Hoarding
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-07-13/hoarding
We have all come across the friend or family member that collects piles of old fabric, newspaper clippings, or even buttons. It might seem harmless enough. But for some, hoarding these often valueless items takes over their lives and their homes. The most well known example of the tragic consequences of hoarding was the Collyer brothers, who died in their new york home under a literal mountain of junk. But they story is just one of many. Life management consultant Dr. Darnita Payden and psychologist Elspeth Bell discuss this surprisingly common disorder.
Guests
Darnita Payden
Life Management Specialist
Elspeth Bell
Psychologist, Behavior Therapy Center of Greater Washington
Randy Frost
Professor at Smith College and author of "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things"
Comments
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I am probably a hoarder. After decades of being tired of it, I hired someone I trusted to clear out one room at a time. I was able to come home to a beautifully re-arranged home which was like a ton of weight being removed.
I was able to go through the things bagged as trash which gave me a bit of control that I wanted. Because I also "treasure" everything in some emotional way, I could let go (donate to Goodwill) things when I though someone else might also "treasure" the items. It helped to think I was sharing or passing on items that had value.
I am probably a hoarder. After decades of being tired of it, I hired someone I trusted to clear out one room at a time. I was able to come home to a beautifully re-arranged home which was like a ton of weight being removed.
I was able to go through the things bagged as trash which gave me a bit of control that I wanted. Because I also "treasure" everything in some emotional way, I could let go (donate to Goodwill) things when I though someone else might also "treasure" the items. It helped to think I was sharing or passing on items that had value.
My ex-husband's hoarding was a large part of the end of our relationship. I had to put some limits on the amount of "stuff" in our home. We were able to fill a large storage shed with the extra items for which we paid thousands of dollars in fees over the years. Still there were too many items for our small home. Eventually our relationship ended and he took as many of his belongings as he could afford to move. With great sadness, I was left with going through the stuff he left behind. I see now that I did not realize the extent of his attachment to these objects.
I am probably a hoarder. After decades of being tired of it, I hired someone I trusted to clear out one room at a time. I was able to come home to a beautifully re-arranged home which was like a ton of weight being removed.
I was able to go through the things bagged as trash which gave me a bit of control that I wanted. Because I also "treasure" everything in some emotional way, I could let go (donate to Goodwill) things when I though someone else might also "treasure" the items. It helped to think I was sharing or passing on items that had value.
CHILDREN are HOARDERS!!!
Please discuss how many children naturally seem to be hoarders.
My 7 year old son collects everything from fast food free toys, pictures that he likes from magazines, childrens menus, worksheets from school, rocks, stickers. Ironically he is pretty good about donating old out-grown toys. I feel that he is unnaturally attached to small objects. His stuff is in his room and very organized in bins, but he does not like to part with things that should be thrown out, recycled or donated.
How can I help him realize that many things that he needs to keep permanently? It seems as if at his young age, I should do something now to change his behavior and attachment to things.
I am very sympathetic to his nostalgia and save his favorite old toys, do not throw out stuffed animals but the endless plastic McDonald toys and papers are accumulating fast. It's okay to collect things like rocks but to pick up and save every interesting rock he sees?!
please paraphrase if needed and do not use my name.
CHILDREN are HOARDERS!!!
Please discuss how many children naturally seem to be hoarders.
My 7 year old son collects everything from fast food free toys, pictures that he likes from magazines, childrens menus, worksheets from school, rocks, stickers. Ironically he is pretty good about donating old out-grown toys. I feel that he is unnaturally attached to small objects. His stuff is in his room and very organized in bins, but he does not like to part with things that should be thrown out, recycled or donated.
How can I help him realize that many things that he needs to keep permanently? It seems as if at his young age, I should do something now to change his behavior and attachment to things.
I am very sympathetic to his nostalgia and save his favorite old toys, do not throw out stuffed animals but the endless plastic McDonald toys and papers are accumulating fast. It's okay to collect things like rocks but to pick up and save every interesting rock he sees?!
please paraphrase if needed and do not use my name.
pls excuse multiple postings -- adjusting to new computer
How can people who collect large numbers of animals i.e., cats be helped?
I am in exactly the same position as Jared. My social life as a child was destroyed by my mother's hoarding; I lived in shame and fear that one of my friends would find out. (Sometimes they did; then they were no longer my friends.)
I am terrified that I will end up like her. My house is neat and tidy, but I still have a tremendous fear of having people over-- it will never be clean and neat enough. Obviously, I'm still trying to hide my shame.
Isn't it time that we start looking at the next generation -- the effects of clutter behavior on children?
