I'm not a full on hoarder, but we do have more stuff than we can keep tidy. Things get moved from one place to another. I do go through fits of chucking things out but it's difficult so I can understand about the emotional attachment to stuff thing.
When I was pregnant with my DS (now nearly 11 months) I was pretty stressed about nesting, trying to create space for our new baby and associated necessary stuff. I struggled about whether to throw away a large pile of writing magazines. In my head, they were tied up to my desire to be a writer, and I had frantic thoughts that if I let them go, I never would be, or that I was throwing out fantastic advice that when I had read it seemed important but which I had now forgotton.
To put the magazines out for recycling I had to logically and emotionally detatch the idea of being a writer from a pile of old magazines. To be a writer I need to write, not spend hours/longer reading old magazines that I've already read. Yes they did have good tips/ideas etc, but nothing I wouldn't be able to find online, in the many books I have, or indeed in current issues of the magazines shoudl I wish to purchase them. Having that pile of magazines wasn't helping me to write at all, and they were taking up space that my much wanted baby needed!
So I find things related to dreams/ambitions difficult to part with, also things that I have wanted to use for a creative project difficult to let go because it feels a failure not to have completed them - of course having them around taking up space feels bad too. I also find it difficult to let go of things that others have given me as it seems ungrateful. So that's a lot of stuff taking up mental and physical space.
Maybe what stops it from becoming a horde is that I do value having space and order, so I try to keep on top of it but I could do better really. I think part of it is that I don't really trust myself to remember things, without the stuff that triggers those memories.
So I feel I can really sympathise with the emotional side of hoarding. I really get that getting rid of the hoard without permission would only cause the person to replace the stuff - because it is (or could be) filling an emotional void. Often people who hoard have lost something precious or lived through times when they had very little, so put value in everything.
What I don't really understand is the verbal abuse and disrespect people are saying they experience from their partners if they challange them about the hoard. It seems to me to be very controlling - throwing a temper tantrum over a newspaper, etc. Even when it is them who has overstepped the agreed limit of their hoarding (a room/loft/shed etc).
I don't think that people should feel they have to put up with being shouted at, or emotionally blackmailed over a newspaper. Maybe that's why severe hoarders end up alone. Surely it is the same as any emotional abuser, they may or may not have a condition (depression/alcholism/etc) which they are struggling with, but it doesn't excuse them from being controlling/abusive.