It is a nice little article that is pleasant to read. What didn't escape my attention is that it is hosted on the website of Sotheby's. Their clientele consists of collectors, so the direction...
It is a nice little article that is pleasant to read. What didn't escape my attention is that it is hosted on the website of Sotheby's. Their clientele consists of collectors, so the direction this article takes is fairly obvious. Of course, they are not going to write something that paints a problematic picture about their clientele. It effectively is a reassuring and mildly enjoyable read for their clientele that they can keep buying from Sotheby's.
I do believe collectors and hoarders have distinctly different psychoanalytic stories. What I'm curious about is how close these two groups actually are. Specifically, are they close enough that they become a Venn diagram creating a group of people who are both collectors and hoarders?
Given where this article was published, investigating that aspect was never going to happen. But exploring that question would've moved this from a mildly enjoyable read to something actually interesting.
The dynamics of people who are proud of their visible collection on the one hand but at the same time are ashamed of their “shadow collection” for example. People who started out as collectors but have long since lost the battle on organizing. I know that there are examples of these people out there, and it is this threshold between two worlds that interests me.
I think it's possible for there to be overlap. Most hoarding has a "don't throw this away, keep it in case it's needed" but it can also involve seeking specific items. Collectors can have...
I think it's possible for there to be overlap. Most hoarding has a "don't throw this away, keep it in case it's needed" but it can also involve seeking specific items. Collectors can have compulsive behavior but the motivation is rarely about use in case of need rather than completing a set or acquiring a particularly rare item.
You're also no longer generally able to take care of your items when you cross the line into hoarding. You're just so overwhelmed you make your own existence smaller and smaller to fit into the remaining space while continuing to keep that coupon section from the paper, because you might need it.
I would argue that if we approach it through the lens of mental illness, typically most mental illnesses are associated with the following traits: Abnormally high negative emotion associated with...
I would argue that if we approach it through the lens of mental illness, typically most mental illnesses are associated with the following traits:
Abnormally high negative emotion associated with some action
Continuing to pursue some behavior even when it comes at the expense of social, physical, or other health
Not attributed to another mental disorder
Most mental illnesses in the DSM are classified in this fashion and diagnoses is about getting enough likert points (1-5 strongly disagree - agree; does not impact - strongly impacts). It would not surprise me if there was a classification for hoarding already, but I do not know for certain. Regardless, it would be fairly simple to think of hoarding in this way - it becomes hoarding when there's a combination of strong emotions associated with giving things up regardless of their value and when it becomes socially and physically harmful due to the environment it creates.
Persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.
This difficulty is due to a perceived need to save the items and to distress associated with discarding them.
The difficulty discarding possessions results in the accumulation of possessions that congest and clutter active living areas and substantially compromises their intended use. If living areas are uncluttered, it is only because of the interventions of third parties (e.g., family members, cleaners, authorities).
The hoarding causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (including maintaining a safe environment for self and others).
The hoarding is not attributable to another medical condition (e.g., brain injury, cerebrovascular disease, Prader-Willi syndrome).
The hoarding is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder (e.g., obsessions in obsessive-compulsive disorder, decreased energy in major depressive disorder, delusions in schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder, cognitive deficits in major neurocognitive disorder, restricted interests in autism spectrum disorder).
It helps if you think of it as an anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder.
Yeah, I realize there is a likely overlap. I might not have been very clear about that question being more or less rhetorical. Exploring that overlap instead of the "collectors are clearly...
Yeah, I realize there is a likely overlap. I might not have been very clear about that question being more or less rhetorical. Exploring that overlap instead of the "collectors are clearly different from hoarders, buy more stuff from us" narrative we are fed now would have made for a much more interesting article.
The silly answer to that is "not answer them," but the resulting discussion was interesting to me anyway, so that would've been lost. So in that sense I am glad you took the question literally. If...
Also idk I'm not sure what to do with rhetorical questions.
The silly answer to that is "not answer them," but the resulting discussion was interesting to me anyway, so that would've been lost. So in that sense I am glad you took the question literally.
If I try to answer more earnestly, I'd say rhetorical questions usually aren't looking for literal answers. They are narrative tools meant to shift attention, introduce context or provoke thought about something beneath the surface. In my original comment, my rhetorical question was an attempt to highlight a missing angle in the article. What happens when the boundary between collecting and hoarding isn't so clean? Specifically how that manifest, how people experience that, etc.
I wasn't really looking for an answer like "yes, overlap exists," since that to me is sort of obvious. I was more pointing out that if the article had explored that overlap, it could have moved past a fairly safe narrative into something with more depth. Something that would move it from a mildly interesting fluff piece into an actual engaging exploration of this subject.
I'll make sure to read the article you linked. But basically I was more or less expressing my disappointment in having missed out on an article that could have been.
I'll be honest, I have zero way to tell in text that this is a rhetorical question. Hence me saying idk what to do with them. So instead I take what I think is a genuine question, and answer it. I...
I'll be honest, I have zero way to tell in text that this is a rhetorical question. Hence me saying idk what to do with them. So instead I take what I think is a genuine question, and answer it.
I know literally they're not intended to be answered but they're not marked nor is it obvious what folks know or assume, so...
┐(´ー｀)┌
(I got that the specific article was underwhelming that wasn't confusing. )
Are you saying you have trouble recognizing them for what they are? That's fair, like I said maybe I could have made that clearer. Anyway, to be very clear, I am not saying you should have...
Are you saying you have trouble recognizing them for what they are? That's fair, like I said maybe I could have made that clearer. Anyway, to be very clear, I am not saying you should have recognized it as a rhetorical question. I just figured that once I saw that you didn't I'd clarify a bit more why I included it. That's all :)
I'm saying it's difficult in text, and can either come off as a genuine question or an insincere leading question where obviously we all know the answer. More of a personal ┐( ˘_˘)┌ at hitting one...
I'm saying it's difficult in text, and can either come off as a genuine question or an insincere leading question where obviously we all know the answer.
More of a personal ┐( ˘_˘)┌ at hitting one twice in like 24 hours.
From my experience with family members, collecting turns into hoarding when some physical or mental impairment happens and they become unable to manage their collection.
From my experience with family members, collecting turns into hoarding when some physical or mental impairment happens and they become unable to manage their collection.
It certainly can, but the difference between your home being an overwhelmed mess and hoarding is the willingness to let go of things. I've seen the houses full of trash that are more about...
It certainly can, but the difference between your home being an overwhelmed mess and hoarding is the willingness to let go of things. I've seen the houses full of trash that are more about depression and physical inability to clean, which is different than "I cant get rid of that receipt from 1995, what if I need to prove I purchased it to insurance."
It's really about the compulsion/fear of loss of the item rather than the clutter. So some folks "hoard" without it getting to a bad level (because it's driven by that motivation) until they can't keep up anymore just like some folks manage their depression without major life impacts.
Just from what Ive seen, it starts out as a manageable ‘I bought these 50 sets of golf clubs from the second hand store because I want to make youtube videos reviewing them’ To ‘shit, the shed I...
Just from what Ive seen, it starts out as a manageable
‘I bought these 50 sets of golf clubs from the second hand store because I want to make youtube videos reviewing them’
To ‘shit, the shed I was storing the golf clubs in now has a leak and I need to move them’
to ‘my house is cluttered with all these golf clubs so my adhd brain doesn’t notice the trash needs to be taken out’
to eventually ‘the house is a mess and thats making me depressed so Ive stopped cleaning entirely’
Its not as clear cut as that. Lots of these things are comorbid with other things and both the anxiety and the executive dysfunction combined make the entire situation way worse than it would be...
