To ask how people get to be hoarders?

[drspouse]

Watching Sort your Life Out - always makes me feel a little better about our slightly messy house.
I know people on here who've lived with hoarders as partners or parents and those who've tried to help them, and I've heard people also say it's really hard to treat.
Does anyone know how this all happens, are people "just like that" or is there a trigger? Why is it so hard to treat? I know anxiety is fairly well treated these days and OCD can be if people engage with help, is hoarding worse and if so why?

This is exactly me! I have sympathy but also am fascinated/can't get my head around it because I would pretty much live in an empty house if I could 😅

Bereavement is very often a trigger - not wanting/being able emotionally to let go of the person who has died. 20 years ago this was a common theme on How Clean is Your House? People who were overwhelmed by grief and who hoarded to the extent they couldn't see how to resolve things.

I have a predisposition to hoarding. My Dad was a hoarder. My Mum is a hoarder. And my Uncle never threw anything away. I mean nothing. We are just clearing his house now (not rubbish, just items). I rarely buy things for myself, beyond food. And do have that, oh that could be repurposed, it would be a waste to throw it mentality. Also I don't see the bin as a magic place that my things go to and vanish. I imagine them languishing in a landfill. The best I can do is try and recycle items through a charity shop. I have collected computers, bike parts, and stuff for garden projects. I still can't move for stuff! I do collect rubbish too, for future building projects... At the same time I have some kind of repulsion of plastic, hate having it around me. Go figure. Oh and I think it started when I actually had somewhere to put stuff. Everything I owned would once fit in a car. Now it gives me night sweats thinking about moving.

@bigkahunaburger I would be extremely interested in your source material on this part of your masters. Can you cite the authors please?

We massively lack actual H/D skilled therapists as well as the money and time needed to be invested in them, which means we send most people on 6 weeks of IAPT with general therapists at best, but still call the condition hard to treat. (not saying it isn't, just question how we measure these things)

There are often visible overlaps with OCD. For a long time one of the reasons H/D was so intractable to treat, was because it was considered a sub section of OCD, so OCD theories on treatment where used. They proved almost totally ineffective to treat H/D, which added to the idea it couldn't be treated.
(We finally get a separate classification in DSM 5 but it continued to focus on chaotic hoarding that might affect others.)

We have also for a very long time tried to call 'symptom reduction,' cure, and based how well a person was doing on what their home looked like, leading to the idea that a cleaned out home meant the person was 'cured' and when it filled back up, they had 'relapsed.'

I hesitate to use the term OCD about myself as I have no diagnosis, and it seems unfair to those who have fought to be diagnosed, but I was washing all incoming shopping, and wearing latex gloves outdoors, long before Covid, alongside huge cleaning rituals.
I put it down to a direct rebellion/result of having grown up in a squalor hoard.(as well as other dirty environments I'd had no control in)
I've actually overcome the worst of the OTT cleaning, slowly but surely on my own, as part of working on myself and how 'my' H/D manifests.

...the person commonly will be extremely tidy and have OCD in their tendencies towards order, cleanliness and hygiene. But then it starts to spill over because they simply cant maintain that. They simply cannot control their environment that much - things spill, things get lost, etc - and that is when the hoarding begins - as a form of OCD in that it is their way to maintain control. (my underlining)

Some concern that you have been taught to recognize hoarding incorrectly.

For organized hoarders (I am one) the hoarding doesn't begin as a result of being unable to maintain a current overfull environment.
Many of us entirely do. Neatly, cleanly, and with good living space. Some to a point of warehousing and spread sheets. It's still hoarding, and causes those suffering it huge problems. We clean and disinfect every spill, and haven't sunk to chaos, mess or dirt, yet we are hoarding huge numbers of items (often painfully) tidily. Not all with H/D continue acquisition, for some it is a phase.
Yes it is connected to control in one way or another.
But, it's important to note that hoarding doesn't begin, when people with more stuff than they can comfortably house, can't keep it in good order. It gets messy and problematic for all when that happens, but the idea that those of us who can do it tidily only begin to become hoarders if it subsequently gets messy, isn't correct.

There's a book written by a woman whose mother was a hoarder, but she also looks at some of the wider reasons why people hoard and it is all of these and more - she talks about ADHD too. It's called The Life of Stuff

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Stuff-Possessions-obsessions-behind/dp/1784163309/ref=sr_1_1?crid=V222JZMR66NS&keywords=life+of+stuff&qid=1655281085&s=books&sprefix=life+of+stuff%2Cstripbooks%2C58&sr=1-1

@Elleherd interesting note about organised hoarding. My Mum recognises she has a problem, but she has maxed out her house. It is totally organised. She lost her partner, all his stuff was soon eradicated which is slightly odd and his space was soon reworked to fit the organised hoard. Now like I say I am a hoarder, but... I am somewhat limited with space. No garage, no shed, no basement. Hence living with my stuff. My family would look and say, you need to get rid. While one has a double garage stuffed to the max, and the other has a garage and two sheds and a conservatory maxed out.

After clearing up after a hoarders. When they passed. I'm all too aware of stuff. And do acquire/inherit a little. It kind of keeps me in check. But I do long for the day I can buy a few of my own items.

