04
Oct

Hoarding is Serious Business

Hoarding is Serious Business that make most wonder….how did I get here?

Lots of factors can be responsible for a person becoming a Hoarder – or having hoarding tendencies.

Hoarding is an anxiety disorder that affects 700,000 – 1.4 Million people. They can experience a fear of getting rid of items and hoarding can control their life.  And what you may find as strange is that hoarding can be a subset of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).

Making the decision of what and why to keep an item as small as a ceramic dish can be enormously stressful for many. They can justify “why” they need to keep it, while knowing that there is really not a reason to keep it.

I just read an article that talks about the 10 Things that You Should know about Hoarding. Check it out because I think you will find it interesting.

Hoarding doesn’t have to be like the TV Show “Hoarders” and “Hoarding: Buried Alive”. But this is what we typically think about when we talk about people being a Hoarder. This is not necessarily the case.

Hoarding can happen because the person is a perfectionist and is afraid of making the wrong decision if they get rid of an item. They don’t allow themselves to take ownership of the item to be able to make the decision.

As in the past, I mentioned that I have found 2 reasons that people want to hold on to their items:

  1. They paid a lot of money for it so they can’t donate it or let it go (even though there isn’t room in their home for the item)
  2. They got the item for Free and it would cost too much $$$ to replace the item. So, they may as well keep it “just in case”.In either situation, stop kicking yourself in the butt and feeling bad about getting rid of things. Even if you have it, if you can’t find it there is no purpose in having it to begin with, right? 

What I am experiencing with families now are 3 different situations:

  1. They can’t get rid of things because it was given to them by a family member
  2. They think that they have to save things for later
  3. They have inherited another family member’s “collection” and they make it their collection too.
  • What I share with families is that especially if the item was free and given to you by a family member; that family member did not intend for the item to cause you clutter. It would not make them happy to know that they had contributed to your “mess”.  And if you get rid of an item given to you by a friend, you can always “blame the organizer” for getting rid of it.
  • I also think that people can get sucked into the “I’ll save it for later” mode because an item is on sale and a “deal”. But think about it….how good is that “deal” if you can’t find it when you need it and then you go out and buy another one anyway.
  • The inheritance of items can be the most difficult situation to deal with. Understanding that the hoarding tendencies of your family member does not define you and it doesn’t mean that you need to hoard items too.

More to come this month on the topic of Hoarding. Let us help you get organized. It Will change your life.