
What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder? - toufiqbarhamov
https://daily.jstor.org/whats-causing-the-rise-of-hoarding-disorder/
======
im3w1l
Smaller living space means that you can't save the thing you will need once
every five year anymore. A previously adaptive behavior becomes poorly
adaptive.

Cheap disposable items. Where before you would have a few hand made item of
high quality, you now get a lot of lower quality items. This is partially
related to technological advancement. If things become obsolete fast, it
doesn't make sense to build with quality. Anyway a consequence is that it's
easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before.

Anti-landfill propaganda. We are guilt-tripped for throwing stuff in the
garbage. We are told to dispose of things in very complicated ways and then it
may be easier to just not dispose of it.

Breakdown of community and family. Before we might keep things around by
giving them away to relatives or friends. There is a satisfaction in passing
the torch. But this option isn't as available anymore.

~~~
jdietrich
_> it's easier to acquire a large amount of stuff than before_

I suspect this is _the_ factor. A behaviour that is adaptive in an environment
of scarcity becomes maladaptive in an environment of abundance.

When my grandmother was a child, practically the only thing that genuinely
counted as "garbage" was ash from the fire. Pretty much everything else had a
meaningful value. Scraps of paper could light the fire. Scraps of cloth could
make a quilt or a rug. Vegetable peelings went to the pigs and not a morsel of
edible food was wasted. Packaging wasn't a word anyone was familiar with, but
boxes and tins would be saved for re-use. Furniture was repaired and re-
repaired until it was only good for firewood.

A lot of people were essentially raised to be hoarders, either through direct
experience or transmission of those values from their parents. That mindset
isn't irrational, but it's a poor match for the 21st century. It's all too
easy to lose sight of the purpose of those values and hoard for the sake of
hoarding.

I think that similar factors explain a significant part of the obesity
epidemic. The scarcity-era virtues of clearing your plate and being a generous
host become vices in a world of supersized portions and supermarket offers.

~~~
narag
Your historical explanation is reasonable and rational. The problem is that
compulsive hoarders and eaters aren't. I mean there are persons that like to
hoard, persons that like to eat much, but the extreme cases involve a
personality disorder.

~~~
jdietrich
We didn't evolve to be rational, we evolved to survive. "Personality disorder"
implies that there's something wrong with the individual, which I don't
particularly agree with.

"Eat as much food as possible" and "hoard useful resources" have been
successful evolutionary strategies for pretty much the entire history of life
on earth. Abundance is very, very new. No species can fully adapt to a
completely different ecosystem in a few generations. Most of us have at least
some maladaptive responses to abundance. Some people eat too much, some people
own too much stuff, some people drink too much alcohol, some people are scared
or sad all the time for no obvious reason, some people lose their life savings
to imaginary internet money, some people spend an unreasonable amount of time
playing Candy Crush or reading Hacker News. We're just not built for the
modern world.

I'm not endorsing hoarding as a lifestyle. I'm not saying that it's healthy or
rational. I'm not saying that we should leave hoarders to their own devices.
I'm saying that it's not _crazy_ , just an obsolete strategy. Looking through
that lens gives hoarders a means of understanding their behaviour and gives us
a means of helping them.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Hoarding useful resources is an important instinct. When the instinct is so
strong it causes serious problems, and the person is unable to control the
instinct with his will and intellect, or is unwilling to try, then it's a
disorder.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable definition.

------
jointpdf
I find the comments in this thread to be counterproductive (bordering on
disturbing/dangerous). Trivializing/dismissing the existence of mental
disorders based on uninformed viewpoints can cause harm to others, in that
they can feel ostracized and become less likely to seek the help they need.
Comments like this are along the same lines as 'everybody gets depressed--you
just have to choose to be happy'. Depression is a frequently a severe and
life-altering disease, and I hope everyone can recognize this sort of
statement as absurd.

Similarly, hoarding (as described in the article) is a _cluster_ of persistent
behaviors distinct from related disorders (like OCD). Like any cluster (esp.
clusters in a high-dimensional space, like human behavior), the class
membership is inherently fuzzy--everyone exists somewhere on the hoarding
spectrum or OCD spectrum or ADD spectrum. But by definition very few (~6%,
according to the link) people are close enough to the far side of the spectrum
that it causes severe distress to themselves and others. Think of it (very
loosely) like cancer--virtually everyone has some cancer cells in their body,
but our protective systems are usually able to keep them in check before they
run amok. But once they do, it undeniably becomes _cancer_.

I don't really know how to say this in a better way, but trivializing or
denying the existence of mental illness is cruel and reductive, and these
sorts of attitudes tend to ricochet around. Please don't participate in doing
so.