Interesting thread. The only proof there is of me ever having been a child is a handful of photos. We moved a lot and for each move, more got thrown away. I haven't become a hoarder, in fact I'm more the other way. My brother, on the other hand, keeps all sorts of random items and really struggles to throw things away. If it wasn't for his wife keeping on top of things, I think their house would quickly get filled with stuff.

MIL is a hoarder not in filthy way but she has too much stuff in orderly piles of boxes mainly. She keeps newspaper clippings and pieces of paper and has stacks of them. She also used to record lots of radio 4 programmes on tape. She has kept loads of her parents stuff and they died before I met DH, her Father died about 40 years ago. DH attempted to assist her last year and one of her 3 large sheds did get sorted out but it took just over a week. She also has a large garage, these spaces are floor to ceiling stuffed and quite dangerous to try and pull stuff out.

I avoid going to her house as it’s just awful to be in. You have to move stuff just to make a cup of tea often. She only has her draining board and sink not covered in stuff.

If a kid or animal disappointed her (usually by growing past the only stage she had interest in, the newborn one) she could always get herself another better one until she'd chased away their fathers because she didn't want to share her property or she just couldn't be arsed to provide it with food or veterinary care.

The Stuff (which was great, it sparkled or shone or just never changed) meant she could control the disappointing/inadequate/unsatisfactory ones physically, block them out from her mind, prevent anybody noticing the neglect and abuse, make sure nobody could come round and see the injuries and dirt, give her excuses to rage at them for existing. And once the Stuff wasn't so sparkly and new, she could always buy more to make the unwanted beings fade further into the background.

She had a perfectly adequate, caring and non abusive childhood.

Stuff was just better than bothering with living things that weren't babies.

My FIL is one and it was triggered after his mother died. He didn’t want to get rid of her stuff and it just spiralled from there. Now, you go to his place and you can only open the front door about 8 inches or so, you kind of have to shimmy in sideways. There’s stuff literally piled everywhere, it’s cold, damp and smells musty. We’ve got 4 kids and none of them will go there, not that there’s anywhere to sit anyway.

@DetectiveSleuth I think MIL was probably made far worse by her parents dying. She used to ask her Mothers opinion on everything, quite a dominant woman according to DH. MIL really struggles to make decisions about anything ever. She is academically gifted, speaks a few languages but just can't decide anything ever.

The one person I know who is a full on hoarder (as in house is pretty much uninhabitable) was orphaned at a very young age and they went to live with a relative who immediately chucked all their possessions on a fire saying you won't need that stuff anymore. Very sad but the hoarding has ruined their life.

In some cases I expect it creeps up on you, perpetuated by buying new, things you already have but can't see?

From family experience, declining health (so often occuring at old age) will be the tripping point between a person being naturally cluttery and hoardy, but keeping it focused and within some functional boundaries (rooms for "best" or guests, zones to keep free) and spiralling into chaos.

It would be interesting if there are specific trends in the current generation of old people who had childhoods indoctrined with WW2 rationing legacy and its slow removal through the 1940s and into the 1950s. Then there's the people who did go through war-based trauma through being bombed out (or the very real fear of), bereavements, instability and traumatised family returning after the war.

They were in the first cohort to go through mass consumerist affluence where stuff became more affordable and accessible. That's not to say they're free from money issues; many achieved financial stability in middle age, or it may just be a relative shift compared to the living standards of their youth, but either way their generational values are poorly equipped to deal with a world of built-in obsolescence and cheap & cheerful fast fashion and novelty goods. Saving things for the next generation made sense when things were crafted and expensive. Mending things made sense when items were more durable and built to be fixable.

Hoarding disorder is when the desire to hold on defies rational logic. When things are broken, out of use, of no value, in poor condition and hold a very exagerated value to the beholder. When there's fear about the consequences of letting go. DM will not let go of any papers with personal details on because it will lead to fraud (never mind that those details are often avaliable in other ways such as electoral roll). You can't clear out the fashion magazines because she hasn't read an article or a horoscope yet... never mind that it's 33 years out of date. The house is rammed with broken furniture (I can store papers in that broken cabinet... that sofa is ok if you sit on that end...) but impulse furniture still comes in (usually friends' elderly parents clearances and charity shops... waste not want not)

Being raised in a family where organisation skills weren't taught (TBH I don't think she had them to pass on, and her mother just didn't have the volume of stuff to hit functional crisis point) it's been adulthood before I've manually learned to deal with stuff and how to let go. I am naturally cluttery and sentimental but was raised that way. I wasn't allowed to clear out unwanted hand-me-downs left behind by older family who'd moved on. However, I do need visuals to function (what unproductive hell is a "clean desk policy" when an empty desk is an empty mind with annoying earworms from 3 days earlier to fill in the void of being purposeful- I need to see what I'm doing and have what I need in reach)

Tidying/ organising/ cleaning are functional skills that need to be learnt but society has a huge blackspot for recognising them. We spend ££££ on driving lessons and don't expect 17yos to be competent drivers based on life experience observing as a passenger. There's cookery books, TV shows and plentiful articles on how to cook. But generally maintaining a functional home has had very little media attention until recent years (probably a very strong feminist and outsourcing angle on that). That's before any ND issues or trauma enter the mix, so it's very easy for generational patterns to repeat. Social media has been a godsend for sharing a range of effective strategies.

