in the UK are known for buying high quality stuff and wearing it for years Prince Charles has a favourite Barbour jacket that's 40 years old.
  - jodrellblank 8y ago
    Is it definitely the same jacket - he only bought one originally and has never bought an identical one since?
acidtrucks 8y ago
For me, it was growing up with Sonic the hedgehog. I was trained that keeping as many rings as I could would ensure my survival.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  If Sonic had really trained you, you'd have learned a different lesson: you can survive anything if you can keep just one ring.
Phenomenit 8y ago
Is the inverse of this extreme minimalism?
tim333 8y ago
>What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder? Judging by the article taking something that's gone for ages without too many problems and recategorising it as a disorder.
- doubleunplussed 8y ago
  You must have never seen a hoarder's house. Look up pictures.
  - tim333 8y ago
    My mum's something of a hoarder. It's never been a DSM issue though.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Granted this is a layman's perspective, but it doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me. On the one hand we have rampant marketing pushing the idea that stuff will make us happy, and on the other we have society telling us that waste is dooming the planet. So we have significant pressures to a) acquire things and b) not throw them out.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Yes, but those pressures are applied to everybody while only a relatively small percentage of the population becomes hoarders. There must be more to it.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    Some people emotionally bond with stuff just as readily as with puppies.
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      I was a kid when I first encountered the home of a hoarder. My mother brought me there because she was dropping off schoolwork to one of her students (a year younger than me) that lived in the home. I think that was just an excuse, I think she was concerned for the child who lived there. What I remember most vividly was the pile of toilet paper cardboard tubes. The pile was taller than I was, and wider than I was tall. That wasn't even close to the worst, but it stood out because it must have represented decades of hoarding. It takes a long time to use that much toilet paper. That's not simple materialism. That's not loving your motorcycle like somebody loves a dog. It's a serious mental illness that shouldn't be taken lightly or brushed off.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    There's clearly some variability in how people respond to these pressures, but an overall increase in pressure would be expected to cause more people to exhibit the dysfunctional behavior.
Nasrudith 8y ago
The bit about hoarding not existing in the past except for gold was a real eye-roller. Stuff was expensive then so it wouldn't be abnormal and more readily pawnable. You could sell anything from old clothes to a dead horse or headless axe and get something of value from it. Virtually nothing was worthless.
lkrubner 8y ago
This describes the hoarders that I have actually known: "But researchers have found a possible link between hoarding and PTSD among Holocaust survivors, and late-onset hoarding has often been linked to loss or trauma." Of those I've known, all of them have had intense anxiety about their own mortality -- all of us have some anxiety about our death, but with hoarders that fear is close to the surface. I've had the impression that they hope to hold onto the past by holding onto physical objects from the past. If you keep a souvenir from a particular day, then it's as if that day has not yet ended, it will last forever.
- Digory 8y ago
  A comment on one episode of Hoarders stuck with me: "I'm saving all this for my grandkids." It was a mangled way of protecting him from death and the indifference of future generations. But all it takes is a visit to a local estate sale to realize no one wants 99.9% of this junk, even your descendants.
sethammons 8y ago
Couple of things. All it means being classified in the DSM is "now we can diagnose and bill for treatment." Another, many commenters here are saying "Hur de hur, I have a lot of stuff, I'm such a hoarder." I have to think they have not experienced hoarding. My wife's mom is a hoarder. Literal trash fills her home and she navigates through unsafe tunnels of newspaper, disguarded food, broken things she has a pulled from dumpsters, and animal feces between her couch and the restroom. She gets distressed at the thought of removing any of it. She might do something with that broken or rotten thing one day, and not in the hack something together way. Collectors, reusers/repurposers, and keeping things that can be legitimately used again are not hoarders. If the DSM definition includes them, it is only due to overly broad definitions to make billing for treatment easier. Take the definition of ADD; nearly every kid can fall into that definition when doing a homework assignment they don't like.
- Pigo 8y ago
  I like watching Hoarders because it motivates me enough to get up and clean my room Peterson-style. Lingering and non-useful junk feel like tiny weights in my mind, so its a relief when it's gone. When you watch the show you always end up seeing a rush of fear in their face when people start removing their junk, like they have some sort of emotional attachment to the garbage. There's a stark contrast between these people and people who've just been lazy for awhile.
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    "... like they have some sort of emotional attachment to the garbage." They do. That's why they're hoarders. Everything they own represents a piece of their identity- their past (childhood memories, toys, etc), their present (current hobbies and interests), their future (belief that objects will be useful someday). Removing these objects is an attack on the person's identity- and calling it trash is calling their identity, hopes, and dreams trash. Severe hoarding is a serious mental illness.
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  I had an elderly neighbor that was a hoarder. We knew because of the rats (which were otherwise largely absent from that town). One day she went into the hospital for a routine surgery and her kids showed up with a dumpster. They simply cleaned out the house, exterminated, and bought her new furniture. Hadn’t seen anything like it before.
accnumnplus1 8y ago
Brexit.
wslh 8y ago
The article mentions divorce. I would say that you can be a hoarder but live with people that help you balance against hoarding. Beyond your partner, this is also true if you don't have a social life or don't live with other people. So, nowadays degrading social life (e.g. mobile phone addiction) could be a natural cause.
anjc 8y ago
I accept that it can be a disorder, but they don't say whether hoarding (or, 'organising' I think is more accurate) is just a natural human compulsion. From early childhood we seem to be drawn to collectible/hoardable/organisable items (baseball cards, Pogs, Pokémon, Barbies, etc). Maybe this hoarding disorder is a poor manifestation of a compulsion that we all exhibit in some way.
njharman 8y ago
The psychological industry inventing new disorders and diagnosing normal human behaviors as a disorder, something that needs to be fixed. https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_...
- jointpdf 8y ago
  No. Clinical hoarding disorder is not normal human behavior--it causes "significant distress and/or impairment of personal functioning", by definition. Same goes with any other mental disorder.
jointpdf 8y ago
I find the comments in this thread to be counterproductive (bordering on disturbing/dangerous). Trivializing/dismissing the existence of mental disorders based on uninformed viewpoints can cause harm to others, in that they can feel ostracized and become less likely to seek the help they need. Comments like this are along the same lines as 'everybody gets depressed--you just have to choose to be happy'. Depression is a frequently a severe and life-altering disease, and I hope everyone can recognize this sort of statement as absurd. Similarly, hoarding (as described in the article) is a cluster of persistent behaviors distinct from related disorders (like OCD). Like any cluster (esp. clusters in a high-dimensional space, like human behavior), the class membership is inherently fuzzy--everyone exists somewhere on the hoarding spectrum or OCD spectrum or ADD spectrum. But by definition very few (~6%, according to the link) people are close enough to the far side of the spectrum that it causes severe distress to themselves and others. Think of it (very loosely) like cancer--virtually everyone has some cancer cells in their body, but our protective systems are usually able to keep them in check before they run amok. But once they do, it undeniably becomes cancer. I don't really know how to say this in a better way, but trivializing or denying the existence of mental illness is cruel and reductive, and these sorts of attitudes tend to ricochet around. Please don't participate in doing so.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  As an ADHD researcher, I've found many commenters on HN to be ignorant and still highly opinionated about ADHD diagnosis and medication, which was my thesis topic. Even highly educated, very smart individuals are growing up with inherent biases against these mental illnesses which they do not know anything about except heresay and pseudo-scientific nonsense. A recent thread on ADHD brought these people out of the woodwork, and I received many downvotes for spreading my belief that the ADHD research community is not convinced of the over-diagnosis of ADHD, which many arm-chair experts seem to take as a given. It's simply good scientific behavior to not take this for granted, to do more studying, and yet numerous STEM experts have spouted their certainty that ADHD is overdiagnosed and we're drugging our poorly parented/educated kids into submission. I don't know much about the other mental health disorders, but I'd be willing to bet HN at large is not well-equipped to constructively discuss hoarding, OCD, or even depression/anxiety. Though, I will say I believe depression/anxiety get less stigmatized than OCD and ADHD, perhaps due to their increased prevalence and incidence in today's world.