~~~
WhompingWindows
As an ADHD researcher, I've found many commenters on HN to be ignorant and
still highly opinionated about ADHD diagnosis and medication, which was my
thesis topic. Even highly educated, very smart individuals are growing up with
inherent biases against these mental illnesses which they do not know anything
about except heresay and pseudo-scientific nonsense.

A recent thread on ADHD brought these people out of the woodwork, and I
received many downvotes for spreading my belief that the ADHD research
community is not convinced of the over-diagnosis of ADHD, which many arm-chair
experts seem to take as a given. It's simply good scientific behavior to not
take this for granted, to do more studying, and yet numerous STEM experts have
spouted their certainty that ADHD is overdiagnosed and we're drugging our
poorly parented/educated kids into submission.

I don't know much about the other mental health disorders, but I'd be willing
to bet HN at large is not well-equipped to constructively discuss hoarding,
OCD, or even depression/anxiety. Though, I will say I believe
depression/anxiety get less stigmatized than OCD and ADHD, perhaps due to
their increased prevalence and incidence in today's world.

~~~
jointpdf
Thank you for all your comments (across many threads) that are helping to
destigmatize these issues. ADD/ADHD and stimulant treatment is an especially
loaded one. A lot of peoples' personal experience with stimulants is, "oh yeah
I took Adderall during finals in college and went on a giddy cleaning spree--
no way we should medicate our kids with meth". Every person's physiologic
response to stimulants is unique--and as you say, some people (like me) really
and truly need them to function and be themselves.

That being said, I can relate to the sentiment that stamping a red ADD on a
kid's forehead, loading their bloodstream with amphetamines, and sending them
back to the same mismatched school environment (with little/no other plan of
action) is _not_ a recipe for success. It wasn't for me, anyways.

Perhaps my hindsight is a little distorted, but I think a more personalized
and interactive educational experience would have been the single most
effective way for me to blossom educationally (and consequently emotionally).
My drive to learn has always been there, but the differences based on
environment, subject matter, and social setting were _extremely_ stark. I
outright failed some classes and almost got kicked out of school. At the _same
time_ in other HS classes (e.g. computer programming, web design, project-
based business mgmt. class), I went above and beyond. I bought a C++ game
programming as a 12-year old (and I built my own computer, with a friend)--the
ambition was there, but that book is still sitting on my shelf unread. No one
identified that interest as something that needed adult encouragement, so my
adolescent passion for programming died on the vine.

To what extent to you (or others) study this sort of thing (i.e. personalized
education for ADHD kids)? In particular, I'm intrigued by the potential of
things like intelligent tutoring systems, experiential education,
explorable/interactive explanations (AR/VR?), biofeedback/BCI, and so on. Are
you and others bullish or bearish on these sorts of technological solutions to
ADHD?

------
sethammons
Couple of things. All it means being classified in the DSM is "now we can
diagnose and bill for treatment."

Another, many commenters here are saying "Hur de hur, I have a lot of stuff,
I'm such a hoarder." I have to think they have not experienced hoarding. My
wife's mom is a hoarder. Literal trash fills her home and she navigates
through unsafe tunnels of newspaper, disguarded food, broken things she has a
pulled from dumpsters, and animal feces between her couch and the restroom.
She gets distressed at the thought of removing any of it. She might do
something with that broken or rotten thing one day, and not in the hack
something together way.

Collectors, reusers/repurposers, and keeping things that can be legitimately
used again are not hoarders. If the DSM definition includes them, it is only
due to overly broad definitions to make billing for treatment easier. Take the
definition of ADD; nearly every kid can fall into that definition when doing a
homework assignment they don't like.

~~~
germinalphrase
I had an elderly neighbor that was a hoarder. We knew because of the rats
(which were otherwise largely absent from that town). One day she went into
the hospital for a routine surgery and her kids showed up with a dumpster.
They simply cleaned out the house, exterminated, and bought her new furniture.
Hadn’t seen anything like it before.

~~~
jacob019
how did she react?

