Calling all hoarders out there......why?

[muriel76]

My DH is a bit of a hoarder. Some of his family are the same but particularly his mum, she seems to keep everything. They both like to also display pointless things ie books that will never be/never have been read etc.

Don't get me wrong, it is not a big deal or anything but I do want to understand why. It's hard to understand as my mum is the complete opposite and I am the same. DH and I have agreed to give the house (another!) big clear out and it would help me to hear a hoarder's view!

(Obviously I have talked with him about it many times BTW, I am just looking for other people's more neutral insights)

Thanks for any replies.

I really don't know why but I become very emotionally attached to things and DD (5) is turning out the same. She is regularly in tears if something needs to be binned - this morning it was a cup that is broken. We both drive DH distracted and I hate clutter myself but can't seem to get past it.

Sorry, no real help at all.

Well I'm like you, an anti hoarder and a ruthless chucker outer. I dont see emotional meaning in 'things' (although conversely I LOVE shopping)

My H willl keep ticket stubs for things he's been to, football programmes he NEVER refersback to, books he wil never re read. I dont geddit eithr, but its my lifes mission to help him with his 'problem'

Warning though- lots of Mners feel getting rid of books is on a par with leaving your children out for the dustaman

Thanks for the replies and for the warning Cyb! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE books and always have one on the go. I read loads, but my books go to the charity shops and then I swap for some more......DH reads the paper and magazines but likes to display Oliver Twist etc in the book shelf because it's a classic and he's had it for years! Alongside some old records although record player is under our bed and unplugged!!

I am a hoarder! Things might come in useful one day, or they remind me of something or someone nice, and that doesn't leave much over!

Ps LilRedWg, funny you say you hate clutter cos my DH says he does too and get can quite cross about it!

This thread just reminds me of my MIL and is therefore making me angry.

I get too emotionally attached to a lot of things, and find it hard to part with other seemingly useless tat because a small part of me says that in a few decades it will be vintage and worth something :o Case in point, the three rare boy My Little Ponies in my attic collection of childhood toys. Sold for a total of almost £90 a few years ago, and the money went directly towards Christmas that year.
I have bags of clothes that no longer fit from my teens/early twenties for my DDs to look through in years to come. Some nice things in there!

My H likes to show what kind of personality he has through the stuff he keeps and displays, unlike me, who actually TALKS to let people know what I'm like

My FIL is terrible. He has a very large house so you never really see all the crap he keeps, but wander into one of his utility rooms and you're swamped by broken toasters, 35 year old cans of paint, magazines etc. MIL believes having a very frugal childhood has made him this way. Weirdly my dad grew up super poor too, but he can't abide any hoarding whatsoever.

I think hoarding broken stuff and not being able to walk through rooms properly because of all the crap can show hoarder has some issues other than just hanging onto stuff 'in case'

Its different to sentimental keeping

[watching to discover why I am like this]

My FIL is like this. I actually think he's mentally ill. The dining room has no less than three dead PCs and monitors (despite the fact he's never used a computer in his life), there are shelves floor to ceiling with VHS tapes with stuff taped off the TV, and in the last couple of years he's moved to recording from TV to DVD. Bought an expensive DVD recorder for the very purpose. I guarantee he's never re-watched a single thing.

Have no idea why he does it, other than he's a bloody weirdo

@ turd in a ziplock bag!

My dad is a hoarder and I dread dread dread clearing out his attic. He wants DB and me to do it now, but it's going to have to wait til he's dead because if he's kept the staff handbook from his first civil service management job c.1974 he presumably has some emotional attachment to it and would not be pleased to see me toss it in a skip.

OMG this could not have come at a more fitting time! I am literally sitting in my pants and bra (too hot! Aggravated!) surrounded by all the stuff Ihave tipped out of various boxes/bags/little hidden piles from every shelf and cupboard in our house, trying to 'sort things out' and 'throw things away' (you will notice my commitment by the use of 'these')

I am such a hoarder! Keep every card, ticket stub, train ticket (I know, I know) not to mention all the shitty 'You are not only a daughter, but a friend' magnets I would NEVER display.

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHY???!

I do need to be surrounded by my things, and I totally get the DH who displays his personality around the house, but I also feel a horrible guilt about this...

SO I have decided to compromise. This stuff is supposed to make me feel secure, not totally disorganised and ovewhelmed. I have bought a lot of lovely boxes and labelled them Cards, Tickets, Diaries, Hotel Toiletries (I coud open an entire salon for little people), etc.

That's the best DH is going to get, I'm afraid

In answer to your question, tough, I love 'finding' things from the past (all sentimental) and have a beat-all argument of 'for the grandchildren!'

PS I don't even have children

I have to be careful not to get like this.

Think in my case it's because we've had quite a few child deaths in the family, I find it difficult to part with anything of the dcs in case it's the last thing they do, I have to be very brutal and things are either displayed or binned.

I remember when my granny died we found a some little boys clothes amongst all her hoard piles in the house, we think they were her little boys who died when he was 4. He just stopped breathing when she was giving him a bath.