More disposable income and larger living space.

Proven 8y ago
Exactly. Not a problem but a luxury. But how can I, a healthcare professional, monetize that? Let’s declare it a disorder and get some tax-funded monies to “treat” it.
Casseres 8y ago
That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate everything'. Buying junk to fill a house that's too big is not the same as hoarding. Please read the article.
- Supermancho 8y ago
  > That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate everything'. My fiancee's grandmother (from a post-Great-Depression era) wasted a fortune (~$500k) on ordering from late night infomercials and anything else they could buy (buried in the hoard were total gyms and horse saddles, stacks of unread subscriptions piling for decades, etc). Their house was a veritable hoarder home that only stopped filling when they ran out of money. I'll counter your "nuh-uh" with "uh huh".
  - stordoff 8y ago
    That doesn't counter "That alone". A single example doesn't prove that that alone may may cause it - even within that example, there may be other factors at play.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      The multiple unused copies sounds like impulse control issues coupled with memory problems.
      - Supermancho 8y ago
        There was no issue with memory. The subscriptions were each individually fulfilled. It was just a mass (stacks of individual magazines monthly). It was fueled by relatively disposable assets plus anxiety. Storage space is a function of assets, which is why hoarders end up with renting storage for housing their junk.

Consumer capitalism caused by an infinitely exponential increase in advertising compared to any other era of human history.

wvenable 8y ago

I have a family member who has mild hoarding habits and the most striking thing is the emotional attachment to the stuff. Throwing out something is felt as though it is a personal attack and a loss almost equivalent to tossing the family pet. To blame income, capitalism, live space, etc misses the point. The items don't have to be large or important. The space doesn't have to be large. The income doesn't have to plentiful. If there is an increase in hoarding, it's probably due to an increase in stress and anxiety in life.

stordoff 8y ago
> The items don't have to be large or important. I have OCD (which isn't hoarding, but manifests in similar ways), and it's as if there is not filter. _Everything_ is of equal value. That wrapper I just discarded, or this photo of my parents - they're of equal importance. Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought process).
- mirimir 8y ago
  > Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought process). Hey, I know that "wrapper" is intended to induce eye roll. But I do save some bags and packaging. For example, laminated packaging with an Al layer + Al tape = temporary repair of a cracked roof slate.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I only recently threw away a (unused) Starbucks paper cup from ~2010. Life circumstances around the time it came into my possession made me particularly attached to an image printed on it, and thus the cup changed apartments with me twice before I finally realized it's just a dust collector and I don't care about it that much anymore. People are weird. Myself included.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      Yeah. My wife has a couple PBS "Downton Abbey" paper cups in the cabinet.