~~~
etrevino
My ex-wife was a hoarder and I threw some of her things away while she was in
a mental hospital. Cue screaming, crying, and rage that persisted for years.
To her mind I had irreparably damaged the relationship.

I imagine the mother reacted the same way.

------
ummonk
I tend to feel guilty throwing away stuff that can't be recycled (and even
recyclable stuff, knowing that recycle recovery is nowhere close to 100%). As
a result, I often end up hoarding stuff that I wish I didn't have, before
finally getting fed up and just clearing out a bunch of stuff by throwing it
away. As the article mentions regarding perfectionism, I have to be fed up
enough that I'll just quickly throw away stuff instead of second guessing
whether I might be wasting material that I might have a chance of finding a
use for.

This is exacerbated by the fact that there is lots more to hoard today
(massive amounts of junk mail, swag at every event, and product packaging
getting ever fancier). I think akin to how many people suffer from a paradox
of choice, I suffer from a paradox of abundance, and actually sort of wish
goods and materials were scarce enough that you could put time and effort into
making the most of what you have without getting overwhelmed.

~~~
antoinempl
I often do the same. Especially with plastic categories that are recyclable
but not in all facilities / areas. I've found a local government app (in Qc)
that indicates what to do with that. So for plastic category 6 i'm literally
saving enough for a trip to the eco-center (not sure how it's called
elsewhere).

But the really liberating thing for me is to reduce how much waste I have to
get rid of. Right now this means going to shops where I can bring reusable
containers for all liquids (drinking/cooking/washing) as well as avoiding
places that are overly wrapping with plastics.

In Montreal some places are even starting to give discounts if you bring your
own containers.

------
towelr34dy
The article mentions something in passing that I think is important:

Potential and Value

The article only mentions it once. We live in an increasingly globalized world
where our individuality can have an ever smaller impact on the enormous
system. I think this drives a lot of people to have a feeling that they are
living up to less than their potential and their value isn't that high. Maybe
the whole system is living up to less than it's potential. But there is a lot
of hopelessness about being able to influence it and our value within the
system.

The reality is that much of what is horded has potential or is tied to
something that had/has (like lost relatives mentioned in the article)

It seems like hording, like compulsive behaviors, allow us to create a small
sense of agency in a world that constantly strips us of it and define
potential and value by our own book.

~~~
slfnflctd
Yeah, according to most of the world's apparent value systems, I am
essentially human garbage as a middle aged person with no degree and a bunch
of partial skills but no specialties who works menial jobs for a bit above
minimum wage (or below, depending where you live).

On some level, I know I have tremendous potential, if I could find the right
place to plug in. But the many complicated steps, obstacles and potential
pitfalls awaiting me in that search are more than a little daunting. Also, how
many of these workplaces really _deserve_ me at my absolute very best? In my
experience, rather few.

Oh well, I still have my cozy spot with all my stuff, and my niece seems to
think I'm okay, so that'll have to do. Just need to keep the main rooms clear
so she doesn't trip over anything. When the world's values and your own aren't
aligned, pick whichever rates you higher, I say.

------
shard
I hoard digital media. I have thousands of e-books, movies, TV episodes,
music, and games that I will never be able to consume in my lifetime. Not to
mention all the time I spent obtaining the media. It does make me slightly
uncomfortable to get rid of the ones I know I probably won't consume, but that
feeling is mitigated by the fact that I should be able to easily re-obtain the
items if I change my mind.

I don't know if this is related to physical hoarding, since I am an anti-
hoarder when it comes to physical objects -- I prefer to have fewer things as
opposed to more things, and have a strong aversion to what I call "cheap
plastic crap".

~~~
jpatokal
Hoarding digital media has become kind of pointless with the advent of
streaming services though. As a former DJ with eccentric tastes, I spent tons
of time looking for, buying and cataloguing obscure music, then eventually
digitizing it. But now I just listen to Spotify and Soundcloud, which already
have virtually everything I ever collected and then some.

Of course, there are some gaps and the niggling sense of unease that something
I like today might not be there tomorrow because of licensing changes or
whatever -- but that's what cheap cloud storage is for.

~~~
Tor3
I'm "hoarding" web sites with technical information. I've got TBs of disk
where I mirror things. Because I started to notice that things just..
disappear. And they're not on archive.org, or their mirror is very incomplete.
I'll never need 99.99% of the stuff that I copy.

