What childhood experiences can causes a person to hoard?

[Inawayalso]

I’m just wondering as I know of 2 siblings. One of them hoards and only buys second hand or free the other throws everything and buys brand new, always the most expensive brands, never second hand.

The hoarder really struggles with anxiety at the thought of throwing anything. I’m just wondering what kind of upbringing could create a hoarder? Let’s say for arguments sake the hoarder is not ND. Could the parents have been non emotional?

I would second pp's comments about death and bereavement. It seems to be a sort of existential anxiety, a feeling about the impermanence of things and a desire to have changelessness. A mis-channeled spiritual urge.

In my XH’s case it was being bullied by his brother who used to smash or steal everything he held dear. Plus poor accommodation - sharing his room with three brothers. I felt very sorry for him but it also drove me bloody crazy!

Yes this. At a guess, the one who buys everything new has a lot more money than their family did when they were children - so they want to enjoy it, they spoil their children if they have any because they didn’t have much as a child, perhaps they felt a sense of shame about having hand-me-downs when they were young so associate buying things secondhand with that feeling… I’d guess the other sibling lives in fear of having no savings and puts anything spare away into a savings account, spends as little as possible and hoards things in case they need them in the future.

That’s awful x

Seven of us on free school meals
Never having the right school uniform
Never having sports kit or art kit.
Being called into the HE teacher's room and provided with stuff from the second hand box.
Being the only child in the class not to go on school trips
Never being allowed to ask friends home
Constant anxiety
Constantly feeling embarrassed and ashamed
Never being allowed to join in any peer social activities

When I was a teen I had a saturday job cleaning, so my dm decided that she didn't need to provide clothes any more (not that she ever had). I saved up and bought a skirt and blouse and shoes that weren't school uniform. I had a first boyfriend, and on the third date, he asked why I always wore the same clothes. It hadn't occurred to him it was all I had. More humiliation & shame.

30 years later, I still have to make myself throw old clothes away. The fear of poverty never really leaves.

We weren't poor, but I came home from school aged 8 to find that she had taken all my toys "to the children's hospital' I mean all.

I struggle to throw things away, tho I'm not a hoarder.

My DM is a hoarder. Wasn't brought up in poverty. Had no siblings but her dad (my granddad) was apparently very strict and both parents tried to control her as she grew up. We were chatting recently - having lost my DF last year - and mum got upset and was talking about her awful childhood. So maybe that's a reason she hoards.

The hoarding itself didn't really start afaik until after my sibling and I left home in our 20s. Then mum started filling our rooms with junk and we can't get in them now. It's slowly taking over the rest of the house. She couldn't deal with it when my DF was sick and I don't think she ever will despite her saying she's been throwing things out. I have to really watch my own habits as I'm messy and struggle to throw things out, especially packaging.

Loss, fear of loss, lack of love in infancy or childhood experienced as loss...

My mum is a borderline hoarder. She sees it as a more of a “collection”. It’s mostly magazines. Piled up everywhere because she might want to refer back to something later eg. A recipe, an interior pic for inspiration, a knitting pattern (that’s how old some of these magazines are). I hated living with the clutter. It’s difficult to clean around so it got really filthy. I’m thus ruthless about throwing things away and clean often.

My DH moved house at 12 or 13 at the same time as he went to boarding school. He didn’t really get his own bedroom in the new house. More like staying in a spare room during the school holidays. His personal stuff, even clothes as he wore a uniform, was very limited as school rooms are small and it’s tricky to move a lot of stuff back and forth.

He now never throws stuff away. OMG! The boxes. The decades old phones. The charging plugs and cables. The old, worn out clothes. He keeps everything. Even holey underpants.

DSIL lived at home until university. When they moved home again, her room was transferred as is to the new house, even though she wasn’t living at home anymore. Very different treatment of siblings.

DH is not a hoarder but I suspect if he lived alone, he might be. But I get it. We all have childhood challenges that we carry with us.

Who’s to know how the siblings in your story were treated. Maybe differently?

My DH hangs on to stuff. I call him a hoarder but he never buys stuff he just won't throw out things he thinks may be useful one day. A lid off a jar, a piece of plastic that he thinks may have come off something etc etc. He was the youngest child who recounts his brothers constantly taking stuff from him. Wonder if that's why?

Quite possibly- as children who have insecure attachments with their parents can become very attached to pets/cuddly toys/possessions instead to try and fill that void.

I've noticed that a lot of the hoarders that you see on tv programs have sometimes had a death in the family which had a direct link to why they started hoarding.

For me it was growing up poor. My mum used to throw the few toys I had on the fire just to be mean.

This is what's caused a lot of mine I think. Mum got rid of things she decided I didn't need anymore. My brothers broke/stole/sold my things and were never told off/made to replace them. Actually my mum always had a reason for why it was ok that they'd done it.

I'm a hoarder. My brothers aren't. Make of that what you will.

That's so sad 😞
If i was your teacher I'd have paid out of my own money for you to go on the school trip rather than see you be the only one left out.

This sounds very like my DH too!