Its not as clear cut as that. Lots of these things are comorbid with other things and both the anxiety and the executive dysfunction combined make the entire situation way worse than it would be if it were just one issue.
They create a situation where a caregiver, initially gets a false sense of productivity because the top layer (trash) is easily thrown away. But then once you get to the lower layers of things that were once in good shape but are now destroyed because they were left under trash for years or exposed to the weather, now we face the anxiety where normal people still see trash but the anxious hoarding person sees what the item used to be, and thinks maybe we can fix it, so it cant be thrown away.
Sorry, you didn't describe the hoarding diagnostic criteria of being anxious/afraid of letting go of items in that initial post and that's what I was referring to. I'm not saying the person...
Sorry, you didn't describe the hoarding diagnostic criteria of being anxious/afraid of letting go of items in that initial post and that's what I was referring to.
I'm not saying the person doesn't also have anxiety. I'm aware of the complexity of mental health struggles, especially with ADHD involved. None of it comes out of nowhere without ramp-up, if only because of the logistics of filling one's house.
But generally the "mess is overwhelming I can't handle it so I stop perceiving it" may be part of either a hoarding or non-hoarding situation. In both cases I'm most discussing extremes not things more akin to what I've experienced personally. And yes the compulsiveness can absolutely appear later.
Serious question, do hoarders feel okay about having feces and cans of urine cleaned out of their collection? As in, given attention, time and space, could their collection of 30 year old receipts...
Serious question, do hoarders feel okay about having feces and cans of urine cleaned out of their collection? As in, given attention, time and space, could their collection of 30 year old receipts actually be stored and archived into a safe and sanitary space? They'll still be anxious about losing them no doubt, but could hygiene not be part of the issue?
Hoarders don't necessarily have hygiene issues. My grandmother was a hoarder (as is very common for Appalachian people who grew up during the Great Depression), and she kept her home very clean....
Hoarders don't necessarily have hygiene issues. My grandmother was a hoarder (as is very common for Appalachian people who grew up during the Great Depression), and she kept her home very clean. The problem was that more than 50% of the rooms in her house were inaccessible because they were stuffed from floor to ceiling.
She only hoarded things that were valuable or useful — to someone in some hypothetical situation: bedding, dishware, clothes, toys, furniture, and expertly handmade one-of-a-kind dolls (the one thing she hoarded for herself, rather than for other hypothetical people who might be in need). She and my grandfather were heavily involved in charities and volunteer work to help the homeless, and also took several homeless people into their own home over the years, so she very happily gave thousands of items away (other than her dolls!) to people in need. But if nobody wanted them, she still wouldn't throw them away because somebody somewhere might want one day need to dress their toddler in this 40-year-old faded, mothball-scented baby shirt.
Her anxiety wasn't about keeping things; it was about letting useful things go to waste. She and her siblings grew up in a coal mining camp, and I'm guessing that the things she hoarded were the things that her parents stressed about when she was a child (most of the things she hoarded were for children, even long after her own children and grandchildren had grown up). She was not otherwise an anxious or compulsive person. She was very cheerful, extremely socially active, and very loved and respected in her community.
One thing I will add is that in addition to hoarding useful items, she also "hoarded" useful skills. She was highly competent in home maintenance (plumbing, roofing, you name it), beekeeping, gardening and food preservation, emergency first aid care, and emergency veterinary care (for example, she saved my puppy's life using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and she did an emergency C-sections on pregnant stray cat that was killed by a car and then raised the kittens to adulthood by herself). I imagine she also knew a lot of useless or out-of-date skills, but it's hard to know because, unlike the unwanted items she hoarded, her rusty skills did not fill up the rooms of her house.
I don't see a problem whatsoever with this kind of collection? Seems like every single video game protagonist to me: collect all the butterflies, all the swords, all the sets of clothing, max out...
I don't see a problem whatsoever with this kind of collection? Seems like every single video game protagonist to me: collect all the butterflies, all the swords, all the sets of clothing, max out all the skills. The inaccessible rooms perhaps, but she managed to fit entire peoples and kittens and puppies into her life even then! If we ever experience societal collapse I have no doubt she would empty out her rooms and boxes for people in need. So in that regard they're spare rooms right?
Narnia started with an old dude who has too many coats in a spare room helping out war time kids. A better sort of collection than million dollar art that doesn't help anyone, imo....
I think if you had seen her house, you might change your mind. It was a large house (she and her husband built it for their seven kids and then continued adding on more and more rooms for storage;...
I think if you had seen her house, you might change your mind. It was a large house (she and her husband built it for their seven kids and then continued adding on more and more rooms for storage; plus they had something like five or six outbuildings), but by the time she passed away, only the living room, kitchen, bathrooms, and one bedroom were accessible — single file only. You were basically squeezing through floor-to-ceiling canyons of stuff.
The pathways, at least, were kept very clean and clear — but outside the pathways, it was pretty similar to this image, if you imagine this pile as neatly stacked coats, baby clothes, toys, blankets, sippy cups, hand sewing kits, picture books, etc.
But yeah, in a collapse of society, she could have supplied her whole county — and would have done so joyfully.
It looks like my local Catholic run good will! Oh my thats a lot a lot of rooms filled very full. Not all of us are born at the right time for our talents/challenges I suppose.
It looks like my local Catholic run good will!
Oh my thats a lot a lot of rooms filled very full. Not all of us are born at the right time for our talents/challenges I suppose.
Indeed. I've seen the same kind of hoarding in a lot of other Appalachian people her age — all of them poised to hit the ground running in the next economic collapse. As frustrating as the...
Indeed. I've seen the same kind of hoarding in a lot of other Appalachian people her age — all of them poised to hit the ground running in the next economic collapse. As frustrating as the hoarding is, I'm just glad it is hoarding because it means that economic collapse never came.
Here on the other side of the world (Australia), my elderly in-laws grew up on a farm during very tough times (Great Depression and harsh WWII rationing) when they were already a poor family to begin with. They are not hoarders like my elderly relatives in Tennessee, but they have a similar mindset — that this is just a temporary moment of economic prosperity, and we must take advantage of it and poverty-proof before for the inevitable reversion to the mean.
My mother-in-law, for example, has invested heavily in making the farm suitable for a large multi-generational farming family because, she says, that's how people have always lived — the way we live now is an anomaly.
Really tells you different people’s family experiences of survival. My understanding of getting by in a collapse means that you need to have as few things holding you down as possible so you can...
Really tells you different people’s family experiences of survival. My understanding of getting by in a collapse means that you need to have as few things holding you down as possible so you can pick up stakes and move where you can have support or a job. This comes from an ancestral background of people who had to flee their homes in the wake of wars and invasions. The general lesson was always if you have stuff you better need it or be able to sell/trade it. The idea of being loaded down with things I can’t jettison or fence makes me feel vulnerable rather than secure.
I've been (not clinically) hoarding medical supplies since my partner's paraplegia. That has not improved with threatened Medicaid/Medicare cuts (he's on both). Thankfully while I have a bit of...
I've been (not clinically) hoarding medical supplies since my partner's paraplegia. That has not improved with threatened Medicaid/Medicare cuts (he's on both). Thankfully while I have a bit of "wait i like that thing I can use that thing" the medical supplies are the only one I'm "KEEP ALL OF IT" about.
Ironically ADHD makes this harder I think, because I easily forget about stuff, but when I see it again, I remember I really like that mug/pen/book/whatever and want to use it... and then put it back on the shelf.
