What Goes Through the Mind of a Hoarder?

We all probably know someone who has more clutter than usual in their home, sometimes justified, other times completely unjustified. Rarely there are times that having clutter isn’t powerful enough to describe the mess in someone’s home, but rather the term hoarding must be used. Webster’s defines a hoard as“a supply or accumulation that is hidden or carefully guarded for preservation, future use, etc.” The part about later use is the key to understanding the mind of a hoarder, they believe they aren’t storing junk, but rather that everything they own has a use.

Even if someone has a 1/1000 chance of being useful to a hoarder in their lifetime, they will most likely hold onto it due to some sort of emotional connection to it. Whether it is because they spent money on it at one point in time and can’t imagine throwing it out, or something else, they will hold onto it. Hoarders often place happiness in the items they own, usually junk, but still, they derive a sense of purpose from them. In addition they might believe what they own is an actual collection, assigning some sort of confusing order to their hoard.

If you have ever seen the show Hoarders, you can usually tell that most people featured aren’t there by their own accord. Hoarding is not a normal thing to do and most who exhibit the problem have some sort of underlying cause for doing so. Often if people do not interfere the problem gets worse and worse until in affects other people they love, or ultimately causes their own demise. One of the most famous hoarding cases was the Collyer brothers, who locked themselves in their Harlem brownstone until one day the clutter fell on one of the brothers, killing him, and the other starved due to an inability to call for help.

I knew a boy in my grade who’s mother was a hoarder and the few times I went over his house, you had to dodge piles of boxes, newspapers ect. There was a set path you had to follow in order to get to the rooms in the house, or else you risked toppling the towers of boxes that were stacked up. Ultimately someone reported the mother and child services intervened. She was forced to remove much of the hoarding from her home or risk the removal her child. I remember riding bikes with my friends past the house that summer and seeing multiply full sized dumpsters filled to the brim with junk.

There are definitely people who collect things and aren’t hoarders, but there can be a fine line as well. If you physically don’t have the space to own the things you are purchasing, you can’t go on buying, even if it is a good deal. People who buy 10 copies of the same video game, might buy it as an investment, but if there is nowhere to store it and you don’t plan on selling it anywhere in the immediate future , it needs to be passed up. Do you know anyone who is a hoarder and in need of help? What do you think should be done if someone’s hoarding is putting someone else in danger?