wufufufu 8y ago

My untested hypothesis is that hoarding is a symptom of depression. That coupled with there are just "more things" to hoard these days.

tomnipotent 8y ago
> symptom of depression Not all hoarders are depressed. Or have OCD. Which is why it has it's own classification (from tested hypotheses).
Geee 8y ago
I think there's difference between stuff piling up because you're depressed and hoarding as a disorder.

ummonk 8y ago

I tend to feel guilty throwing away stuff that can't be recycled (and even recyclable stuff, knowing that recycle recovery is nowhere close to 100%). As a result, I often end up hoarding stuff that I wish I didn't have, before finally getting fed up and just clearing out a bunch of stuff by throwing it away. As the article mentions regarding perfectionism, I have to be fed up enough that I'll just quickly throw away stuff instead of second guessing whether I might be wasting material that I might have a chance of finding a use for. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is lots more to hoard today (massive amounts of junk mail, swag at every event, and product packaging getting ever fancier). I think akin to how many people suffer from a paradox of choice, I suffer from a paradox of abundance, and actually sort of wish goods and materials were scarce enough that you could put time and effort into making the most of what you have without getting overwhelmed.

antoinempl 8y ago
I often do the same. Especially with plastic categories that are recyclable but not in all facilities / areas. I've found a local government app (in Qc) that indicates what to do with that. So for plastic category 6 i'm literally saving enough for a trip to the eco-center (not sure how it's called elsewhere). But the really liberating thing for me is to reduce how much waste I have to get rid of. Right now this means going to shops where I can bring reusable containers for all liquids (drinking/cooking/washing) as well as avoiding places that are overly wrapping with plastics. In Montreal some places are even starting to give discounts if you bring your own containers.
rb808 8y ago
Just say no swag. I have enough tshirts already.
UnFleshedOne 8y ago
Every time you throw something away, remember it when you are about to buy something similar and then just don't. Hard to do with packaging and containers though.

tylerjwilk00 8y ago

Hoarding feels similar to over eating. We need to eat but some people can't control the quality or quantity of food consumed. Similarly, instead of collecting an appropriate amount of valuable and useful resources, they collect random nearly useless items and attach much value to them. Could be a case of an ancient survival strategy that is no longer valid in the current environment.

maigret 8y ago
You can't "control", but you can create an environment that's better or less for healthy eating. Look at the BMI difference between Japan and the US. In the US, the lobbies for processed foods have long been very strong, and it had its effects.
- tylerjwilk00 8y ago
  Sure. Perhaps we generalize them both and say that: Modern capitalism exploits (perverts?) natural human behavior and can lead to maladaptive behavior in our current environment.

nowicleanpoop 8y ago

The only people I know who have profoundly cluttered homes filled with much more stuff than average had war or famine/poverty as a part of their personal history. I'm sure this doesn't account for all cases and my sample isn't representative. When I notice the extra items in the homes of hoarders I know, they're nothing that I haven't or wouldn't have acquired in one way or another -- they're things I would've thrown away. I see no evidence in the article that a possible increase in (more likely recognition of) hoarding is a result of increased consumption and yet that connection is implied in the article again and again.

wsc981 8y ago
I seem to recognise this behaviour in my girlfriend (Thai nationality). She was from a very poor family, they didn't even have shoes to wear some of the time. Food was also very limited, sometimes she'd share a single egg with her brothers and sisters and her mother wouldn't eat. Or her father wood kill a raccoon and they'd eat a raccoon for dinner. Now our 1.5 year old daughter probably has 20-30 pairs of shoes and every other week my girlfriend buys a new pair. Same is true for toys. Our daughter definitely gets a few new toys every month and most of it is sadly of crappy quality. For clothes it's the same. My girlfriend has many old clothes in the drawer and buys new clothes for our daughter every month - she doesn't buy too much new clothes for herself though. I do try to make her change this behaviour, but it's not easy and I don't want to fight over it. I am a bit worried our house will be cluttered with crap in the coming years.
clan 8y ago
Around here we have a term for that which directly translates to "warchild" (or "child of war"). Mainly used for people who grew up in scarcity around WWII. My girlfriends grandmother is often referred to as such. She has a high perceived value of things because the scarcity is ingrained in her.
gambiting 8y ago
Yep, my parents who grew up in communist Poland used to collect so much stuff it's unbelivable. And then I can't really blame them - during the communist times if you wanted a new washing machine or a radio you had to wait for a special coupon to buy one, or maybe you had to figure out how to get some foreign currency to buy one in special shops that sold foreign goods(the irony being that these shops sold goods for US dollars, but you couldn't legally obtain US dollars anywhere, you could only get them if someone sent them to you for instance or if you had legitimate business with the West - for which of course you had to get a special permit that was difficult to get). So yeah, of course we always had several of everything, because "what if it breaks and you can't buy another".