I don't do and haven't done that specific work, and don't have enough ancillary experience to speak to it. Generally there is a struggle to identify and get rid of anything of any potential value...
I don't do and haven't done that specific work, and don't have enough ancillary experience to speak to it. Generally there is a struggle to identify and get rid of anything of any potential value (as ascribed by the individual), and it is not a rational distress.
I think stuff like this tends to be too specific and varies too much based on the specific presentation and severity of the disorder in a given individual, as well as what their support network is...
I think stuff like this tends to be too specific and varies too much based on the specific presentation and severity of the disorder in a given individual, as well as what their support network is like.
In this area I believe we lack the real knowledge or skill to give useful or definitive answers. Brain chemistry and psychology are so complex that you can have completely different looking...
I do believe collectors and hoarders have distinctly different psychoanalytic stories. What I'm curious about is how close these two groups actually are.
In this area I believe we lack the real knowledge or skill to give useful or definitive answers. Brain chemistry and psychology are so complex that you can have completely different looking datasets with the exact same behavior, and identical datsets with totally different behavior.
Basically everything we're doing in this area is mostly just looking for obvious correlation (yeah they started hoarding after the head injury) or only addressing if it's a problem (they were fine when the collection stayed in one room, but its become a problem as it impacts their day to day life now).
I suspect if we somehow had omniscient information you'd see overlap, but that's because I personally believe a lot of mental illness is just a personality "metric" cranked up to 11. Even still, there's probably plenty that we'd still never easily identify as "hoarder/collector" from raw data.
I am fully aware of this. For context, the article approaches the question it poses with under the umbrella of “Psychoanalysis as Therapy and Storytelling” and how the stories between the groups...
In this area I believe we lack the real knowledge or skill to give useful or definitive answers.
I am fully aware of this. For context, the article approaches the question it poses with under the umbrella of “Psychoanalysis as Therapy and Storytelling” and how the stories between the groups apparently differ in how they experience being a collector or hoarder. It pits that experience as the key difference between the two. Aside from there being much more to it, I also think it makes for boring and predictable outcome of the article.
The question I posed was more rhetorical in nature, because I know there are cases where collectors have turned into hoarders. While the article posted here is basically a feel good fluff peace, if it was written by someone else for a different organization it might have actually explored this angle and even sought out real stories of real people.
I actually have a weird parallel form of hoarding where I very much want to get rid of stuff, but I want them to go to somewhere they will be used rather than in a landfill. But this is becoming...
I actually have a weird parallel form of hoarding where I very much want to get rid of stuff, but I want them to go to somewhere they will be used rather than in a landfill. But this is becoming increasingly impossible nowadays. So functionally the landfill ends up coming to me, as old electronics and clothes remain in my closet because I can’t find a more responsible place to scrap them.
I’ve had this old Dyson vacuum battery in the trunk of my car for like, 3 months because I can’t find a hardware store that will recycle it! They only take standard sized batteries. So WTF am I supposed to do with this? It’s maddening!
Clothes are easy, salvation army or goodwill. Goodwill will also take electronics in some areas, they do in mine. Ive also had good luck with listing things for free on facebook marketplace, but...
Clothes are easy, salvation army or goodwill. Goodwill will also take electronics in some areas, they do in mine.
Ive also had good luck with listing things for free on facebook marketplace, but it has to be something that would actually sell if you tried to sell it, like an old terrarium or sports equipment.
For the battery, try contacting your local landfill service and ask them what to do with it.
I’ve done enough clothing donation stuff on the receiving side and it turns out that, like, 90% of the clothes get thrown away. They basically only keep the pieces in very good condition and...
I’ve done enough clothing donation stuff on the receiving side and it turns out that, like, 90% of the clothes get thrown away. They basically only keep the pieces in very good condition and essentially nothing fast fashion will survive. They won’t even wash stuff that’s a bit dirty or sell high quality stuff in need of minor fixes, like mending or patching. So at this point I will either just throw things away or repurpose them as buffing rags/wipes.
I’ve been reluctant to do FB Marketplace just due to resistance to Meta. It’s a real shame it seems to have largely displaced CraigsList now. But CraigsList just had too many scammers and it got to be a hassle to list things on there. People will try to haggle over EVERYTHING and then show up without enough money to try and cheat you. Terrible experience. BuyNothing groups have migrated off FB onto their own apps now, but the general user base has collapsed as a result. It’s never been harder to get rid of stuff responsibly.
Responsibility has been completely abandoned by world governments and the manufacturing industry. I try to avoid stuff like synthetic fabrics because I believe the accumulation of microplastcs and...
Responsibility has been completely abandoned by world governments and the manufacturing industry. I try to avoid stuff like synthetic fabrics because I believe the accumulation of microplastcs and other forever-garbage is an even bigger existential problem than anthropogemic climate change BUT I refuse to let the responsible industries make me feel bad for buying the occasionally bottled beverage. Make a difference where you can (my other focus is native gardening because seriously the ecosphere as we know it is falling apart and every bit helps) and let the rest go. Chuck that battery in the garbage and let a future landfill-miner deal with it. (Recycling is also mostly bullshit, in that it isn't being done on any kind of impactful scale. Reduce and Reuse are way more beneficial)
Well then do that instead of complaining on the internet about how there aren't ways to responsibly dispose of stuff. Either care enough to do the thing or stop caring enough to chuck it in the...
Well then do that instead of complaining on the internet about how there aren't ways to responsibly dispose of stuff. Either care enough to do the thing or stop caring enough to chuck it in the garbage, this middle amount of caring only serves to validate your false helplessness that is causing the hoarding you described.
Ah okay Ive never donated anything other than fairly high quality lightly used clothing. My mom had kept all of my childhood clothes in boxes and much of it had only been worn a couple times...
Ah okay Ive never donated anything other than fairly high quality lightly used clothing. My mom had kept all of my childhood clothes in boxes and much of it had only been worn a couple times before I grew out of it. Everything Ive bought as an adult Ive worn till its shredded.
My rule of thumb is basically if I couldn’t sell it, I don’t donate it.
I’m not convinced that collecting isn’t hoarding. It’s just a matter of degree. When I hear about hoarding, I think about Jay Leno. He has a famous collection of cars. Hundreds of cars and...
I’m not convinced that collecting isn’t hoarding. It’s just a matter of degree.
When I hear about hoarding, I think about Jay Leno. He has a famous collection of cars. Hundreds of cars and motorcycles worth over $50 million. His collection is highly organized and his garages look like a museum. It’s still hoarding, just more expensive than the teacups and scraps of paper that the local cat lady has in her house. Maybe it wouldn’t be a hoard if his collection was open to the public. Maybe it will be made public after he dies.
Most people collect things. Some people are obsessed by it. Sometimes the collecting is mostly harmless. Sometimes it affects relationships. Sometimes it harms the community and the planet. Sometimes it’s a reflection of mental illness.
Mental illness isn’t a binary property. We all are on some spectrum. Based on what I’ve heard, hoarding is used as a shield in response to a trauma. We’ve all had some amount of trauma. Maybe the bigger the hoard, the bigger the trauma. Billionaires in general are hoarders, aren’t they? Their waste and mental illness affects us all.