But just yesterday somebody on a forum looked for information and mentioned a
web site that apparently had that info at one point.. but had disappeared.
Completely.

Except that I had a copy and could hand it over.

~~~
adrianN
Why don't you contribute to archive.org instead?

~~~
Tor3
It's not something I could do instead - it's something I would have to do in
addition. And there's some problems with that - at the time I'm
copying/mirroring, the site is out there on the net. Uploading (as in direct
uploading) to archive.org of sites that exists would look a bit strange, I
think. But if you mean to get archive.org to mirror instead - yes, I do that
too, but the thing is, you can't get archive.org to recursively mirror
anything. You can point save.archive.org (IIRC - they change the URL
sometimes) to a not-yet archived site (or one which needs an update), and
archive.org will copy _that page_. You'll have to click-and-walk through every
page if you want archive.org to get a full mirror. And I have done that too,
with a few sites. But that's a lot of time-consuming work. Just quickly
mirroring a site that pops up during a technical discussion takes all of 30
seconds to set up.

------
nowicleanpoop
The only people I know who have profoundly cluttered homes filled with much
more stuff than average had war or famine/poverty as a part of their personal
history.

I'm sure this doesn't account for all cases and my sample isn't
representative.

When I notice the extra items in the homes of hoarders I know, they're nothing
that I haven't or wouldn't have acquired in one way or another -- they're
things I would've thrown away.

I see no evidence in the article that a possible increase in (more likely
recognition of) hoarding is a result of increased consumption and yet that
connection is implied in the article again and again.

~~~
tallanvor
Having lived in poverty, particularly as a child, was certainly a trigger for
many hoarders, but it isn't the only one. We just don't understand how mental
disorders are triggered.

I know that I have trouble throwing stuff away if I think I might need it, be
able to use it, or be able to repair it. Part of this is probably inherited
from my mother, who I think might have ended up with a house like some of
those you see on TV if it weren't for my father helping to set boundaries.

While I don't think hoarding itself is genetic, it is clear that there has to
be a genetic predisposition that make it easier for this type of behavior to
be triggered. My mother also ended up being diagnosed with early-onset
Alzheimer's, and I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that there's a
connection, although obviously I don't have the data to prove it.

~~~
gerbilly
> it is clear that there has to be a genetic predisposition that make it
> easier for this type of behavior to be triggered.

You just described one of the major theories about the onset and progression
of mental illness: the diathesis/stress theory of mental illness.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model)

see also:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_susceptibility_hy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_susceptibility_hypothesis)

------
KozmoNau7
My mom is almost entirely unable to throw things away. As a consequence, my
parents have boxes and boxes of all kinds of stuff stored, including some of
my toys from 20+ years ago. They live in a rather big house, but it is
starting to encroach on their living space, and it does prevent them from
using some of their extra rooms for their original intent, such as a dedicated
washing room, so they could move the washer/dryer out of their downstairs
bathroom.

Every time my dad and I try to bring up the subject of clearing all of that
stuff away, she counters with claims like "but that's our winter clothes" or
"as soon as I have the time", which never happens.

I've talked to her about why she tends to accumulate stuff like that, and she
thinks it's because her family didn't have much when she was growing up, and
her mother was a semi-functioning alcoholic. She says they often experienced
simply running out of basic things, and couldn't immediately afford to replace
it. So she internalized a need to keep everything around, never throw out or
give away anything that still works, and always have at least one spare in
storage.

They have three refrigerators (for three adults, my sister still lives at
home), which are all stuffed full at all times. This leads to ~monthly rituals
of cleaning out all the spoiled food, and then filling up the fridges again to
repeat the cycle. When questioned on this behavior, my mom argues that they
need to keep all the different spreads and stuff around at all times, because
you never know what people might want to eat. We try to argue that it's
perfectly OK to not have every single food you would possibly like to eat at
any time available at all times, but she doesn't seem to want to agree.

------
mirimir
I'm clearly a hoarder. As a child, I collected WWII stuff. Some, I found
myself in battlefields. And some, I got through trade with other kids. And a
lot of it got disassembled. Both out of curiosity, and for parts. So I had
quite the collection. Basically, weapons, ordinance, hardware and electronics.

