[TheDude]

Simon Hattenstone on the life of Gordon Stewart, an extreme hoarder | Society | The Guardian

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')ore stories crop up in the papers about lonely people dying alone, surrounded by their own rubbish. In the same month Stewart dies, we learn about Tony Baxter, 85, from Pinner, who emptied his neighbours' rubbish into his home each week; Joan Cunnane, 77, who was crushed in her Stockport home under 16 years' worth of unopened goods she had bought; and 89-year-old Harold Carr, who hoarded mountains of memorabilia, including a 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante, one of only 17 ever made, which sold for £3.2m at Bonhams' RetroMobile auction in Paris last month. Recently, research carried out by Hammonds Furniture concluded that Britain was a nation of hoarders - the average person accumulates more than a tonne of unwanted stuff, and a quarter of the population said they had been forced to stop using a room because it was so full of stored possessions.

Of course, Gordon Stewart wasn't alone. His hobby/obsession/condition is common enough to have a number of names: compulsive hoarding syndrome, disposophobia, Diogenes syndrome, Collyer brothers syndrome. The disposophobia website states that "disposophobics are generally very smart people who can't, don't or won't make fast value judgments about their 'stuff', so their solution is to keep everything". The Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, are the most famous disposophobics in history - films have been made about them and books written. They were born in the 1880s, the sons of an eminent Manhattan gynaecologist. After university, they started to hoard and withdrew from the world. The more I find out about them, the more eerie I find the comparisons with Stewart: like him, they collected books and newspapers, and went on from there. Like him, they couldn't, or wouldn't, let anyone in, stacked stuff from floor to ceiling and burrowed their way through tunnels. Like him, they had long hair and are thought to have died of malnutrition.

[lateStarter]

I've been in some of their houses. I try not to be judgemental - As long as the stink is not too bad (hopefully not hoarding unwashed tuna-fish tins!)... My father was a bit of a hoarder, but in a practical sense. He never threw anything out, before taking it completely apart and saving all the usefull parts. As a result, I have bins (labeled) of screws, nails, washers, cotter pins, rivets, nuts, bolts, etc, etc... and the tools to use them. All in all, I think it was a nice parting gift...

[vision-master]

My place is loaded with 'stuff'.

[JJ]

fifteen years married to a filipina who grew up in abject poverty. we throw virtually nothing away. Conversely, we almost always have something we *need*... I did draw the line with the rooms full off empty boxes.

[Cloud9]

Beer, Beans, Bullets, when does one ever have enough?

[Denny]

My parents grew up in the Depression. It amazed me when I helped my father move to the retirement home to find all kinds of low value stuff stored up, especially old glass jars. I actually had to pay to get rid of this at the recycling yard, they have zero value it seems these days.

[threadbear]

Hoarding disgusts me. Enough already. Throw it out. I've lived with 2 men who hoarded and had a roommate who, I'm sure, had all her navel lint filed neatly somewhere beneath between or on top of all of her odd collections.

She saved orange peels, plastic vegetable bags, collected ash trays, (she didn't smoke) and almost had a nervous breakdown when I threw out my husband's 25 year old sweaters that he hadn't worn for a couple of decades. Seriously. She told me she became extremely frightened of me, after that and that I was liable to "do anything". Like getting rid of your junk is the gateway drug that leads directly to murder.

Everytime she went to a second hand store she'd come home laden down with the crap a rational person had disposed of.

By the time she left, I wanted to strangle her. I'm not going to lie. She introduced that much chaos into my life and it could all have been avoided if she had simply hit the OFF switch.

[Sixstrings]

Quite a story, the Collyer brothers. They had money, but didn't pay their bills. When the police came to evict them, they couldn't break through all the junk. Rather than see the cops hack their way through all the precious junk, the brothers just wrote a check, paying the mortgage in full, and ordered the cops to leave them alone.

It's amazing, to think of two men living so isolated for decade after decade, in such a large city.

wikipedia:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')n April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the body of Langley Collyer just ten feet from where Homer died. His partially decomposed body was being eaten by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers had covered his body.

Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later. The stench detected on the street had been emanating from Langley, the younger brother.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', ' ')it could all have been avoided if she had simply hit the OFF switch.

[Ainan]

Yeah... I'm a teenie weenie bit of a hoarder myself...

However after several years my mother has beaten most of it out of me and I'm only allowed to hoard books now.

Surffice to say I have stuffed books everywhere in my family home. In every room... even the bathroom. At the moment I'm living in Germany which has been great, only brought 30 odd books in the last 9 months, since it's so expensive to get them home. I won't ever finish them all, actually I have a list of books I MUST read before I die. It's only has 124 titles! I've been hard on myself.