In any event, the article seems like an excuse for Southbys to continue selling and promoting luxury items without guilt. From their about page:
Established in 1744, Sotheby’s is the world’s premier destination for art and luxury. Sotheby’s promotes access to and ownership of exceptional art and luxury objects through auctions and buy-now channels including private sales, e-commerce and retail. Our trusted global marketplace is supported by an industry-leading technology platform and a network of specialists spanning 40 countries and 70 categories which include Contemporary Art, Modern and Impressionist Art, Old Masters, Chinese Works of Art, Jewelry, Watches, Wine and Spirits, and Design, as well as collectible cars and real estate. Sotheby’s believes in the transformative power of art and culture and is committed to making our industries more inclusive, sustainable and collaborative.
Hoarding (disorder) is a matter of degree. Like other disorders, it becomes a disorder when the degree is such that it interferes with your daily life. It’s like anxiety. Everyone has anxiety....
I’m not convinced that collecting isn’t hoarding. It’s just a matter of degree.
Hoarding (disorder) is a matter of degree. Like other disorders, it becomes a disorder when the degree is such that it interferes with your daily life.
It’s like anxiety. Everyone has anxiety. Having anxiety is just a sign that your nervous system works. It’s when it significantly interferes with your standard of living that it becomes a problem.
This! And yes absolutely there are people who have similar behaviors but they're sub-clinical. If someone's collection is bankrupting them, there's probably a compulsive behavior issue that's...
This! And yes absolutely there are people who have similar behaviors but they're sub-clinical. If someone's collection is bankrupting them, there's probably a compulsive behavior issue that's reached a clinical level, but not a hoarding issue... Unless they cant navigate their home, are afraid to get rid of items in case they're needed, etc.
Also hoarding often stems from a need to stockpile against future times of hardship after experiencing difficulty maintaining basic needs. I did some of this with grocery shopping during the pandemic but never to the degree of hoarding.
Leno does not seem to be hoarding in the clinical sense. In the "dragon with his pile of gold sense" sure. And that's why it's important to make it clear what definitions of the word we're using.
I'm rather convinced that a disorder's severity in degrees can be measured in money. Jay Leno's car hoarding isn't problematic because he can afford to have them be kept indoors in climate...
I'm rather convinced that a disorder's severity in degrees can be measured in money.
Jay Leno's car hoarding isn't problematic because he can afford to have them be kept indoors in climate controlled settings. He buys cars in good condition and have money to repair them to a state at which little ongoing maintenance is needed. My neighbour, whose donation/scrap collection is stored outside, has a junkyard.
The woman who keeps giant cats and has cleaning staff and a whole social media team and vets on call runs a sanctuary. The woman with 5+ cats in her home is a crazy cat lady.
Anxiety about the future or safety can be better managed with money and tech. Social phobia can be assuaged if you have staff do all the "life" for you. An eating disorder can be better managed by working closely with medical and diet professionals, and having life be arranged around it.
On the one end of the spectrum, a rich person can afford to be eccentric where a poorer person might see the same tick prevent employment or finding housing
(On the other end, depression, mania, schizophrenia and other very serious illnesses seems to be more of an equal opportunity attacker. But, here too, financial instability, housing precariousness, nutrition and medical care access would also make these far worse.)
Mind, the ultra wealthy have their own set of mental illnesses also measured in money. But there exists a very large slice of society whose afflictions are made more bearable with money.
Just a note, this isn't hoarding. That's just social opinion. Hoarding is so many things, including cats, that a hazmat suit is required to clean up all the waste and deal with the fumes, and dead...
The woman who keeps giant cats and has cleaning staff and a whole social media team and vets on call runs a sanctuary. The woman with 5+ cats in her home is a crazy cat lady.
Just a note, this isn't hoarding. That's just social opinion. Hoarding is so many things, including cats, that a hazmat suit is required to clean up all the waste and deal with the fumes, and dead cats are found dessicated and crushed in the debris.
Also she only owns a sanctuary if she's done the paperwork.
Rich people can absolutely be hoarders, they're just more likely to have people around and the means to get help.
Hmm I don't know, the same person with a licensed sanctuary, if suddenly without staff and resources, might find themselves cramming large cats into a too small home without proper cleaning but...
Hmm I don't know, the same person with a licensed sanctuary, if suddenly without staff and resources, might find themselves cramming large cats into a too small home without proper cleaning but unable to let go out of...?
I think problematic hoarding people didn't suddenly get like that, they start with an okay number of tin cans or boxes or cats, and then get overwhelmed and don't have the (mental + financial + time + skill) resources to refuse more / manage existing, plus chasing the fleeting high of acquiring more and the faint hope that this time it'll all get organized. And then get stuck like that.
So 5 cats for a well person isn't problematic, but 5 could, for someone feeling stuck, become more than 5 very soon and finding themselves living with 60 uncleaned litter boxes and 30-40 cats one day.
The diagnostic criteria for Hoarding I'm speaking about it as a mental health disorder, not colloquially just for clarity! No, hoarders don't start that way, and yes a big cat enthusiast could...
I'm speaking about it as a mental health disorder, not colloquially just for clarity!
No, hoarders don't start that way, and yes a big cat enthusiast could become a hoarder but as you described neither were. (The rich woman in your scenario is getting eaten by her tigers btw. )
People with strong and close support systems can often get early intervention and not end up in a house full of feces, and wealthier people often, but not always, have more people around to provide that support. Money also makes treatment and cleanup easier.
A large part of hoarding is fear of getting rid of things. In the case of cats it's more "I have to take care of them they'll die without me" but it's rarely just one "thing"
I can only dream of becoming rich enough to be devoured by my giant friend-shaped pets one day. On a slightly more serious note, though, reading though the diagnostics, I guess a rich person with...
I can only dream of becoming rich enough to be devoured by my giant friend-shaped pets one day.
On a slightly more serious note, though, reading though the diagnostics, I guess a rich person with 1000 cars could be just collecting, if they're not distressed by the thought of travelling out of the home or having visitors or driving one of them for fun.
But another rich person who despite having an also immaculate garage, could be a hoarder if they are distressed by the thought of losing their 10th exact same base model cheap car, if they think they're going to be needed for mad Max world or something, and their garage is only clean because of money and staff constantly picking up after them, and they're no longer travelling or enjoying the cars or feel good about having people over to look at them.
Yeah, and the latter person might not get flagged as a hoarder but with, say, OCD, or something similar anxiety-wise because they don't look like a hoarder yet. So they might not speak with...
Yeah, and the latter person might not get flagged as a hoarder but with, say, OCD, or something similar anxiety-wise because they don't look like a hoarder yet. So they might not speak with someone who knows to ask the hoarding questions.
Unwillingness x impact. I suspect most people have a few keepsakes whose emotional value far exceeds what anyone would be willing to pay for it. A shoebox full of bad poetry from a deceased spouse...
Unwillingness x impact. I suspect most people have a few keepsakes whose emotional value far exceeds what anyone would be willing to pay for it. A shoebox full of bad poetry from a deceased spouse wouldn't ever register as "hoarding" but filling a bedroom with unopened thank-you cards because of an anxiety around seeming grateful and worthy to others probably would, even with the same degree of unwillingness to let go.
I do want to say that there is a fuzzy tipping point where the spectrum behavior becomes a mental illness. So in that case, yes, it is a fuzzy binary property. If you feel anxious without your...
Mental illness isn’t a binary property. We all are on some spectrum.
I do want to say that there is a fuzzy tipping point where the spectrum behavior becomes a mental illness. So in that case, yes, it is a fuzzy binary property.
If you feel anxious without your teacups and scraps of paper, it's closer to a mental illness than not. If you like the way 10 teacups look, or you're having fun finding all 50 state quarters, not a mental illness.
Yes, it's all a spectrum, but we all don't have a mental illness.
