Why do some people feel the need to hoard?

20 Comments

Some people feel the need to cover everything in useless nick-knacks. But that small chair is so cute, it's so small even a child couldn't use it.

They collect mounds of collectibles. Yes, more salt shakers and ornamental spoons.

Mountains of fake flowers and wicker baskets. One wicker basket is good five must be better.

And cut flowers, what is the point? Ooh, I have an idea lets kill flowers on an repeating basis because I like the way they look for a few days, before I need to replace them.

Hateful1

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Comments ( 20 )
  • e51pegasi
    6 years ago

    Do you mean the hoarders that have some serious psychological problem like you see on tv or the people who adorn & festoon their houses in pointless shit?

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    • [Old Memory]
      6 years ago

      Thumb up for use of the word festoon.

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    • Hateful1
      6 years ago

      Both. And yes festoon is a good word.

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  • [Old Memory]
    6 years ago

    Hey Hateful, did you really post this?

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    • Hateful1
      6 years ago

      Yes, why?

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      • [Old Memory]
        6 years ago

        Didn’t sound like you.

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        • Hateful1
          6 years ago

          I was tired and pissed about family things. I was sort of ranting.

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          • [Old Memory]
            6 years ago

            It wasn’t your normal prose and anyone can sign a post with your name. Hope things work out on the family front.

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            • Hateful1
              6 years ago

              Thanks. I hope so to.

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  • Boojum
    6 years ago

    I remember watching a program a few years ago about an elderly guy who lived in London and was a notorious hoarder. He had a large house with three or four bedrooms, but he was only able to use a small area in the kitchen because he had literally crammed every room full of junk from floor to ceiling. The outside of the property was just as bad, and the main reason he was known to the public health authorities was because his garden (US = yard) was piled high with more junk, and a paradise for rats.

    His backstory turned out to be that he was a Pole who had been in Poland during WWII, and he'd lost all his family to the Nazis, and then been sent to a Soviet camp for years. The hoarding appeared to be a reaction to this: never again would he have nothing but a spoon to call his own.

    Hoarding is a compulsion, and I'm sure the reasons for it vary, but I'm sure the stuff always represents something to the hoarder, maybe material comfort, maybe some connection to an important person or event in the hoarder's past.

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    • Hateful1
      6 years ago

      Not always a significant meaning. Do you really attach meaning mayonnaise that expired seven years ago?

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      • Boojum
        6 years ago

        I have no idea what it means to your particular hoarder, but mayonnaise is food, and lots of people find it difficult to throw away food. My wife is a bit like that, and I'm sure it goes back to a difficult period in her life.

        For a long time, it was difficult for me to throw away books. Rationally, I knew it was unlikely I'd ever open some of them again, but it just felt wrong.

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        • Hateful1
          6 years ago

          Donate books to your local library. My particular hoarder also collected book. I could go up into her attic and pull out 250 books easy. I know because I put them there. She had them stacked around her bed.

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  • donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
    6 years ago

    collectin collections

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  • AntiArchon
    6 years ago

    it's a mental illness.. everything wrong with humans always stems from abnormalities in the brain.

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  • e51pegasi
    6 years ago

    Houses with a legion of those creepy porcelain headed dolls. Usually 12 to 18" tall. Either the ones in flouncy dresses or worse still the terrifying clown ones.

    They are usually concentrated in one corner of one room in the house which exponentially multiplies the evil those foul creations discharge.

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    • Hateful1
      6 years ago

      When I was young I was working at a store that had those. And a few talked. One night I was in the back of the store near the dolls and the power went out. The dolls that talked all said "Goodnight Te he he".

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      • e51pegasi
        6 years ago

        Villages & towns should have purges.

        Pile the doll things up in the town centes, douse them in petrol & burn the lot.

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  • Pumpurrnickel
    6 years ago

    Mental illness? Stupidity? Nothing better to do? I don't even know.

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  • [Old Memory]
    6 years ago

    Because some people have lost a lot in their life and don’t want to risk losing any more. I don’t hoard, but you could say I hoard with food. I keep cans up soup under my bed and in my closet just in case.

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