nowicleanpoop 8y ago

im3w1l 8y ago

Smaller living space means that you can't save the thing you will need once every five year anymore. A previously adaptive behavior becomes poorly adaptive. Cheap disposable items. Where before you would have a few hand made item of high quality, you now get a lot of lower quality items. This is partially related to technological advancement. If things become obsolete fast, it doesn't make sense to build with quality. Anyway a consequence is that it's easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before. Anti-landfill propaganda. We are guilt-tripped for throwing stuff in the garbage. We are told to dispose of things in very complicated ways and then it may be easier to just not dispose of it. Breakdown of community and family. Before we might keep things around by giving them away to relatives or friends. There is a satisfaction in passing the torch. But this option isn't as available anymore.

tjr225 8y ago
Anti-landfill propaganda? Do you have any evidence whatsoever that anti-landfill propaganda exists in any capacity? I'm being totally sincere and I'm not angry at you whatsoever...this is just the first I have ever heard of anything like this.
- erik_seaberg 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_waste There are cities and companies whose stated goal is to have no garbage service and (somehow) recycle literally everything.
  - tjr225 8y ago
    I'm failing to see how this ideology has invoked any sort of propaganda to suit its goals? They seem like pretty decent goals, too- though my opinions on this aren't really relevant towards whether or not propaganda is being employed.
    - vibrato 8y ago
      Reduce reuse recycle

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

My parents grew up in the Great Depression. My dad still hoards stuff, because he remembers when you simply couldn't get stuff. For example, he talks about re-using thread, not because they had no money to buy thread, but because there was no thread to buy because the thread factories had closed. I wonder if the Great Recession had a similar impact on people. Staring the ruin of the financial world in the face may have left a mark on some people.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
My parents did the same, but the stuff they kept was very different to what we see from a modern hoarder. They'd been through the depression, war, and rationing. My dad remembered his childhood in the 30s where there simply weren't enough clothes and shoes to go around between him and his two brothers. None of what they kept was consumer stuff. No crap. They didn't hoard records, magazines, electronics, clothes or what have you. Financially they were comfortable and had no need whatsoever to do so. They kept screws, bolts, string (in the string tin), paper bags (neatly folded), plastic bags. Then they were reused and repurposed. Mum unravelled old jumpers and knitted or crocheted the wool into socks, scarves, blankets. She'd darn socks and mend rips. When she watched a soap opera there was always the background noise of knitting. There was enough food in the cupboards and freezer for a month, yet they'd shop weekly and always replenish stock. Mum baked and cooked for the freezer too, which had the added advantage of being 1,000x nicer than any store bought bread or cake. Dad kept an Aladdin's cave in the garage from old broken electricals and mechanicals. He could repair most things from what was in the cupboards and tins in there, and almost always did in preference to buying another. Clearing it after he died took forever, but was an education of an age when things were more substantially made. Every thing. Their environmental footprint was a tiny fraction of me and my peers, though knew nothing of "environmentalism". I never quite understood why they didn't spend more, especially in retirement. I don't think they saw the point of spending, except trips and holidays. :)

towelr34dy 8y ago

The article mentions something in passing that I think is important: Potential and Value The article only mentions it once. We live in an increasingly globalized world where our individuality can have an ever smaller impact on the enormous system. I think this drives a lot of people to have a feeling that they are living up to less than their potential and their value isn't that high. Maybe the whole system is living up to less than it's potential. But there is a lot of hopelessness about being able to influence it and our value within the system. The reality is that much of what is horded has potential or is tied to something that had/has (like lost relatives mentioned in the article) It seems like hording, like compulsive behaviors, allow us to create a small sense of agency in a world that constantly strips us of it and define potential and value by our own book.

slfnflctd 8y ago
Yeah, according to most of the world's apparent value systems, I am essentially human garbage as a middle aged person with no degree and a bunch of partial skills but no specialties who works menial jobs for a bit above minimum wage (or below, depending where you live). On some level, I know I have tremendous potential, if I could find the right place to plug in. But the many complicated steps, obstacles and potential pitfalls awaiting me in that search are more than a little daunting. Also, how many of these workplaces really deserve me at my absolute very best? In my experience, rather few. Oh well, I still have my cozy spot with all my stuff, and my niece seems to think I'm okay, so that'll have to do. Just need to keep the main rooms clear so she doesn't trip over anything. When the world's values and your own aren't aligned, pick whichever rates you higher, I say.

mirimir 8y ago

I'm clearly a hoarder. As a child, I collected WWII stuff. Some, I found myself in battlefields. And some, I got through trade with other kids. And a lot of it got disassembled. Both out of curiosity, and for parts. So I had quite the collection. Basically, weapons, ordinance, hardware and electronics. And now, I just keep broken stuff, or parts of it. Just about every display, for example, comes with a power cord (or now, brick) and data cable. Ditto with computers and keyboards. So I keep the best ~five of each that aren't in use, and donate the rest to a reuse center. I also have quite the fan collection. But I no longer save RAM, because it so rarely matches. I also have lots of hardware. Metal stock, fasteners, etc. And scrap wood, left over from projects. Sure, it takes up space. But I have a closet for that, and it's reasonably well organized. And if something breaks, or if I need to hack something, there's a pretty good chance that I'll have what I need.