The mental illness aspect comes into play if the behavior cannot be stopped or there is a feeling of anxiousness/dread or something like that. And it's continuous or recurring over a long period of time. A mental health assessment will let you know.
I've collected books. I've hoarded books. I've hoarded computer equipment. There is a distinct difference. Ever thought "I might be able to use this cable again, I'm not going to chuck it out when...
I've collected books. I've hoarded books. I've hoarded computer equipment. There is a distinct difference.
Ever thought "I might be able to use this cable again, I'm not going to chuck it out when I dispose of the rest of this electronic waste."?
Take that to the extreme and you have hoarding. Where you don't want to throw away anything because it might be useful in some made up scenario in your head. You also see others throwing away things and it offends you because those items could also be useful in some other made up scenario in your head. To the point where you see super cheap crap that others are desperately trying to get rid of without trashing it and you see potential treasure.
That is hoarding. Get rid of your shit. No, you will never ever need that parallel cable ever again. Not ever. There is no scenario you will ever need a parallel cable that you cannot easily access it through 3 dollars and the internet.
Things I have not regretted keeping: An AM3 motherboard with both IDE and SATA connectors A DVD drive A floppy drive Basically every microusb that actually transmits data Things I regret giving...
Things I have not regretted keeping:
An AM3 motherboard with both IDE and SATA connectors
A DVD drive
A floppy drive
Basically every microusb that actually transmits data
My rule is to only keep one of each type cable if they are no longer commonly useful. Every once in a while I am able to "save the day" by having such a cable. I wish there was some sort of tech...
My rule is to only keep one of each type cable if they are no longer commonly useful. Every once in a while I am able to "save the day" by having such a cable. I wish there was some sort of tech themed thrift store that has these things in a sorted way, then I'd be more than happy to part with them.
Although of course Sotheby’s has an interest in reassuring collectors that what they do isn’t as unhealthy as hoarding, the article does make a distinction that never occurred to me. Collectors...
Although of course Sotheby’s has an interest in reassuring collectors that what they do isn’t as unhealthy as hoarding, the article does make a distinction that never occurred to me. Collectors have a compulsion to acquire, while hoarders have an inability to discard.
I have mild anxiety about getting rid of things with actual value because of my childhood and later losing everything when my home burned down. I have found that finding good places to donate...
I have mild anxiety about getting rid of things with actual value because of my childhood and later losing everything when my home burned down. I have found that finding good places to donate items has made it easier as I know these things will ideally get to people and not get thrown away.
One framing is looking at in and out flows. A collector is generally interested in external valuation and making trades. A hoarder is obsessed with an internal valuation of their possessions and...
One framing is looking at in and out flows. A collector is generally interested in external valuation and making trades. A hoarder is obsessed with an internal valuation of their possessions and may gift some of their stuff but isn't trading in a market.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is my favorite museum. It was a personal collection and museum until its namesake died and left it to the city of Boston. It's a massive collection in a beautiful museum built for the purpose of displaying its contents.
But there is one room that feels more "hoarder" than "collector." In the room, in display cases, is just random personal family affects. A comb that belonged to one of her sons, a random tassel labeled "from the bed of Mary Queen of Scots," and other odds and ends (there is also one of Napoleon's battle standards, sufficiently tattered.) It's a room that is touchingly personal. I got the sense that this woman and her husband built and maintained their collection, but there were hoarding tendencies as well. It's also not a stretch to call their collection of art a veritable "hoard" like a dragon might protect.
I don't think that assessing the value of the collected items directly like this makes a ton of sense. Hoarding has much more to do with being unable to get rid of items to such an extent that you...
I don't think that assessing the value of the collected items directly like this makes a ton of sense. Hoarding has much more to do with being unable to get rid of items to such an extent that you impact your environment in ways that are harmful to you. This includes refusing to get rid of things even though they're not valuable, but I don't think having a collection of sentimental items that aren't valuable constitutes hoarding on its own without the associated anxiety and dangerous environment.
That is why I specified internal value, that subsumes sentimental value. But that's also why we threshold hoarding based on environmental effects. My point was hoarders don't have much outgoing,...
That is why I specified internal value, that subsumes sentimental value. But that's also why we threshold hoarding based on environmental effects. My point was hoarders don't have much outgoing, collectors are usually trading in a market.
It is a nice little article that is pleasant to read. What didn't escape my attention is that it is hosted on the website of Sotheby's. Their clientele consists of collectors, so the direction this article takes is fairly obvious. Of course, they are not going to write something that paints a problematic picture about their clientele. It effectively is a reassuring and mildly enjoyable read for their clientele that they can keep buying from Sotheby's.
I do believe collectors and hoarders have distinctly different psychoanalytic stories. What I'm curious about is how close these two groups actually are. Specifically, are they close enough that they become a Venn diagram creating a group of people who are both collectors and hoarders?
Given where this article was published, investigating that aspect was never going to happen. But exploring that question would've moved this from a mildly enjoyable read to something actually interesting.
The dynamics of people who are proud of their visible collection on the one hand but at the same time are ashamed of their “shadow collection” for example. People who started out as collectors but have long since lost the battle on organizing. I know that there are examples of these people out there, and it is this threshold between two worlds that interests me.
I think it's possible for there to be overlap. Most hoarding has a "don't throw this away, keep it in case it's needed" but it can also involve seeking specific items. Collectors can have compulsive behavior but the motivation is rarely about use in case of need rather than completing a set or acquiring a particularly rare item.
You're also no longer generally able to take care of your items when you cross the line into hoarding. You're just so overwhelmed you make your own existence smaller and smaller to fit into the remaining space while continuing to keep that coupon section from the paper, because you might need it.
Oh, I think I'm beginning to see what you mean. Perhaps collecting is a sort of lust to get more, and then hoarding is a sort of fear of losing any?
I would argue that if we approach it through the lens of mental illness, typically most mental illnesses are associated with the following traits:
Most mental illnesses in the DSM are classified in this fashion and diagnoses is about getting enough likert points (1-5 strongly disagree - agree; does not impact - strongly impacts). It would not surprise me if there was a classification for hoarding already, but I do not know for certain. Regardless, it would be fairly simple to think of hoarding in this way - it becomes hoarding when there's a combination of strong emotions associated with giving things up regardless of their value and when it becomes socially and physically harmful due to the environment it creates.
it is in the DSM V
It helps if you think of it as an anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder.
ah yep, that looks more or less like what I thought it might!
Yeah the usual suspects are all in there!
Yeah, I realize there is a likely overlap. I might not have been very clear about that question being more or less rhetorical. Exploring that overlap instead of the "collectors are clearly different from hoarders, buy more stuff from us" narrative we are fed now would have made for a much more interesting article.
It's Psychology Today so poppsych but maybe?
They have a linked study at the end
Also idk I'm not sure what to do with rhetorical questions.
The silly answer to that is "not answer them," but the resulting discussion was interesting to me anyway, so that would've been lost. So in that sense I am glad you took the question literally.
If I try to answer more earnestly, I'd say rhetorical questions usually aren't looking for literal answers. They are narrative tools meant to shift attention, introduce context or provoke thought about something beneath the surface. In my original comment, my rhetorical question was an attempt to highlight a missing angle in the article. What happens when the boundary between collecting and hoarding isn't so clean? Specifically how that manifest, how people experience that, etc.
I wasn't really looking for an answer like "yes, overlap exists," since that to me is sort of obvious. I was more pointing out that if the article had explored that overlap, it could have moved past a fairly safe narrative into something with more depth. Something that would move it from a mildly interesting fluff piece into an actual engaging exploration of this subject.