ALL of the hoarders I know, myself included, are also dyslexic. I am curious to know if this panel thinks that there is a link between dyslexia and hoarding or if there have been any studies linking the two.
~Margaret
in Seattle
Just to let listeners know that Johns Hopkins University is conducting a family study of compulsive hoarding. The study involves an approximately 1.5 hour telephone interview. Confidentiality is assured. Please contact Dr. Jack Samuels at 410-614-4942, or jacks@jhmi.edu
I have beeb combating the symptoms of depression and seasonal affective disorder since my teenage years. I fit the three reasons discussed at the beginning of the show, especially the "I can't part with this" magic hoarding theory. Long term depression and it's multi-dimentional joys and consequences contribute to my particular situation, which is managing clutter and staying organized.
I winder if any of your guest could recommend somebody in in who would consider a consult at a reduced cost. I have no health insurance and the downturn and the death of a close relative have wreaked havoc on my animal behavior business.
I love your show, Diane.
Thank you,
Adrien Zubrin
This may be a separate problem but my accumulation of stuff is caused by feeling guilt if I add something to a landfill before I am 100% sure it cannot be repaired. I can give usable things to friends or to charities but I keep broken things. Keeping this accumulation organized takes much of my time and energy. Carol
I remember hoarding when I was a kid. Please help him now! You have to set a good example, and set boundaries! I ask my kid regularly, after he brings things into the house - "do you want to throw something else away to make room for this?" He only has X amount of space for storage, he's not allowed to use more. He makes those decisions, and he throws things away himself, to learn to overcome any anxiety he might have about tossing stuff.
I suspect that my mother's hoarding comes from two major impetuses: (1) that she is truly OCD and cannot start to tackle organization without putting EVERYTHING in EXACTLY the right place in (she can't start to organize unless she knows it will be perfect), and (2) that she comes from a war-torn, impoverished third-world country and--ironically--feels that she needs everything and needs things in bulk. In regards to the second suspected cause, many people would think that people who have lived extremely simply would be adept at living comfortably with less in their life, but I've seen the exact opposite with her: she fears not having what she needs.
In my life, also being OCD and having hoarding tendencies, I relate to the guest's reference to "all or nothing" mentality. I use that term all the time to describe myself. This causes a lot of anxiety about things I do keep or the amount of possessions I have.
How would you categorize a hobbyist? I'm an aquarist, and will generally pick up supplies on sale- and rarely sell anything. I don't hold onto anything that doesn't work
I'm organized, except when work/life keeps me from staying organized.
Am I a hoarder?
Thank you for bringing the subject to the program. I have a dear friend with hoarding problem, and I find it very hard, or almost impossible to help, partly due to denial or the clutter blindness. I have read Randy Frost's book in an attempt to understand the subject better, and the book helped me beyond my expectations, it's a great work, written not only with knowledge, but respect and compassion. It gave a boost to my own organizational efforts, which stalled due to chronic illness. I am still unable to find out, how to help the friend though. He doesn't see how deeply the problem constricts his life and it gets worse. He also suffers a number of anxieties, and any issue makes it worse. I find, what makes it harder to explain is that the portrayal of hoarders often focuses on the most extreme cases, so moderate hoarders can easily dismiss it being a problem. How to help both efficiently and with understanding remains for me a question and this is the subject I would very much need more information about. St Louis, MO
am a clutterer. i want to get help, but have not been able to find a professional in my area, fort wayne, indiana. i have been to at least 4 therapist, no one seems to know how to deal w/ this specifically. i also have ADD. i really want help, i want my life to be clutter free. this is the best program i have ever heard on the subject.
i have a 15yo son going inti high school, i want his life to be different, free of my burden. my daughter avoids bringing my new granddaughter here to visit. i understand why, there is not even a place to sit...please guide me...jennifer
i also live in a 130yo farmhouse. so the fear of fire is an issue. this is my ancestrial home, my family arrived here in 1851.
i use the term 'clutterer' because i consider it less severe, no animals, kitchen is used, no food left out.
Is it possible to post some resources which might help family members of hoarders? Thank you.