Ultimately it doesn't matter too much why with hoarding as there are multiple possibilities why; what matters is that having the things makes the person feel safe in some way. The hoard becomes over time like a shell of protection. For most sufferers it is about separating the idea of feeling safe from the objects themselves. It's a slow difficult process breaking that down. It can really only be done with tiny steps and the help of highly qualified mental health professionals. Hoarding is only recently categorised as a mental illness and a very very serious one.

I think 'hoarding' is an umbrella term for very different aspects, and some causes won't necessarily lead to a specific aspect. So for example, someone who grew up with never enough of basic things may well develop a sense of comfort from having a comfortable stockpile of food, but won't necessarily end up a squalor hoarder throwing rubbish on the floor and keeping every piece of paper that comes into their house because they use the food up. Someone who doesn't have a solid sense of who they are might derive comfort from buying for a fantasy self which means they run up debt buying a lot of unnecessary stuff, but every so often they will have a clear out as they move onto the next fantasy self manifestation.

Then as well, I think traumatic life events (and specifically bereavement as pp have mentioned) can push that personality/ behaviour along a spectrum into the more extreme end, and at the same time a terrible fear develops which stops any 'outflow' of stuff, so the individual is completely blocked. At that point, the emotions and physical hoarding both become overwhelming. So the comfortable stockpile becomes a pile of rotting food which is always being added to and never thrown away.

Needing to fill a void from lack of affection from a narcissistic mother.

My Mum hoards. She’s in her 80s, grew up in WW2, with rationing, one of 4 siblings plus 2 evacuees in a council house, so I guess there was never enough to go round.
She has always been cluttered and untidy but I think it has got worse in the last 10 years. She lost her sister 5 years ago, she is now the only sibling left. The house is a tip and it’s hard to clean.
She’s also had lifelong other mental health problems including depression and extreme bouts of temper and aggression. When I was younger I used to think she was bipolar; now I wonder if it’s trauma and/or undiagnosed ADD. Who knows.

Trauma due to abandonment by death of a parent when young, and also by their father walking out. The DC were sent to live with any family members who could take them in and they had a peripatetic childhood in poverty without much food or schooling. This caused anxiety and the need for control in a life where they felt unprotected from a young age and had no control of anything. Holding onto items such as food and clothing gave them security and brought back memories of happier times.
The hoarding got worse as they aged.

My sister and I are exactly like this. It's taken me to the age of 29 to realise that keeping a house full of 'stuff' loved ones has given me, isn't bringing my grandparents back, it won't undo my parents divorce and it won't stop anyone else dying/ leaving. It was a comfort thing, but now I want a tidier, emptier house for my children to grow up in that's not full of clutter. My sister on the other hand, never formed any attachment to people unless there was something in it for her. So it's way for her to just ditch stuff whenever it's no longer useful. We were raised exactly the same and only 1 year between us.

Yes - the anecdotes are on the right trail - The link between loss and hoarding is well established in research.

I have hoarding tendencies, which began at around 10/11 - not long after we lost dad very suddenly. It's something I am aware of and have spent time looking into over the years.

The hoarder I know (relative) had minimalist parents who were very wealthy but didn't like any kind of clutter.

They decided when she had outgrown her toys and books and would donate to charity.

She remembers seeing her toys in the window of a charity shop, much loved stuffed toys and also recalls asking her mother to buy an assortment of Rupert the bear annuals at a school jumble sale (1970s) only to be told that they were hers and had been donated. She recognised Rupert and thought they might be ones she didn't have already.

Her parents were very nice people (now deceased) but had both grown up in large families with lots of siblings and they didn't want the chaos as they put it of cluttering up their own home.

Since she was an independent adult and also a high earner she has amassed many collections of things from her childhood and new things. Things that are looked at once and never seen again.

She describes it as a deep longing for something but when she gets it the emotions disperse and she longs for something else.

All of the family have been involved in supporting and helping as best we can.

When I was a child and young teenager, things that were special to me were taken away as punishment. Not my precious white teddy, thankfully, he’s guarded my bed for 62 years, and he was one of very few things I had from new. Pretty much everything I had was second hand, I was a late and unwelcome surprise to my parents and they weren’t wasting money on new things. To this day I only buy underwear and pillows new, part thriftiness but certainly a feeling that I really don’t deserve new stuff.

If I had been rude or bad my favourite books and toys would be sent to the jumble sale if I hadn’t successfully hidden them. Aged 14, my horse riding best friend and I skipped school one afternoon and went into the town with another (cooler) girl, who shoplifted a t-shirt and was caught by a store detective. We stuck together and it ended with police taking us all home so parents and school were informed. My punishment was that my bike was immediately sold so I couldn’t get to either the riding school or my friend’s house, all my horse riding gear was thrown out, and I was banned from riding until I left school and started work. My friend carried on going to the stables, with the other girl.

Without riding to occupy my spare time I quickly got a boyfriend, and he gave me a cheap bracelet. I left it in my bedroom and my father told me he’d flushed it down the loo while I was at school, and he burned the diary that I kept under my pillow, in which I’d written about being 14 and in love.

So yes, I suppose now I’m a kind of hoarder, though it’s stuff from my ACs’ childhood that I can’t part with - games, books, videos, framed photos, and the childhood books (and teddy) that came with me when I moved out from my parents. The fear of special things vanishing never really goes away.