StefanKarpinski 8y ago
Does not sound like you meet the DSM criteria for hoarding mentioned in the article. It sounds more like you are someone who likes hardware hacking and hangs on to a lot of hardware bits and pieces for that reason.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Maybe so. But my wife would disagree ;) What did sound familiar was the sense of overwhelm. And the pattern of "don't touch my piles, because I know where everything is". Some years ago, when we were living in an ancient farmhouse, I had a basement full of stuff. Bits and pieces of all the stuff that you need to keep an old farmhouse working. I also maintained collections of books and documents used in research, for reference in case anyone asked. Now, at least that stuff is all on disk.
DanBC 8y ago
> and donate the rest to a reuse center. > But I no longer save RAM, because it so rarely matches Then it's not hoarding. Hoarding isn't "I have a lot of stuff, and it's poorly organised". Hoarding is "I have too much stuff, and it's overwhelming, and I am unable to throw it away because I experience distress at the thought of getting rid of things".

shard 8y ago

I hoard digital media. I have thousands of e-books, movies, TV episodes, music, and games that I will never be able to consume in my lifetime. Not to mention all the time I spent obtaining the media. It does make me slightly uncomfortable to get rid of the ones I know I probably won't consume, but that feeling is mitigated by the fact that I should be able to easily re-obtain the items if I change my mind. I don't know if this is related to physical hoarding, since I am an anti-hoarder when it comes to physical objects -- I prefer to have fewer things as opposed to more things, and have a strong aversion to what I call "cheap plastic crap".

ip26 8y ago
As long as you don't wind up spending extra money for more storage, and you don't waste lots of time organizing this media you'll never consume- well, it makes no difference whether the disk holds zeros or a movie.
jpatokal 8y ago
Hoarding digital media has become kind of pointless with the advent of streaming services though. As a former DJ with eccentric tastes, I spent tons of time looking for, buying and cataloguing obscure music, then eventually digitizing it. But now I just listen to Spotify and Soundcloud, which already have virtually everything I ever collected and then some. Of course, there are some gaps and the niggling sense of unease that something I like today might not be there tomorrow because of licensing changes or whatever -- but that's what cheap cloud storage is for.
- Tor3 8y ago
  I'm "hoarding" web sites with technical information. I've got TBs of disk where I mirror things. Because I started to notice that things just.. disappear. And they're not on archive.org, or their mirror is very incomplete. I'll never need 99.99% of the stuff that I copy. But just yesterday somebody on a forum looked for information and mentioned a web site that apparently had that info at one point.. but had disappeared. Completely. Except that I had a copy and could hand it over.

ggm 8y ago

I think there are multiple root causes which are society-wide. One, is that the boomers were a post WWII generation and there was a huge need to keep everything, because people lost everything and much of it was unreplaceable: My parents were teenagers in London during the blitz and lost book collections, possessions being bombed out. They subsequently had kids, across the boomer window: Guess what culture we grew up in: a hoarder culture. We experienced the 1970s oil crisis. So we kept candles and suger. We experienced periodic food and supply shortages. So we kept bulk buying. We kept paper. We kept things. We kept old cars. We kept old electrical items. We repurposed them. But then consumer society moved to replace, not repair. The problem is we didn't get our brains re-wired. The other societal pressure is affluenza. We're under a huge amount of social pressure to keep buying stuff. If the rate of acquisition exceeds the rate of consumption, you can wind up accidentally in hoarder mode, stacked up with purchases "just in case" Thirdly, social anxiety levels are skyrocketing, especially amongst the young. Anxiety feeds hoarding, because the pleasure moment in getting things is matched by the pain moment in shedding things. Its a cycle of emotional states feeding a buy-keep mode. Fourthly, we're drowning in choice. Its a classic experiment, to offer three jams for breakfast, or twenty (if you offer twenty, people often avoid jam because deciding which is too hard). If you have too many choices, you wind up making bad choices to get "all the things" to avoid having to decide which to get. So you get two kinds of screws from the wall of twenty, or a box of twenty kinds? I went the twenty. Then, we have the choice problem disposing: which to keep and which to chuck? Fifthly, the "dont be wasteful" moment works to stop buying but if you HAVE the thing, "dont be wasteful" says don't dispose of it. Dont "throw things away which are useful" Disposal stores, Op-Shops, Charity shops, don't take electrical goods any more in OZ (safety risk) and don't take shoes and bedding (health risk) so these things stack up because adding them to the waste pile is "wasteful" Society is hard sometimes. Its judgemental, and it adds pressures. These pressures feed hoarding. Marie Kondo may be helping unwind it, but the back pressure is huge. She is a bit cult-y and maybe others have noticed what I see: people are disrespecting cleaning up, cutting down, going to 'wasteful' and 'disposable society' messages. Yes, its wasteful to buy unwanted things, and throw them away. But we have the things, and if we stop buying the economy tanks. What do we do?

Haga 8y ago

It's a Symptome of schizophrenia. Not everyone with it runs around as hobo rambling. Instead you have plans, a myriad of them, and each item you got is justified by its usage by the recombination disease.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago
While it can be a symptom of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, hoarding itself isn't really a symptom of schizophrenia when by itself - just like you can have hallucinations and delusions caused by mental illness without having schizophrenia.