I'll make sure to read the article you linked. But basically I was more or less expressing my disappointment in having missed out on an article that could have been.
I'll be honest, I have zero way to tell in text that this is a rhetorical question. Hence me saying idk what to do with them. So instead I take what I think is a genuine question, and answer it.
I know literally they're not intended to be answered but they're not marked nor is it obvious what folks know or assume, so...
┐(´ー｀)┌
(I got that the specific article was underwhelming that wasn't confusing. )
Are you saying you have trouble recognizing them for what they are? That's fair, like I said maybe I could have made that clearer. Anyway, to be very clear, I am not saying you should have recognized it as a rhetorical question. I just figured that once I saw that you didn't I'd clarify a bit more why I included it. That's all :)
I'm saying it's difficult in text, and can either come off as a genuine question or an insincere leading question where obviously we all know the answer.
More of a personal ┐( ˘_˘)┌ at hitting one twice in like 24 hours.
From my experience with family members, collecting turns into hoarding when some physical or mental impairment happens and they become unable to manage their collection.
It certainly can, but the difference between your home being an overwhelmed mess and hoarding is the willingness to let go of things. I've seen the houses full of trash that are more about depression and physical inability to clean, which is different than "I cant get rid of that receipt from 1995, what if I need to prove I purchased it to insurance."
It's really about the compulsion/fear of loss of the item rather than the clutter. So some folks "hoard" without it getting to a bad level (because it's driven by that motivation) until they can't keep up anymore just like some folks manage their depression without major life impacts.
Just from what Ive seen, it starts out as a manageable
‘I bought these 50 sets of golf clubs from the second hand store because I want to make youtube videos reviewing them’
To ‘shit, the shed I was storing the golf clubs in now has a leak and I need to move them’
to ‘my house is cluttered with all these golf clubs so my adhd brain doesn’t notice the trash needs to be taken out’
to eventually ‘the house is a mess and thats making me depressed so Ive stopped cleaning entirely’
Slow decent of maddness
Right, that wouldn't be hoarding, it'd be the executive dysfunction.
Its not as clear cut as that. Lots of these things are comorbid with other things and both the anxiety and the executive dysfunction combined make the entire situation way worse than it would be if it were just one issue.
They create a situation where a caregiver, initially gets a false sense of productivity because the top layer (trash) is easily thrown away. But then once you get to the lower layers of things that were once in good shape but are now destroyed because they were left under trash for years or exposed to the weather, now we face the anxiety where normal people still see trash but the anxious hoarding person sees what the item used to be, and thinks maybe we can fix it, so it cant be thrown away.
Sorry, you didn't describe the hoarding diagnostic criteria of being anxious/afraid of letting go of items in that initial post and that's what I was referring to.
I'm not saying the person doesn't also have anxiety. I'm aware of the complexity of mental health struggles, especially with ADHD involved. None of it comes out of nowhere without ramp-up, if only because of the logistics of filling one's house.
But generally the "mess is overwhelming I can't handle it so I stop perceiving it" may be part of either a hoarding or non-hoarding situation. In both cases I'm most discussing extremes not things more akin to what I've experienced personally. And yes the compulsiveness can absolutely appear later.
Serious question, do hoarders feel okay about having feces and cans of urine cleaned out of their collection? As in, given attention, time and space, could their collection of 30 year old receipts actually be stored and archived into a safe and sanitary space? They'll still be anxious about losing them no doubt, but could hygiene not be part of the issue?
Hoarders don't necessarily have hygiene issues. My grandmother was a hoarder (as is very common for Appalachian people who grew up during the Great Depression), and she kept her home very clean. The problem was that more than 50% of the rooms in her house were inaccessible because they were stuffed from floor to ceiling.
She only hoarded things that were valuable or useful — to someone in some hypothetical situation: bedding, dishware, clothes, toys, furniture, and expertly handmade one-of-a-kind dolls (the one thing she hoarded for herself, rather than for other hypothetical people who might be in need). She and my grandfather were heavily involved in charities and volunteer work to help the homeless, and also took several homeless people into their own home over the years, so she very happily gave thousands of items away (other than her dolls!) to people in need. But if nobody wanted them, she still wouldn't throw them away because somebody somewhere might want one day need to dress their toddler in this 40-year-old faded, mothball-scented baby shirt.
Her anxiety wasn't about keeping things; it was about letting useful things go to waste. She and her siblings grew up in a coal mining camp, and I'm guessing that the things she hoarded were the things that her parents stressed about when she was a child (most of the things she hoarded were for children, even long after her own children and grandchildren had grown up). She was not otherwise an anxious or compulsive person. She was very cheerful, extremely socially active, and very loved and respected in her community.
One thing I will add is that in addition to hoarding useful items, she also "hoarded" useful skills. She was highly competent in home maintenance (plumbing, roofing, you name it), beekeeping, gardening and food preservation, emergency first aid care, and emergency veterinary care (for example, she saved my puppy's life using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and she did an emergency C-sections on pregnant stray cat that was killed by a car and then raised the kittens to adulthood by herself). I imagine she also knew a lot of useless or out-of-date skills, but it's hard to know because, unlike the unwanted items she hoarded, her rusty skills did not fill up the rooms of her house.
I don't see a problem whatsoever with this kind of collection? Seems like every single video game protagonist to me: collect all the butterflies, all the swords, all the sets of clothing, max out all the skills. The inaccessible rooms perhaps, but she managed to fit entire peoples and kittens and puppies into her life even then! If we ever experience societal collapse I have no doubt she would empty out her rooms and boxes for people in need. So in that regard they're spare rooms right?
Narnia started with an old dude who has too many coats in a spare room helping out war time kids. A better sort of collection than million dollar art that doesn't help anyone, imo....
I think if you had seen her house, you might change your mind. It was a large house (she and her husband built it for their seven kids and then continued adding on more and more rooms for storage; plus they had something like five or six outbuildings), but by the time she passed away, only the living room, kitchen, bathrooms, and one bedroom were accessible — single file only. You were basically squeezing through floor-to-ceiling canyons of stuff.
The pathways, at least, were kept very clean and clear — but outside the pathways, it was pretty similar to this image, if you imagine this pile as neatly stacked coats, baby clothes, toys, blankets, sippy cups, hand sewing kits, picture books, etc.
But yeah, in a collapse of society, she could have supplied her whole county — and would have done so joyfully.
It looks like my local Catholic run good will!
Oh my thats a lot a lot of rooms filled very full. Not all of us are born at the right time for our talents/challenges I suppose.
Indeed. I've seen the same kind of hoarding in a lot of other Appalachian people her age — all of them poised to hit the ground running in the next economic collapse. As frustrating as the hoarding is, I'm just glad it is hoarding because it means that economic collapse never came.
Here on the other side of the world (Australia), my elderly in-laws grew up on a farm during very tough times (Great Depression and harsh WWII rationing) when they were already a poor family to begin with. They are not hoarders like my elderly relatives in Tennessee, but they have a similar mindset — that this is just a temporary moment of economic prosperity, and we must take advantage of it and poverty-proof before for the inevitable reversion to the mean.
My mother-in-law, for example, has invested heavily in making the farm suitable for a large multi-generational farming family because, she says, that's how people have always lived — the way we live now is an anomaly.
