The only reason I'm not a good hoarder...
Dec. 23rd, 2009 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lisamoeI've been watching Hoarders on A&E. In a way, I feel good, because I'm a lot better at throwing things out than those people, and you can actually use all the rooms of my house, even if there's clutter around the edges. But on the other hand, I see how I could turn into one of those people if something went wrong, lol. With me it's more a laziness about just physically getting in and cleaning things out though, than a need to keep useless stuff. If I can get motivated to clean an area in the first place, I don't have emotional issues about getting rid of things. On the other hand, I don't seem to have a great need to keep the clutter down either and my house is, by normal standards, pretty cluttered. I can see how it could get out of hand if I weren't vigilant about clearing stuff out every so often.
When I was a child and teen, my parents used to have some good friends who were the kind of hoarders you see on the show. They have a four bedroom house and it just has paths through it and a place for each of them to sit and that's all the space there is. I think that scared me to the point where I was determined not to be like that and that's all that's kept me from real hoarderdom. They aren't filthy really, but they don't throw ANYTHING away. Old TV dinner trays are washed and stored for no reason. Tons and tons of trinkets and ornaments and art, so much that they don't even know what they have and can't ever get it out and display it even though some of it is nice stuff. Other things are just junk though and it's kept all the same. They have sealed boxes of cookies from the 80s that you can't buy anymore so they can't get rid of them, though they're inedible now, thousands of items of craft supplies that won't ever be used and just basically everything they ever had, whether it's worth anything or not. I understand how depression era people get like that, but I don't really know how these folks, both from regular middle class backgrounds, got into that mindset. It has served as a warning to me though. :-)
When I was a child and teen, my parents used to have some good friends who were the kind of hoarders you see on the show. They have a four bedroom house and it just has paths through it and a place for each of them to sit and that's all the space there is. I think that scared me to the point where I was determined not to be like that and that's all that's kept me from real hoarderdom. They aren't filthy really, but they don't throw ANYTHING away. Old TV dinner trays are washed and stored for no reason. Tons and tons of trinkets and ornaments and art, so much that they don't even know what they have and can't ever get it out and display it even though some of it is nice stuff. Other things are just junk though and it's kept all the same. They have sealed boxes of cookies from the 80s that you can't buy anymore so they can't get rid of them, though they're inedible now, thousands of items of craft supplies that won't ever be used and just basically everything they ever had, whether it's worth anything or not. I understand how depression era people get like that, but I don't really know how these folks, both from regular middle class backgrounds, got into that mindset. It has served as a warning to me though. :-)
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Date: 2009-12-23 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-24 02:10 am (UTC)Now that they are gone, he lives alone in the family home with their hoard AND his.
I think if I lived alone for too long, I could easily start to justify keeping all sorts of weird things as 'part of the craft stash'.
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Date: 2009-12-24 02:33 am (UTC)