0x8BADF00D 8y ago

Ultimately, it comes down to a lack of sexual intercourse. When one is sexually deprived, they will attempt to substitute sexual activity with something: whether it is accumulating goods, or overeating for example.

pravda 8y ago
Very Freudian! It all comes down to sex. Sex is why we gamble, sex is why we drink, sex is why women have babies!
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  When you don’t have a fulfilling sex life, it will make you go crazy. Anecdotally, I have seen this with both married, unmarried, single, in a relationship, etc. You substitute your sexual energy for another pursuit. See the concepts of lingam and yoni. If as a culture we could have a mature conversation about sex, you wouldn’t see these types of disorders.
- belorn 8y ago
  While the comment has been flag killed, the article did actually tangentially support that claim. > The psychological understanding is that objects are gathered in a futile attempt to fill emotional emptiness—piled up like a barricade to protect oneself against an uncertain future. Ie, a theory is that increased loneness and lack of emotional connections with other people causes a raise in hording disorder. In a uncertain future we either need social connections to protect against the unknown, or we substitute it by building up a defense layer through objects. It is a survivor strategy that can become maladaptive.
  - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
    Thanks for keeping an open mind. I’m not even sure why it was flag killed. Having open minded discussions (no pun intended) about how the mind works is beneficial to all. It is something I think about all the time, in order to better build the things I’m building.

bayesian_horse 8y ago

And how can hoarders actually be helped?

atomical 8y ago

Why is this page using 100% of CPU?

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
That seems unique to you. I'm not experiencing that, and I'm running vanilla chrome without an adblocker.

et-al 8y ago

No one's mentioned marketing? We're probably bombarded with more marketing than we ever have before. In addition, it's so easy to buy stuff with 1-click shopping with 2-day shipping. It's known that web sites want to be addictive for people, but it's so they can ultimately sell people something.

wink 8y ago
Not sure that's really a deciding factor I think, at least not in the majority. Not all hoarders buy all the stuff they get. They just sweep up stuff that's free or some of them just keep candy wrappers or old newspapers. Sure, if someone is easily wooed by marketing and likes (or feels pressed to) buy stuff, this can exacerbate the problem, but from all hoarding stories the only thing that matches this was "Oh, this mustard is really cheap, better buy the whole case of 48 glasses" which was then discovered years later in the basement...

superkuh 8y ago

The unstated premise is that there is a rise in hoarding and that hoarding is a disorder. As this very article states at the beginning it was only within the last 5 years that it has been recognized as a psychological disorder. It's just as likely to be removed again depending on the profits, or not, of those seeking to exploit the idea of hoarding being a disorder.

btmorex 8y ago
No idea if it's on the rise or not because it could just be reporting, but hoarding is a mental disorder no doubt. Watch an episode or two of Hoarders. People are literally breaking down for having to throw away a dirty piece of trash.
- usrusr 8y ago
  I can't think of a single healthy behavior that is not occasionally taken to an unhealthy extreme by people with a disorder. The term hoarding is problematic because it is lacking a clear line even more than other potentially pathological behaviors, there is absolutely no consensus where having some stuff that you don't exactly use daily ends and pathological hoarding begins. Even alcohol consumption seems clear-cut by comparison. Combined with the smugness of how self-congratulatory "minimalists" will look down on everybody who has slightly different standards than them, and the unfortunate coincidence that disorder (as in chaotic) shares a linguistic token with disorder (as in mental health) it makes it incredibly hard to have a meaningful discussion about the topic. (I write "minimalist" in quotes because far too many self-identifying minimalists are not minimal at all, they are just eagerly disposing to drive their consumerism to eleven, new and shiny every time)
  - Retric 8y ago
    The disorder line is always fairly clear cut for all mental issues. The question is if it interferes with daily life not of if it’s odd.
    - 8y ago

narrator 8y ago

I think there's just been a general decline in mental health. The suicide rate has been increasing steadily since 2000.

chillingeffect 8y ago

This is an epic talk on the psychology of clutter by a very subtly brilliant therapist. [0] I re-listen every few months and get new things out of it every time. Many of her points are in this article, but also many more and more deeply and personally contextualized. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4

danielrm26 8y ago

I think the simplest explanation goes like this: 1. Hoarding is addictive behavior. 2. The Opposite of Addiction is Connection (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-the-digital-age/201509/the-opposite-addiction-is-connection https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-the-...) 3. Because we currently have less connection, we have more addiction—and hoarding is one instantiation.

renholder 8y ago
>Because we currently have less connection, we have more addiction — and hoarding is one instantiation. This makes the most sense to me. Connection and attachment are correlated. If there's no connection or attachment, we'll - more than likely - attempt to replace this 'x' thing missing with 'y' tangible thing. Edit: I think the problem of society always needing an enemy to attack, with the ferocity the likes of which hasn't been seen in previous generations, is only part of the problem. I'm going to refer to Bill Hicks' closing speech to give a general synopsis around this[1]. [1] - https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU

RandomInteger4 8y ago

I'm not a hoarder; I just see the potential for a future use that I don't quite know of for these cardboard boxes and paper rolls. Never know when you'll need a lot of cardboard ...

gerbilly 8y ago
Get some gerbils, they love to chew up cardboard! It would be like one compulsive helping out another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A (Only joking people, don't buy pets unless you are ready to properly care for them from cradle to grave!)

dasanman 8y ago

Consumerism pops into my mind. People want more and more and at the same time are terrible at getting rid of things

dschuetz 8y ago

Funny enough, in the past days I was thinking about hoarding as a neurological disorder. It has similarities to keeping a lot of things in mind at the same time and re-iterate them over and over. The are quite a few mind-hoarders, as I call them, who basically hoard ideas and concepts to the point that they forget what is actually relevant here and now. Hoarding psychical objects might stem from the same cause inside the brain which causes the mind hoarding as well. Hence it can't be a psychological disorder alone.

KozmoNau7 8y ago

My mom is almost entirely unable to throw things away. As a consequence, my parents have boxes and boxes of all kinds of stuff stored, including some of my toys from 20+ years ago. They live in a rather big house, but it is starting to encroach on their living space, and it does prevent them from using some of their extra rooms for their original intent, such as a dedicated washing room, so they could move the washer/dryer out of their downstairs bathroom. Every time my dad and I try to bring up the subject of clearing all of that stuff away, she counters with claims like "but that's our winter clothes" or "as soon as I have the time", which never happens. I've talked to her about why she tends to accumulate stuff like that, and she thinks it's because her family didn't have much when she was growing up, and her mother was a semi-functioning alcoholic. She says they often experienced simply running out of basic things, and couldn't immediately afford to replace it. So she internalized a need to keep everything around, never throw out or give away anything that still works, and always have at least one spare in storage. They have three refrigerators (for three adults, my sister still lives at home), which are all stuffed full at all times. This leads to ~monthly rituals of cleaning out all the spoiled food, and then filling up the fridges again to repeat the cycle. When questioned on this behavior, my mom argues that they need to keep all the different spreads and stuff around at all times, because you never know what people might want to eat. We try to argue that it's perfectly OK to not have every single food you would possibly like to eat at any time available at all times, but she doesn't seem to want to agree.

gaius 8y ago

Minimalism is the ideology of the rich - you don’t need to keep stuff if you know you can simply buy it again next-day shipping. Keeping stuff “in case” it’s ever needed again is the normal behaviour of normal people!

C1sc0cat 8y ago
Really the rich in the UK are known for buying high quality stuff and wearing it for years Prince Charles has a favourite Barbour jacket that's 40 years old.
- jodrellblank 8y ago
  Is it definitely the same jacket - he only bought one originally and has never bought an identical one since?

acidtrucks 8y ago

For me, it was growing up with Sonic the hedgehog. I was trained that keeping as many rings as I could would ensure my survival.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
If Sonic had really trained you, you'd have learned a different lesson: you can survive anything if you can keep just one ring.

Phenomenit 8y ago

Is the inverse of this extreme minimalism?

tim333 8y ago

>What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder? Judging by the article taking something that's gone for ages without too many problems and recategorising it as a disorder.

doubleunplussed 8y ago
You must have never seen a hoarder's house. Look up pictures.
- tim333 8y ago
  My mum's something of a hoarder. It's never been a DSM issue though.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

Granted this is a layman's perspective, but it doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me. On the one hand we have rampant marketing pushing the idea that stuff will make us happy, and on the other we have society telling us that waste is dooming the planet. So we have significant pressures to a) acquire things and b) not throw them out.

darkpuma 8y ago
Yes, but those pressures are applied to everybody while only a relatively small percentage of the population becomes hoarders. There must be more to it.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  Some people emotionally bond with stuff just as readily as with puppies.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    I was a kid when I first encountered the home of a hoarder. My mother brought me there because she was dropping off schoolwork to one of her students (a year younger than me) that lived in the home. I think that was just an excuse, I think she was concerned for the child who lived there. What I remember most vividly was the pile of toilet paper cardboard tubes. The pile was taller than I was, and wider than I was tall. That wasn't even close to the worst, but it stood out because it must have represented decades of hoarding. It takes a long time to use that much toilet paper. That's not simple materialism. That's not loving your motorcycle like somebody loves a dog. It's a serious mental illness that shouldn't be taken lightly or brushed off.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  There's clearly some variability in how people respond to these pressures, but an overall increase in pressure would be expected to cause more people to exhibit the dysfunctional behavior.

Nasrudith 8y ago

The bit about hoarding not existing in the past except for gold was a real eye-roller. Stuff was expensive then so it wouldn't be abnormal and more readily pawnable. You could sell anything from old clothes to a dead horse or headless axe and get something of value from it. Virtually nothing was worthless.

lkrubner 8y ago

This describes the hoarders that I have actually known: "But researchers have found a possible link between hoarding and PTSD among Holocaust survivors, and late-onset hoarding has often been linked to loss or trauma." Of those I've known, all of them have had intense anxiety about their own mortality -- all of us have some anxiety about our death, but with hoarders that fear is close to the surface. I've had the impression that they hope to hold onto the past by holding onto physical objects from the past. If you keep a souvenir from a particular day, then it's as if that day has not yet ended, it will last forever.