Really tells you different people’s family experiences of survival. My understanding of getting by in a collapse means that you need to have as few things holding you down as possible so you can pick up stakes and move where you can have support or a job. This comes from an ancestral background of people who had to flee their homes in the wake of wars and invasions. The general lesson was always if you have stuff you better need it or be able to sell/trade it. The idea of being loaded down with things I can’t jettison or fence makes me feel vulnerable rather than secure.
I've been (not clinically) hoarding medical supplies since my partner's paraplegia. That has not improved with threatened Medicaid/Medicare cuts (he's on both). Thankfully while I have a bit of "wait i like that thing I can use that thing" the medical supplies are the only one I'm "KEEP ALL OF IT" about.
Ironically ADHD makes this harder I think, because I easily forget about stuff, but when I see it again, I remember I really like that mug/pen/book/whatever and want to use it... and then put it back on the shelf.
I don't do and haven't done that specific work, and don't have enough ancillary experience to speak to it. Generally there is a struggle to identify and get rid of anything of any potential value (as ascribed by the individual), and it is not a rational distress.
I think stuff like this tends to be too specific and varies too much based on the specific presentation and severity of the disorder in a given individual, as well as what their support network is like.
Absolutely
In this area I believe we lack the real knowledge or skill to give useful or definitive answers. Brain chemistry and psychology are so complex that you can have completely different looking datasets with the exact same behavior, and identical datsets with totally different behavior.
Basically everything we're doing in this area is mostly just looking for obvious correlation (yeah they started hoarding after the head injury) or only addressing if it's a problem (they were fine when the collection stayed in one room, but its become a problem as it impacts their day to day life now).
I suspect if we somehow had omniscient information you'd see overlap, but that's because I personally believe a lot of mental illness is just a personality "metric" cranked up to 11. Even still, there's probably plenty that we'd still never easily identify as "hoarder/collector" from raw data.
I am fully aware of this. For context, the article approaches the question it poses with under the umbrella of “Psychoanalysis as Therapy and Storytelling” and how the stories between the groups apparently differ in how they experience being a collector or hoarder. It pits that experience as the key difference between the two. Aside from there being much more to it, I also think it makes for boring and predictable outcome of the article.
The question I posed was more rhetorical in nature, because I know there are cases where collectors have turned into hoarders. While the article posted here is basically a feel good fluff peace, if it was written by someone else for a different organization it might have actually explored this angle and even sought out real stories of real people.
I actually have a weird parallel form of hoarding where I very much want to get rid of stuff, but I want them to go to somewhere they will be used rather than in a landfill. But this is becoming increasingly impossible nowadays. So functionally the landfill ends up coming to me, as old electronics and clothes remain in my closet because I can’t find a more responsible place to scrap them.
I’ve had this old Dyson vacuum battery in the trunk of my car for like, 3 months because I can’t find a hardware store that will recycle it! They only take standard sized batteries. So WTF am I supposed to do with this? It’s maddening!
Clothes are easy, salvation army or goodwill. Goodwill will also take electronics in some areas, they do in mine.
Ive also had good luck with listing things for free on facebook marketplace, but it has to be something that would actually sell if you tried to sell it, like an old terrarium or sports equipment.
For the battery, try contacting your local landfill service and ask them what to do with it.
I’ve done enough clothing donation stuff on the receiving side and it turns out that, like, 90% of the clothes get thrown away. They basically only keep the pieces in very good condition and essentially nothing fast fashion will survive. They won’t even wash stuff that’s a bit dirty or sell high quality stuff in need of minor fixes, like mending or patching. So at this point I will either just throw things away or repurpose them as buffing rags/wipes.
I’ve been reluctant to do FB Marketplace just due to resistance to Meta. It’s a real shame it seems to have largely displaced CraigsList now. But CraigsList just had too many scammers and it got to be a hassle to list things on there. People will try to haggle over EVERYTHING and then show up without enough money to try and cheat you. Terrible experience. BuyNothing groups have migrated off FB onto their own apps now, but the general user base has collapsed as a result. It’s never been harder to get rid of stuff responsibly.
Responsibility has been completely abandoned by world governments and the manufacturing industry. I try to avoid stuff like synthetic fabrics because I believe the accumulation of microplastcs and other forever-garbage is an even bigger existential problem than anthropogemic climate change BUT I refuse to let the responsible industries make me feel bad for buying the occasionally bottled beverage. Make a difference where you can (my other focus is native gardening because seriously the ecosphere as we know it is falling apart and every bit helps) and let the rest go. Chuck that battery in the garbage and let a future landfill-miner deal with it. (Recycling is also mostly bullshit, in that it isn't being done on any kind of impactful scale. Reduce and Reuse are way more beneficial)
Battery recycling actually is a thing and the materials in them are valuable enough to be worth collecting, as long as people actually collect them.
But people aren't collecting them near you, and so you're left with an item that you identify as valuable but can't find a way to get rid of.
I mean there is a way, I would just have to drive to Costco at which point I’m in for buying too many muffins.
They sell single packs of 8 instead of Buy 2 6 packs now. If that helps ;)
(It's still too many for me before they go bad)
Well then do that instead of complaining on the internet about how there aren't ways to responsibly dispose of stuff. Either care enough to do the thing or stop caring enough to chuck it in the garbage, this middle amount of caring only serves to validate your false helplessness that is causing the hoarding you described.
Hey how about you just not be a dick? I was casually shooting the shit here.
Ah okay Ive never donated anything other than fairly high quality lightly used clothing. My mom had kept all of my childhood clothes in boxes and much of it had only been worn a couple times before I grew out of it. Everything Ive bought as an adult Ive worn till its shredded.
My rule of thumb is basically if I couldn’t sell it, I don’t donate it.
I’m not convinced that collecting isn’t hoarding. It’s just a matter of degree.
When I hear about hoarding, I think about Jay Leno. He has a famous collection of cars. Hundreds of cars and motorcycles worth over $50 million. His collection is highly organized and his garages look like a museum. It’s still hoarding, just more expensive than the teacups and scraps of paper that the local cat lady has in her house. Maybe it wouldn’t be a hoard if his collection was open to the public. Maybe it will be made public after he dies.
Most people collect things. Some people are obsessed by it. Sometimes the collecting is mostly harmless. Sometimes it affects relationships. Sometimes it harms the community and the planet. Sometimes it’s a reflection of mental illness.
Mental illness isn’t a binary property. We all are on some spectrum. Based on what I’ve heard, hoarding is used as a shield in response to a trauma. We’ve all had some amount of trauma. Maybe the bigger the hoard, the bigger the trauma. Billionaires in general are hoarders, aren’t they? Their waste and mental illness affects us all.
In any event, the article seems like an excuse for Southbys to continue selling and promoting luxury items without guilt. From their about page:
Hoarding (disorder) is a matter of degree. Like other disorders, it becomes a disorder when the degree is such that it interferes with your daily life.
It’s like anxiety. Everyone has anxiety. Having anxiety is just a sign that your nervous system works. It’s when it significantly interferes with your standard of living that it becomes a problem.
This! And yes absolutely there are people who have similar behaviors but they're sub-clinical. If someone's collection is bankrupting them, there's probably a compulsive behavior issue that's reached a clinical level, but not a hoarding issue... Unless they cant navigate their home, are afraid to get rid of items in case they're needed, etc.
Also hoarding often stems from a need to stockpile against future times of hardship after experiencing difficulty maintaining basic needs. I did some of this with grocery shopping during the pandemic but never to the degree of hoarding.
Leno does not seem to be hoarding in the clinical sense. In the "dragon with his pile of gold sense" sure. And that's why it's important to make it clear what definitions of the word we're using.