Great show!! I'm fascinated by hoarders: My mother has always had more "stuff" than she needed, but it went to another level after we six kids all left home, and she had the empty nest (she & my father had divorced back in the 60's) - the anxiety of not knowing what the meaning of her life was now, pushed her to acquire under the guise of "collecting", and to buy literally anything & everything that was on sale or clearance (Walmart was her drug of choice), allegedly to use for potential gifts but then she never was able to part with any of it. She grew up in a severely insecure home, and I think that once we kids were not there to provide the love she craved, the "stuff" filled up the void. At its peak, her hoarding took up FOUR 15 X 15 storage rooms - there was not even enough room in her car for a passenger, as that's where the shopping overflow went. She ended up losing her job due to health reasons and that made her even more anxious that she would lose everything. She became the object of ridicule & scorn for many extended family members, but that just caused her to be more isolated & she would not let anyone near her stuff for fear they'd take it away. Long story short, no one could help her until FINALLY two years ago she watched some of the hoarding shows on TV and apparently a light bulb went off - she began going thru one box at a time, very very tiny efforts until she got it down to what will fit into her small townhouse - a huge accomplishment!! She is so much happier & calmer now, but if someone had just come in and "fixed" the situation, she would eventually have gotten right back to the same problem. It had to be motivated from within to be effective.
Although the segment on hoarding is over, I wanted to share my experiences living with someone who accumulated to excess - but was not disorganized in the placement of these items; everything had a "home." He died six years ago, and I have spent a number of years since then gradually getting rid of the excess.
He mainly purchased items "on sale." These included many packages of chicken, pork chops, and steaks/ground beef, which were crammed into two stand-up freezers in the garage. Sometimes he would visit multiple grocery stores in a single day to check out all of their "deals" and return home with many of these items, which would be stuffed into the freezers, sometimes for years. (Ironically, and predictably, we lost these items when we were without electricity for two weeks following Hurricane Wilma, which impacted Miami in 2005.)
We had numerous/excess canned goods, spices, colognes. We had too many cooking utensils. Too many books. We also had several years' worth of toilet paper, I found out, as I didn't need to buy any for several years after my partner's death.
He considered his behavior completely justified and even clever - as he was committed to "beating the system" by buying hugely when items were "on sale." (Sometimes this included items that SHOULDN'T be bought in bulk - such as heads of lettuce!)
I don't know if this behavior constituted "hoarding," given that it was "organized," but it certainly wreaked havoc psychically and spiritually. I'm glad that this subject is getting more attention than in the past. Thanks for listening.
I wonder to what extent the infantile pastimes of "crafting" and "scrapbooking" have contributed to the phenomenon of hoarding. I remember on the program "Clean Sweep," the professional organizer Peter Walsh frequently encountered clients who refused to part with their cheap, made-in-China "craft" junk. Seems to me these hobbies (which are invariably aimed at women) were invented to distract women from real issues in their lives, like how little they're paid.
Does hoarding have a genetic basis? My grandfather had a terrible hoarding problem in his old age, my uncle did also, my mother had a lot of "stuff" that probably would have turned into a problem if she had lived longer, and I tend to have more "stuff" than I really want, but still have to work to get rid of the attachment to the stuff, and get rid of the stuff itself.
Clutterers Anonymous is a tremendous resource for clutterers or hoarders, and, like all 12 step based programs, is essentially free. There are a couple meetings in the DC area.
This is posted to offer assistance to folks who might need help; I did not go through all the comments to see if this information has already been posted here.
http://sites.google.com/site/clutterersanonymous/Home?pli=1
Dr. Randy Frost is involved with the International Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation, another useful resource.
www.ocfoundation.org
I worry that hoarding is now considered a mental illness. Are we on our way to medicating anyone with a propensity for disorder? Certainly some people need help; those whose hoarding render them a danger to themselves or others. But there can be wide ranges of standards of cleanliness and orderliness depending on circumstances and priorities. Albert Einstein's study, after all, was a total mess and he said he worked best that way. May I suggest that when we enter a home we judge it by the joy, love and laughter we find inside.
Have your guests ever studied people who hoard so much stuff that it is kept outside of the home? As I travel in rural areas around New Hampshire it is not unusual to see the land around a home loaded with stuff that can include old cars, a appliances, toys, etc. Are these folks hoarders as described in today's program? John Howe
I was actually surprised they didn't talk about Animal Hoarders.
My sister saw it a lot when she went to Vet Tech School in NE. They'd have squirrels & other wildlife as pets.
There have even been cases of homes so over run with cats that it smells like a litter box when you drive by.
The Institute for Challenging Disorganization (http://www.challengingdisorganization.org) offers free fact sheets for people interested in chronic disorganization, as well as an FAQ.
The website also offers a referral directory of professional organizers who are ICD subscribers and have earned, at minimum, the Foundation Certificate in Chronic Disorganization. This is a great starting point for folks looking to work with a professional organizer who has been educated in these issues.
Janine Adams
Marketing Director, Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD)
Owner, Peace of Mind Organizing, LLC
I live on Wisconsin Ave and see the 'homeless hoarder' daily, does anyone know more about him?
http://disordertheplay.blogspot.com/