And now, I just keep broken stuff, or parts of it. Just about every display,
for example, comes with a power cord (or now, brick) and data cable. Ditto
with computers and keyboards. So I keep the best ~five of each that aren't in
use, and donate the rest to a reuse center. I also have quite the fan
collection. But I no longer save RAM, because it so rarely matches.

I also have lots of hardware. Metal stock, fasteners, etc. And scrap wood,
left over from projects.

Sure, it takes up space. But I have a closet for that, and it's reasonably
well organized. And if something breaks, or if I need to hack something,
there's a pretty good chance that I'll have what I need.

~~~
StefanKarpinski
Does not sound like you meet the DSM criteria for hoarding mentioned in the
article. It sounds more like you are someone who likes hardware hacking and
hangs on to a lot of hardware bits and pieces for that reason.

~~~
mirimir
Maybe so. But my wife would disagree ;)

What did sound familiar was the sense of overwhelm. And the pattern of "don't
touch my piles, because I know where everything is".

Some years ago, when we were living in an ancient farmhouse, I had a basement
full of stuff. Bits and pieces of all the stuff that you need to keep an old
farmhouse working.

I also maintained collections of books and documents used in research, for
reference in case anyone asked. Now, at least that stuff is all on disk.

------
danielrm26
I think the simplest explanation goes like this:

1\. Hoarding is addictive behavior. 2\. The Opposite of Addiction is
Connection ([https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-
the-...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-the-digital-
age/201509/the-opposite-addiction-is-connection)) 3\. Because we currently
have less connection, we have more addiction—and hoarding is one
instantiation.

~~~
renholder
>Because we currently have less connection, we have more addiction — and
hoarding is one instantiation.

This makes the most sense to me. Connection and attachment are correlated. If
there's no connection or attachment, we'll - more than likely - attempt to
replace this 'x' thing missing with 'y' tangible thing.

Edit:

I think the problem of society always needing an enemy to attack, with the
ferocity the likes of which hasn't been seen in previous generations, is only
part of the problem. I'm going to refer to Bill Hicks' closing speech to give
a general synopsis around this[1].

[1] - [https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU](https://youtu.be/tHzm01FQKEU)

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Granted this is a layman's perspective, but it doesn't seem like much of a
mystery to me.

On the one hand we have rampant marketing pushing the idea that stuff will
make us happy, and on the other we have society telling us that waste is
dooming the planet.

So we have significant pressures to a) acquire things and b) not throw them
out.

~~~
darkpuma
Yes, but those pressures are applied to everybody while only a relatively
small percentage of the population becomes hoarders. There must be more to it.

~~~
Aeolun
Some people emotionally bond with stuff just as readily as with puppies.

~~~
darkpuma
I was a kid when I first encountered the home of a hoarder. My mother brought
me there because she was dropping off schoolwork to one of her students (a
year younger than me) that lived in the home. I think that was just an excuse,
I think she was concerned for the child who lived there. What I remember most
vividly was the pile of toilet paper cardboard tubes. The pile was taller than
I was, and wider than I was tall. That wasn't even close to the worst, but it
stood out because it must have represented decades of hoarding. It takes a
long time to use that much toilet paper.

That's not simple materialism. That's not loving your motorcycle like somebody
loves a dog. It's a serious mental illness that shouldn't be taken lightly or
brushed off.

------
AnimalMuppet
My parents grew up in the Great Depression. My dad still hoards stuff, because
he remembers when you simply couldn't _get_ stuff. For example, he talks about
re-using thread, not because they had no money to buy thread, but because
there was no thread to buy because the thread factories had closed.

I wonder if the Great Recession had a similar impact on people. Staring the
ruin of the financial world in the face may have left a mark on some people.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
My parents did the same, but the stuff they kept was _very_ different to what
we see from a modern hoarder. They'd been through the depression, war, and
rationing. My dad remembered his childhood in the 30s where there simply
weren't enough clothes and shoes to go around between him and his two
brothers.

None of what they kept was consumer stuff. No crap. They didn't hoard records,
magazines, electronics, clothes or what have you. Financially they were
comfortable and had no need whatsoever to do so.

They kept screws, bolts, string (in the string tin), paper bags (neatly
folded), plastic bags. Then they were reused and repurposed. Mum unravelled
old jumpers and knitted or crocheted the wool into socks, scarves, blankets.
She'd darn socks and mend rips. When she watched a soap opera there was
_always_ the background noise of knitting. There was enough food in the
cupboards and freezer for a month, yet they'd shop weekly and always replenish
stock. Mum baked and cooked for the freezer too, which had the added advantage
of being 1,000x nicer than any store bought bread or cake.

Dad kept an Aladdin's cave in the garage from old broken electricals and
mechanicals. He could repair most things from what was in the cupboards and
tins in there, and almost always did in preference to buying another. Clearing
it after he died took forever, but was an education of an age when things were
more substantially made. Every thing.

Their environmental footprint was a tiny fraction of me and my peers, though
knew nothing of "environmentalism". I never quite understood why they didn't
spend more, especially in retirement. I don't think they saw the point of
spending, except trips and holidays. :)

------
gaius
Minimalism is the ideology of the rich - you don’t need to keep stuff if you
know you can simply buy it again next-day shipping. Keeping stuff “in case”
it’s ever needed again is the normal behaviour of normal people!

~~~
C1sc0cat
Really the rich in the UK are known for buying high quality stuff and wearing
it for years Prince Charles has a favourite Barbour jacket that's 40 years
old.

~~~
jodrellblank
Is it definitely the same jacket - he only bought one originally and has never
bought an identical one since?

------
wufufufu
My untested hypothesis is that hoarding is a symptom of depression. That
coupled with there are just "more things" to hoard these days.

~~~
tomnipotent
> symptom of depression

Not all hoarders are depressed. Or have OCD. Which is why it has it's own
classification (from tested hypotheses).

------
narrator
I think there's just been a general decline in mental health. The suicide rate
has been increasing steadily since 2000.

------
tylerjwilk00
Hoarding feels similar to over eating.

We need to eat but some people can't control the quality or quantity of food
consumed.

Similarly, instead of collecting an appropriate amount of valuable and useful
resources, they collect random nearly useless items and attach much value to
them.

Could be a case of an ancient survival strategy that is no longer valid in the
current environment.

~~~
maigret
You can't "control", but you can create an environment that's better or less
for healthy eating. Look at the BMI difference between Japan and the US. In
the US, the lobbies for processed foods have long been very strong, and it had
its effects.

~~~
tylerjwilk00
Sure. Perhaps we generalize them both and say that:

Modern capitalism exploits (perverts?) natural human behavior and can lead to
maladaptive behavior in our current environment.

------
wvenable
I have a family member who has mild hoarding habits and the most striking
thing is the emotional attachment to the stuff. Throwing out something is felt
as though it is a personal attack and a loss almost equivalent to tossing the
family pet.

To blame income, capitalism, live space, etc misses the point. The items don't
have to be large or important. The space doesn't have to be large. The income
doesn't have to plentiful.

If there is an increase in hoarding, it's probably due to an increase in
stress and anxiety in life.

~~~
stordoff
> The items don't have to be large or important.

I have OCD (which isn't hoarding, but manifests in similar ways), and it's as
if there is not filter. _Everything_ is of equal value. That wrapper I just
discarded, or this photo of my parents - they're of equal importance.

Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought
process).

~~~
mirimir
> Yes, I _know_ they're of no use, but it _might_ be (is my OCD thought
> process).

Hey, I know that "wrapper" is intended to induce eye roll. But I _do_ save
some bags and packaging. For example, laminated packaging with an Al layer +
Al tape = temporary repair of a cracked roof slate.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I only recently threw away a (unused) Starbucks paper cup from ~2010. Life
circumstances around the time it came into my possession made me particularly
attached to an image printed on it, and thus the cup changed apartments with
me twice before I finally realized it's just a dust collector and I don't care
about it _that_ much anymore.

People are weird. Myself included.

~~~
mirimir
Yeah. My wife has a couple PBS "Downton Abbey" paper cups in the cabinet.

------
dschuetz
Funny enough, in the past days I was thinking about _hoarding_ as a
neurological disorder. It has similarities to keeping a lot of things in mind
at the same time and re-iterate them over and over. The are quite a few mind-
hoarders, as I call them, who basically hoard ideas and concepts to the point
that they forget what is actually relevant here and now. Hoarding psychical
objects might stem from the same cause inside the brain which causes the mind
hoarding as well. Hence it can't be a psychological disorder alone.