Hoarding disorder is a symptom of anxieties and control issues and just ploughing in to clear out is the equivilent of force feeding an anorexic person to "cure" their anorexia. It's the psychology of the possession and retention, not the scale that's the disorder.

SYLO tends to be the cluttery, struggling to keep up with life end of the range where there is still logical processes going on. There's a significant proportion of ND families on it. People with the full-blown disorder wouldn't cope with the format and would spend half the time in the warehouse justifying the need to keep clearly worthless items such as dusty mixed herbs from 2011.

Interestingly the demographic is very much families, and they haven't really done beyond empty nest phase into full old age.

It's fascinating.

My dh is a mild hoarder. Not to the extremes that you see, but he does collect rubbish and finds it very difficult to part with things. We've got into some right situations in the loft and in the garage and even in the house. He's even rescued things from the bin that I've thrown away.

There is no childhood trauma, no poverty. He grew up in a fairly wealthy comfortable home with two lovely parents. His childhood home was lovely and tidy and normal.

My mum and sister gave hoarding tendencies. You could definitely correlate that to trauma and poverty.

I'm the complete opposite, I'm absolutely brutal when it comes to getting rid of things. I grew up in poverty and in a messy cluttered house and I cannot stand clutter.

SLYO is aspirational and like all these programmes is 'cast' incredibly carefully to create a warm upbeat experience. They're not going to take on long term hoarding or lonely old people or distressing intractable situations. I don't think they should have to tbh, it's not a social service.

Does anyone remember Stacey Solomon when she first became famous with her singing? She used to speak in quite a specific way which made her sound dim. I reckon she was told to put that on by her manager. She's not in any way dim. She's got very good emotional intelligence in the way she speaks to people and she's done well for herself.
Stacey Dooley is another one who I think is underestimated because of her accent but she has the emotional intelligence to be able to speak to absolutely anyone and be liked by them.

I thought the family this week were lovely. A really good example of a blended family. I feel sorry for whichever woman has ended up with the mum's ex husband and might not feel able to leave due to cultural reasons.

My cousin was an extreme Mr Trebus type of hoarder & house clearers took 10 truckloads of hoard out of his modest flat. He told me he had depression plus other learning disabilities but was extremely intelligent. His parents were very mean to him as a child & would give him things only to take them away so he didn't have the usual childhood accoutrements. When his ex wife & friends passed away the hoarding became very extreme & he was avoidant of all intervention due to fear of being institutionalized.

@BogRollBOGOF
Thank you for that thoughtful and informative reply 🙂

I'd probably be classed as a hoarder, but not a bad one. I don't see a problem with it. With some people it's out of control, and they don't want to be that way.

I have friends who have very minimalist and tidy homes. I'd hate to live like that. I like my stuff.

Fear of not having something you need.
Growing up we never had much and nothing ever got replaced really. It wasn't as if we were poor, my mum just didn't prioritise nice things. If a kettle still boiled water but had a big chip in the handle, it wasn't replaced. We just used a kettle with a broken handle. She wouldn't throw out our old mismatched tatty cutlery when she got bought a beautiful new set. Mismatched plates, old hi fi cabinets etc were all kept and still is. She's not poor but she is fucking cheap. And being raised that way, I have struggled to feel okay with throwing things out too. I thankfully don't really hoard much but I do have boxes and boxes of stuff in storage in a farm building of my mum's. It's even got things in from when I moved out at 16 (I'm 43) like the remnants of my dinner plates set or some champagne glasses I was bought for my wedding but would never use. My brain says, they're usable items, why would I throw them? What if I need them one day?

From there it's only a small step into not throwing rubbish out. Or seeing something someone else is disposing of and you thinking that binning it is wasteful.

I do hoard food though. My kitchen has enough to see me through the apocalypse. My narcissist mum never regularly bought food/made dinner unless she was hungry once my sister and I were over 11 years old or so. We both got jobs at 11 and 12 and had to buy our own if mum didn't have anything in and she had eaten a proper meal at work. I have cupboards full for my children and any jobs they have is money for them to keep (with a caveat that they save 50% for uni/after high school) and we pay for everything they want/need. I hoard food and I'm happy to do so. My children will not be eating a bowl of microwaved frozen peas for dinner like I did.

Yep, and as much as it comforts them, it also really depresses them, they are crushed under the weight of it. My mum only woke up to it a few years before she died as an old woman, and wanted rid of it all. It's such a damaging condition

Deprivation of something, maybe food, clothes, actual poverty or love.

Keeping things can be protective.

I thinks easier to do than you might think. Sometimes people actually do it to isolate themselves, and it is sign of major depression.

as a society we are still feeling the impacts of generational trauma from WW2 and people who were brought up by parents who lived through the war and rationing is a big factor.

of course other traumas, loneliness, and attaching emotions to objects, particularly memories or having obsessions that bring objects (books papers etc)