I'm rather convinced that a disorder's severity in degrees can be measured in money.
Jay Leno's car hoarding isn't problematic because he can afford to have them be kept indoors in climate controlled settings. He buys cars in good condition and have money to repair them to a state at which little ongoing maintenance is needed. My neighbour, whose donation/scrap collection is stored outside, has a junkyard.
The woman who keeps giant cats and has cleaning staff and a whole social media team and vets on call runs a sanctuary. The woman with 5+ cats in her home is a crazy cat lady.
Anxiety about the future or safety can be better managed with money and tech. Social phobia can be assuaged if you have staff do all the "life" for you. An eating disorder can be better managed by working closely with medical and diet professionals, and having life be arranged around it.
On the one end of the spectrum, a rich person can afford to be eccentric where a poorer person might see the same tick prevent employment or finding housing
(On the other end, depression, mania, schizophrenia and other very serious illnesses seems to be more of an equal opportunity attacker. But, here too, financial instability, housing precariousness, nutrition and medical care access would also make these far worse.)
Mind, the ultra wealthy have their own set of mental illnesses also measured in money. But there exists a very large slice of society whose afflictions are made more bearable with money.
Just a note, this isn't hoarding. That's just social opinion. Hoarding is so many things, including cats, that a hazmat suit is required to clean up all the waste and deal with the fumes, and dead cats are found dessicated and crushed in the debris.
Also she only owns a sanctuary if she's done the paperwork.
Rich people can absolutely be hoarders, they're just more likely to have people around and the means to get help.
Hmm I don't know, the same person with a licensed sanctuary, if suddenly without staff and resources, might find themselves cramming large cats into a too small home without proper cleaning but unable to let go out of...?
I think problematic hoarding people didn't suddenly get like that, they start with an okay number of tin cans or boxes or cats, and then get overwhelmed and don't have the (mental + financial + time + skill) resources to refuse more / manage existing, plus chasing the fleeting high of acquiring more and the faint hope that this time it'll all get organized. And then get stuck like that.
So 5 cats for a well person isn't problematic, but 5 could, for someone feeling stuck, become more than 5 very soon and finding themselves living with 60 uncleaned litter boxes and 30-40 cats one day.
The diagnostic criteria for Hoarding
I'm speaking about it as a mental health disorder, not colloquially just for clarity!
No, hoarders don't start that way, and yes a big cat enthusiast could become a hoarder but as you described neither were. (The rich woman in your scenario is getting eaten by her tigers btw. )
People with strong and close support systems can often get early intervention and not end up in a house full of feces, and wealthier people often, but not always, have more people around to provide that support. Money also makes treatment and cleanup easier.
A large part of hoarding is fear of getting rid of things. In the case of cats it's more "I have to take care of them they'll die without me" but it's rarely just one "thing"
I can only dream of becoming rich enough to be devoured by my giant friend-shaped pets one day.
On a slightly more serious note, though, reading though the diagnostics, I guess a rich person with 1000 cars could be just collecting, if they're not distressed by the thought of travelling out of the home or having visitors or driving one of them for fun.
But another rich person who despite having an also immaculate garage, could be a hoarder if they are distressed by the thought of losing their 10th exact same base model cheap car, if they think they're going to be needed for mad Max world or something, and their garage is only clean because of money and staff constantly picking up after them, and they're no longer travelling or enjoying the cars or feel good about having people over to look at them.
Yeah, and the latter person might not get flagged as a hoarder but with, say, OCD, or something similar anxiety-wise because they don't look like a hoarder yet. So they might not speak with someone who knows to ask the hoarding questions.
Mental health is complicated.
I think it boils down to one thing: For hoarding, it is impossible to let go. For collecting, there is almost always a price.
Unwillingness x impact. I suspect most people have a few keepsakes whose emotional value far exceeds what anyone would be willing to pay for it. A shoebox full of bad poetry from a deceased spouse wouldn't ever register as "hoarding" but filling a bedroom with unopened thank-you cards because of an anxiety around seeming grateful and worthy to others probably would, even with the same degree of unwillingness to let go.
My kids make 400+ bits of art a year. 395ish of them need thrown out for sanity.
I do want to say that there is a fuzzy tipping point where the spectrum behavior becomes a mental illness. So in that case, yes, it is a fuzzy binary property.
If you feel anxious without your teacups and scraps of paper, it's closer to a mental illness than not. If you like the way 10 teacups look, or you're having fun finding all 50 state quarters, not a mental illness.
Yes, it's all a spectrum, but we all don't have a mental illness.
The mental illness aspect comes into play if the behavior cannot be stopped or there is a feeling of anxiousness/dread or something like that. And it's continuous or recurring over a long period of time. A mental health assessment will let you know.
I've collected books. I've hoarded books. I've hoarded computer equipment. There is a distinct difference.
Ever thought "I might be able to use this cable again, I'm not going to chuck it out when I dispose of the rest of this electronic waste."?
Take that to the extreme and you have hoarding. Where you don't want to throw away anything because it might be useful in some made up scenario in your head. You also see others throwing away things and it offends you because those items could also be useful in some other made up scenario in your head. To the point where you see super cheap crap that others are desperately trying to get rid of without trashing it and you see potential treasure.
That is hoarding. Get rid of your shit. No, you will never ever need that parallel cable ever again. Not ever. There is no scenario you will ever need a parallel cable that you cannot easily access it through 3 dollars and the internet.
Things I have not regretted keeping:
Things I regret giving away:
Parallel cables are great for Raspberry Pi GPIO. Just need to snip one ground pin.
My rule is to only keep one of each type cable if they are no longer commonly useful. Every once in a while I am able to "save the day" by having such a cable. I wish there was some sort of tech themed thrift store that has these things in a sorted way, then I'd be more than happy to part with them.
Although of course Sotheby’s has an interest in reassuring collectors that what they do isn’t as unhealthy as hoarding, the article does make a distinction that never occurred to me. Collectors have a compulsion to acquire, while hoarders have an inability to discard.
I have mild anxiety about getting rid of things with actual value because of my childhood and later losing everything when my home burned down. I have found that finding good places to donate items has made it easier as I know these things will ideally get to people and not get thrown away.
One framing is looking at in and out flows. A collector is generally interested in external valuation and making trades. A hoarder is obsessed with an internal valuation of their possessions and may gift some of their stuff but isn't trading in a market.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is my favorite museum. It was a personal collection and museum until its namesake died and left it to the city of Boston. It's a massive collection in a beautiful museum built for the purpose of displaying its contents.
But there is one room that feels more "hoarder" than "collector." In the room, in display cases, is just random personal family affects. A comb that belonged to one of her sons, a random tassel labeled "from the bed of Mary Queen of Scots," and other odds and ends (there is also one of Napoleon's battle standards, sufficiently tattered.) It's a room that is touchingly personal. I got the sense that this woman and her husband built and maintained their collection, but there were hoarding tendencies as well. It's also not a stretch to call their collection of art a veritable "hoard" like a dragon might protect.
I don't think that assessing the value of the collected items directly like this makes a ton of sense. Hoarding has much more to do with being unable to get rid of items to such an extent that you impact your environment in ways that are harmful to you. This includes refusing to get rid of things even though they're not valuable, but I don't think having a collection of sentimental items that aren't valuable constitutes hoarding on its own without the associated anxiety and dangerous environment.
That is why I specified internal value, that subsumes sentimental value. But that's also why we threshold hoarding based on environmental effects. My point was hoarders don't have much outgoing, collectors are usually trading in a market.