------
chillingeffect
This is an epic talk on the psychology of clutter by a very subtly brilliant
therapist. [0] I re-listen every few months and get new things out of it every
time. Many of her points are in this article, but also many more and more
deeply and personally contextualized.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eODhBTO4)

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wslh
The article mentions divorce. I would say that you can be a hoarder but live
with people that help you balance against hoarding. Beyond your partner, this
is also true if you don't have a social life or don't live with other people.
So, nowadays degrading social life (e.g. mobile phone addiction) could be a
natural cause.

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Nasrudith
The bit about hoarding not existing in the past except for gold was a real
eye-roller. Stuff was expensive then so it wouldn't be abnormal and more
readily pawnable. You could sell anything from old clothes to a dead horse or
headless axe and get something of value from it. Virtually nothing was
worthless.

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et-al
No one's mentioned marketing? We're probably bombarded with more marketing
than we ever have before. In addition, it's so easy to buy stuff with 1-click
shopping with 2-day shipping.

It's known that web sites want to be addictive for people, but it's so they
can ultimately sell people something.

~~~
wink
Not sure that's really a deciding factor I think, at least not in the
majority. Not all hoarders buy all the stuff they get. They just sweep up
stuff that's free or some of them just keep candy wrappers or old newspapers.
Sure, if someone is easily wooed by marketing and likes (or feels pressed to)
buy stuff, this can exacerbate the problem, but from all hoarding stories the
only thing that matches this was "Oh, this mustard is really cheap, better buy
the whole case of 48 glasses" which was then discovered years later in the
basement...

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RandomInteger4
I'm not a hoarder; I just see the potential for a future use that I don't
quite know of for these cardboard boxes and paper rolls. Never know when
you'll need a lot of cardboard ...

~~~
gerbilly
Get some gerbils, they love to chew up cardboard!

It would be like one compulsive helping out another.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGb4tqOMt1A)

(Only joking people, don't buy pets unless you are ready to properly care for
them from cradle to grave!)

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anjc
I accept that it can be a disorder, but they don't say whether hoarding (or,
'organising' I think is more accurate) is just a natural human compulsion.
From early childhood we seem to be drawn to collectible/hoardable/organisable
items (baseball cards, Pogs, Pokémon, Barbies, etc). Maybe this hoarding
disorder is a poor manifestation of a compulsion that we all exhibit in some
way.

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lkrubner
This describes the hoarders that I have actually known:

" _But researchers have found a possible link between hoarding and PTSD among
Holocaust survivors, and late-onset hoarding has often been linked to loss or
trauma._ "

Of those I've known, all of them have had intense anxiety about their own
mortality -- all of us have some anxiety about our death, but with hoarders
that fear is close to the surface. I've had the impression that they hope to
hold onto the past by holding onto physical objects from the past. If you keep
a souvenir from a particular day, then it's as if that day has not yet ended,
it will last forever.

~~~
Digory
A comment on one episode of Hoarders stuck with me: "I'm saving all this for
my grandkids."

It was a mangled way of protecting him from death and the indifference of
future generations.

But all it takes is a visit to a local estate sale to realize no one wants
99.9% of this junk, even your descendants.

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ggm
I think there are multiple root causes which are society-wide.

One, is that the boomers were a post WWII generation and there was a huge need
to keep everything, because people lost everything and much of it was
unreplaceable: My parents were teenagers in London during the blitz and lost
book collections, possessions being bombed out. They subsequently had kids,
across the boomer window: Guess what culture we grew up in: a hoarder culture.

We experienced the 1970s oil crisis. So we kept candles and suger. We
experienced periodic food and supply shortages. So we kept bulk buying.

We kept paper. We kept things. We kept old cars. We kept old electrical items.
We repurposed them.

But then consumer society moved to replace, not repair. The problem is we
didn't get our brains re-wired.

The other societal pressure is affluenza. We're under a huge amount of social
pressure to keep buying stuff. If the rate of acquisition exceeds the rate of
consumption, you can wind up accidentally in hoarder mode, stacked up with
purchases "just in case"

Thirdly, social anxiety levels are skyrocketing, especially amongst the young.
Anxiety feeds hoarding, because the pleasure moment in getting things is
matched by the pain moment in shedding things. Its a cycle of emotional states
feeding a buy-keep mode.

Fourthly, we're drowning in choice. Its a classic experiment, to offer three
jams for breakfast, or twenty (if you offer twenty, people often avoid jam
because deciding which is too hard). If you have too many choices, you wind up
making bad choices to get "all the things" to avoid having to decide which to
get. So you get two kinds of screws from the wall of twenty, or a box of
twenty kinds? I went the twenty. Then, we have the choice problem disposing:
which to keep and which to chuck?

Fifthly, the "dont be wasteful" moment works to stop buying but if you HAVE
the thing, "dont be wasteful" says don't dispose of it. Dont "throw things
away which are useful"

Disposal stores, Op-Shops, Charity shops, don't take electrical goods any more
in OZ (safety risk) and don't take shoes and bedding (health risk) so these
things stack up because adding them to the waste pile is "wasteful"

Society is hard sometimes. Its judgemental, and it adds pressures. These
pressures feed hoarding.

Marie Kondo may be helping unwind it, but the back pressure is huge. She is a
bit cult-y and maybe others have noticed what I see: people are disrespecting
cleaning up, cutting down, going to 'wasteful' and 'disposable society'
messages. Yes, its wasteful to buy unwanted things, and throw them away.

But we have the things, and if we stop buying the economy tanks.

What do we do?

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dasanman
Consumerism pops into my mind. People want more and more and at the same time
are terrible at getting rid of things

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Phenomenit
Is the inverse of this extreme minimalism?

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bayesian_horse
And how can hoarders actually be helped?

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njharman
The psychological industry inventing new disorders and diagnosing normal human
behaviors as a disorder, something that needs to be fixed.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test?language=en)