Gosh some of these stories make me panic and want to chuck the contents of my house in a skip!! Others are really sad and puzzling, there is obviously a whole range of reasons....

I am a sentimental hoarder so I have several memory boxes. One for each of the kids with atleast one piece of artwork per year of their age, their baptism certificates (for the younger ones), the champagne corks from my first post-birth drink where we drank to them, you get the idea. Then I have my personal boxes with meaningful things in from friends and family and my wedding. I am ruthless chucker out of everything else except books, even books I cant stand or have been given and will never read!

DH on the other hand is the original "it might come in handy" hoarder and it drives me mad. To be fair to him, he lived alone, or in a house share when he owned the house, for 25 years before he lived with me. So he was used to being able to hoard and/or display his crap precious posessions. Such as his huge batman figure and batmobile collection, his DVDS (of which he has over 2000), his comics etc.

I have made some headway in that he has put the comics in storage and the batman collections are on top of the DVD shelves so out of my line of sight! And he now has less than half of the tshirts he had when he moved in and has never noticed! Some would say I shouldnt get rid of his stuff without telling him but frankly when a man has 16 plain black tshirts, I think I can safely charity shop 10 of them with no guilt!

Gawd not only is my mother a dyed-in-the-wool hoarder( I blame the fact she was a child in the war so things were scarce) but she deliberately goes out and buys more crap.

Clocks-ugly little clocks -from charity shops.Every flippin time she went out she would phone me " I've bought a clock". She had over 120, every surface covered in them. Now she has 40 which is still excessive but on the right track.
She collected tea-pots, cruet sets, plants, cookbooks.But not nice ones.Just any old tat people were getting rid of.
When she went through her plant phase there were 4 ugly triffids in the lounge.Coffee table covered with cuttings in jars of water.

And in the pantry, food so out of date. She has curry powder that her mother had.

My DH keeps boxes and manuals (good idea you say) but I found things relating to kettles and toasters we haven't got and for cars we don't have anymore (of of which was written off so doesn't need its receipt for its service)

I hoard and it was only when my friend ttold me it was getting out of hand that I improved. I love "things" and collect vintage stuff....lots of it. I may but something because something about it reminds me of someone or sometime speacial...and then the itme becomes the person or the time and it encapsulates my emotions.

I personify things.

I have improved a lot though.

LOTF
Being a war-child does seem to be a common factor in hoarders of a certain age. My Aunty isnt a hoarder but she didnt have a particularly hard war (thanks, she since realised, to massive sacrifices my Grandma made) but her husband did. He is a serious hoarder, food and clothes being a particular issue because he was always hungry and always short of clothes.

I think we can all understand the concept of taking anything that is being given away when a person has known real hardship. Its people like my DH that have never gone without their whole life that I dont understand!

That said, he is the eldest of a large family from a non-demonstrative mother who expected him to give far more than he was given so perhaps there are more than one kind of hardship? Hmmm, I'm thinking hard now.....

DH is a hoarder of anything 'that might come in useful' (in his eyes!), whereas I'm a sentimental hoarder. We have a flat roofed house - no attic - which means limited space to store stuff. We're having a major clear out at the moment because we're revamping DS's bedroom, including changing the furniture, and some Xmas decorations and other old shite is stored in there - along with all DS's stuff.

I tried to approach it calmly and methodically - sort out what needs to be kept/binned/taken to charity shop or car boot - but it's like world war 3! We just can't agree on what should stay or go. I'm the one that's keeping stuff for sentimental reasons but in reality what's the point? I'm the only one that's going to get it out and look at it - DH & DS don't give a monkey's.

Pretty much everything is now out of DS's room but you can't move in the spare room as it's covered in the stuff that I'm supposed to be taking to a car boot sale on Sunday, plus I've (secretly) stashed a load of other stuff in my wardrobe, so that needs sorting out too now - arghhhh!!

My mum hoards - she has a 4 bedroomed detached house with a garage all to herself and I can barely park my pram in the garage it's so full, only one bedroom actually has a bed that you can sleep on (in my old bedroom), she even still has the boiler for my DB & my's nappies and I was out of nappies in 1982. Front room is immaculately tidy though (must keep up appearances).

Admittedly I know why she hoards, a few years after her mother died (she died 10 days after moving across the UK when my mum was 10) her dad remarried. The new wife didn't want his children to move in with her children so my Great-Aunt stepped in and said she would have my mum and her older sister but they weren't allowed to bring many belongings (all my mum's clothes fitted in a dolls suitcase) and the rest of everything they owned was set fire to in the back garden and the children all had to watch.

They were also so poor before the marriage (my grandad gave most of his wages to NW) so did things like scrumping and stealing slag from vicarage next door's coal shed just for a bit of food and some heat.

My dad also did something similar to my mum after she moved in with him (gave almost all of her possessions away as they might remind her of her first DH). She cannot throw things away now and the most she puts out a week in rubbish is one carrier bag, if it's a 'good' week she'll leave it as she hasn't filled up her pedal bin in the kitchen (12" one).

I'm a bit like her (have OCD) but I am trying to get better. I don't want the children to not be able to move around the house just because of me!