I do miss my collection of rocks I found with holes in them...

[WildRose]

My husband hoards stuff, as I've mentioned in at least one other thread here. The stuff he collects is potentially useful (not orange peels or tuna fish cans, thankfully!) but it's just too much. We can't walk through our garage. He's very good with small engine mechanics, so we'll end up with four or five lawnmowers or chainsaws or a few compressors that need parts and repair, and they'll sit in the garage until he gets around to it, which can take a long time. Then he tries to find buyers for them, or he'll give one to someone who has need, which is a good thing. But he also has pails and pails of hardware and old parts, and he picks up old bikes and looks for giveaway items at garage sales, etc. and brings them home. Our basement also has a lot of old stuff that needs to go, in my opinion. I like having space, and making good use of space. We don't have a large home, so it's a bit of a problem. Hubby is a hardworking guy and he's intelligent, he just has a hard time parting with anything that he thinks he might "need" sometime.

[medicvet]

My mother has that to some extent. It has always been very difficult for her to throw anything away, including receipts for bills paid 20 years ago, magazines from 10 years ago, a cracked 'teacher of the year mug' from 5 years ago, and so on. At least she doesn't go to many yard sales or continue to the point to where you can't see floor in the house, but there are twenty or thirty big plastic tubs just filled with books, magazines, and papers, and completely and totally disorganized.

I think the fact that she left home at 16 with nothing but the clothes on her back, and during a messy divorce nearly lost everytning she had again might have caused to her have it, but she could have it so much worse than it is. At least you can walk in and other than plastic tubs in odd places, and papers on every flat surface, the place looks pretty normal.

I am so concerned of overdoing it myself that I go through all my papers at least oncea year and junk a bunch of useless stuff that has managed to accumulate in desk drawers and around the enterntainment center and areas like that. In all the years of doing it have never accidentally lost or thrown away anything of value. I think. I hope...

well at least I'm not as bad as my mom!

[ReverseEngineer]

My hoarding these days is involved with stuff I don't think will be easy to get in the future, but which I see value in. Much of it I don't use in day to day living. An example would be a "Magic Bullet" Blending device. Cost me $70, it still sits in its box. I don't blend up anything. However, I really don't like the concept of eating Earthworms whole, I think I could stomach them better if i blended them up into burgers and made patties out of them and BBQ them. So I bought a Magic Bullet for this eventuality.

I also Hoard Stoves that work with different fuels. I have burners that will work with Propane, Kerosene, Sterno, and of course Unleaded Gasoline. Most of them still sit in their original packaging. I hoard Computers. I have 3 laptops all loaded up with software just in case my current one craps out on me.

I am a big Cranberry Juice drinker. I don't throw out any of the Cranberry Juice containers anymore, now I refill them with Water when the Cranberry Juice is done, so I have Numerous 1 Gallon Containers of Water in case the pumps stop working and I need fresh water to cook with. 50 maybe now? I leave room so if they freeze the container doesn't burst.

I also hoard Tools, especially small portable hand tools. A favorite are Hobo tools with a Fork, Knife and Spoon. I have about a half dozen of these still in original Blister Packs. Your final eating tool, everybody should have one I think they will be a good trade item.

I prefer Glass Jars to Plastic ones, and when I buy something in the grocery I will buy stuff in glass before I will buy in plastic even though the price is more. I figure Glass Jars and bottles I can use for Canning. I also have a couple of pressure cookers to do canning with, also in original packaging because I don't do any canning

Absolutely, if TS DOES NOT HTF, I am gonna fill a dumpster at least with all this shit. However,you just cannot dispose of a good Glass Jar. Could YOU make a Glass Jar? I can't make a Glass Jar, especially not one with a top that will seal airtight.

OK, maybe I am psycho. Whatever. I'd rather be psyco and HAVE a jar then be sane and NOT have a jar to can with when TSHTF.

Reverse Engineer

[Pops]

On the other hand there are people who keep all their worldly possessions mobile and handy in a shopping cart. I don't think either end of the scale is very well adjusted.

I think you could use the Pentagon's H.O.A.R.D. Scale (Hoarding, Organizing, Acquiring, Rumsfeld Defense) to judge your hoarder quotient:

1. There are things we hoard 'cus we know exactly why we'll need them, like Pork n Beans...

2. There are also things we hoard 'cus we know we'll need them, just not exactly what for, like hardware, tools...

3. But then there is everything else we hoard simply 'cus there is no way to know if we don't know if we'll need them or not, empty tuna cans, etc.

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing