Brian Explains: Hoarding

Stop Hoarding the Insanity

If you haven't seen any of the shows about hoarding, you owe it to yourself to watch one. The basic premise of every show is that the person who the show is about cannot let go of things. "Things" include both physical and emotional things. It is the emotional baggage that compels them to keep the physical things. In other words, they are psychologically damaged. In other other words, those people are nuts. This is the part of the show that you owe it to yourself to watch. You feel much better about yourself because these people are so much worse than you.

Just as I have a little OCD, I think I exhibit some of the tendencies of those who hoard. My wife and I recently went through our future family room to clear it out so we could actually use it someday. We were definitely hoarders in that room. Part of the definition of a hoarder is having to clear a path through your stuff so you can walk. We fit that definition. Most of the items were junk that we just threw out. We still need to go through the rest of it and make more room in the room in order to consider it a room we would use as a functional room. Do you room what I’m saying?

When I was a kid, I would save the boxes from my toys. I still have some of the boxes and many of the toys. I understand why people want to keep objects that mean something to them. I’ve gone through the boxes of my childhood memories and had hours of reminiscing about the toys and other objects that took me right back to those more innocent and simpler times. Memories are merely the objects of your mind. You can store as many objects as can fit in your head and you don’t have to create a walking path. When I look at the objects of my childhood, I don’t think about the objects themselves. I think about the memories that those objects bring up in my mind. I can throw away the physical objects easily, but it would take one of those memory erasers from Men in Black to lose my memories.

My dad was a definite hoarder. He would save coffee cans, tissue boxes, toilet paper centers, Styrofoam, Atari 2600 video game consoles and games, enough 3-½ inch floppy disks to tile a roof, and boxes of assorted paper. He had reasons in his mind for keeping all of these objects. Admittedly, he would at some point actually use many of the objects he kept. One of my friends asked my dad if he had a couple coffee cans to use as drums in a percussive composition we were working on. My dad disappeared for a couple minutes and came back with 10-15 various sizes of coffee cans. It was a proud day for my dad. All the years he spent collecting those coffee cans was worth it. When we had to clear out my parents’ house, I had to clean out all of these objects. If nothing else, don’t become a hoarder for your children’s sake.

Hoarding is not something that is apparent to people unless they visit the hoarder’s house. It is a hidden disease like alcoholism. Only family and close friends know about what goes on behind the front door of their house. If your parents or other family members are hoarders, go to them now before it gets too late. If you wait too long, you are going to be the one who has to clean up after them. If you are the hoarder yourself, start throwing crap away now before it is too late.