Digory 8y ago
A comment on one episode of Hoarders stuck with me: "I'm saving all this for my grandkids." It was a mangled way of protecting him from death and the indifference of future generations. But all it takes is a visit to a local estate sale to realize no one wants 99.9% of this junk, even your descendants.

sethammons 8y ago

Couple of things. All it means being classified in the DSM is "now we can diagnose and bill for treatment." Another, many commenters here are saying "Hur de hur, I have a lot of stuff, I'm such a hoarder." I have to think they have not experienced hoarding. My wife's mom is a hoarder. Literal trash fills her home and she navigates through unsafe tunnels of newspaper, disguarded food, broken things she has a pulled from dumpsters, and animal feces between her couch and the restroom. She gets distressed at the thought of removing any of it. She might do something with that broken or rotten thing one day, and not in the hack something together way. Collectors, reusers/repurposers, and keeping things that can be legitimately used again are not hoarders. If the DSM definition includes them, it is only due to overly broad definitions to make billing for treatment easier. Take the definition of ADD; nearly every kid can fall into that definition when doing a homework assignment they don't like.

Pigo 8y ago
I like watching Hoarders because it motivates me enough to get up and clean my room Peterson-style. Lingering and non-useful junk feel like tiny weights in my mind, so its a relief when it's gone. When you watch the show you always end up seeing a rush of fear in their face when people start removing their junk, like they have some sort of emotional attachment to the garbage. There's a stark contrast between these people and people who've just been lazy for awhile.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  "... like they have some sort of emotional attachment to the garbage." They do. That's why they're hoarders. Everything they own represents a piece of their identity- their past (childhood memories, toys, etc), their present (current hobbies and interests), their future (belief that objects will be useful someday). Removing these objects is an attack on the person's identity- and calling it trash is calling their identity, hopes, and dreams trash. Severe hoarding is a serious mental illness.
germinalphrase 8y ago
I had an elderly neighbor that was a hoarder. We knew because of the rats (which were otherwise largely absent from that town). One day she went into the hospital for a routine surgery and her kids showed up with a dumpster. They simply cleaned out the house, exterminated, and bought her new furniture. Hadn’t seen anything like it before.

accnumnplus1 8y ago

Brexit.

wslh 8y ago

The article mentions divorce. I would say that you can be a hoarder but live with people that help you balance against hoarding. Beyond your partner, this is also true if you don't have a social life or don't live with other people. So, nowadays degrading social life (e.g. mobile phone addiction) could be a natural cause.

anjc 8y ago

I accept that it can be a disorder, but they don't say whether hoarding (or, 'organising' I think is more accurate) is just a natural human compulsion. From early childhood we seem to be drawn to collectible/hoardable/organisable items (baseball cards, Pogs, Pokémon, Barbies, etc). Maybe this hoarding disorder is a poor manifestation of a compulsion that we all exhibit in some way.

njharman 8y ago

The psychological industry inventing new disorders and diagnosing normal human behaviors as a disorder, something that needs to be fixed. https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_...

jointpdf 8y ago
No. Clinical hoarding disorder is not normal human behavior--it causes "significant distress and/or impairment of personal functioning", by definition. Same goes with any other mental disorder.

jointpdf 8y ago

I find the comments in this thread to be counterproductive (bordering on disturbing/dangerous). Trivializing/dismissing the existence of mental disorders based on uninformed viewpoints can cause harm to others, in that they can feel ostracized and become less likely to seek the help they need. Comments like this are along the same lines as 'everybody gets depressed--you just have to choose to be happy'. Depression is a frequently a severe and life-altering disease, and I hope everyone can recognize this sort of statement as absurd. Similarly, hoarding (as described in the article) is a cluster of persistent behaviors distinct from related disorders (like OCD). Like any cluster (esp. clusters in a high-dimensional space, like human behavior), the class membership is inherently fuzzy--everyone exists somewhere on the hoarding spectrum or OCD spectrum or ADD spectrum. But by definition very few (~6%, according to the link) people are close enough to the far side of the spectrum that it causes severe distress to themselves and others. Think of it (very loosely) like cancer--virtually everyone has some cancer cells in their body, but our protective systems are usually able to keep them in check before they run amok. But once they do, it undeniably becomes cancer. I don't really know how to say this in a better way, but trivializing or denying the existence of mental illness is cruel and reductive, and these sorts of attitudes tend to ricochet around. Please don't participate in doing so.

WhompingWindows 8y ago
As an ADHD researcher, I've found many commenters on HN to be ignorant and still highly opinionated about ADHD diagnosis and medication, which was my thesis topic. Even highly educated, very smart individuals are growing up with inherent biases against these mental illnesses which they do not know anything about except heresay and pseudo-scientific nonsense. A recent thread on ADHD brought these people out of the woodwork, and I received many downvotes for spreading my belief that the ADHD research community is not convinced of the over-diagnosis of ADHD, which many arm-chair experts seem to take as a given. It's simply good scientific behavior to not take this for granted, to do more studying, and yet numerous STEM experts have spouted their certainty that ADHD is overdiagnosed and we're drugging our poorly parented/educated kids into submission. I don't know much about the other mental health disorders, but I'd be willing to bet HN at large is not well-equipped to constructively discuss hoarding, OCD, or even depression/anxiety. Though, I will say I believe depression/anxiety get less stigmatized than OCD and ADHD, perhaps due to their increased prevalence and incidence in today's world.