~~~
jointpdf
No. _Clinical_ hoarding disorder is _not_ normal human behavior--it causes
"significant distress and/or impairment of personal functioning", by
definition. Same goes with any other mental disorder.

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tim333
>What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder?

Judging by the article taking something that's gone for ages without too many
problems and recategorising it as a disorder.

~~~
doubleunplussed
You must have never seen a hoarder's house. Look up pictures.

~~~
tim333
My mum's something of a hoarder. It's never been a DSM issue though.

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atomical
Why is this page using 100% of CPU?

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SketchySeaBeast
That seems unique to you. I'm not experiencing that, and I'm running vanilla
chrome without an adblocker.

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superkuh
The unstated premise is that there is a rise in hoarding and that hoarding is
a disorder. As this very article states at the beginning it was only within
the last 5 years that it has been recognized as a psychological disorder. It's
just as likely to be removed again depending on the profits, or not, of those
seeking to exploit the idea of hoarding being a disorder.

~~~
weinzierl
I also doubt that it's on the rise. I always thought it to be a Baby Boomers
thing because they are the last generation that suffered from material
shortage in their childhood.

Similarly I believe information hoarding is a Gen X thing because we grew up
in information shortage. Do Millennials download stuff? Maybe out of fun or
for convenience but probably not because of the irrational Gen Xer fear that
all the nice access to information we have could go away one day.

All of this is just my arm chair psychology of course.

~~~
yzb
Funny you'd say that. I keep a folder with gigabytes of youtube videos I
downloaded in the event that they are removed from youtube. And, to tell you
the truth, a chunk of them have actually been removed from youtube over the
years!

~~~
gerbilly
This is why I have to laugh at people who deride older non digital
technologies: film cameras (negatives last hundreds of years if stored
properly), photographic prints (archive quality non acid paper last ~100s of
years also.

I have 40 year old VHS tapes that are still good, vinyl records last a long
time too.

Think of all these pictures we snap with our phones.

Most of them will probably be lost from disk drive failures, accidental
erasure, hardware failures making them too expensive to recover, software
obsolescence (pictures are on the device but they don't make the software to
connect to the device any more)...

Meanwhile I have a box of family pictures, some of them from the 19th century
(a few tin types), but most of them from the 20th century, that are still good
most with negatives intact. I could print a brand new print of any of them
anytime I want.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Most of them will probably be lost from disk drive failures, accidental
> erasure, hardware failures making them too expensive to recover, software
> obsolescence (pictures are on the device but they don't make the software to
> connect to the device any more)...

> Meanwhile I have a box of family pictures, some of them from the 19th
> century (a few tin types), but most of them from the 20th century, that are
> still good most with negatives intact. I could print a brand new print of
> any of them anytime I want.

This is really where cloud storage solves those problems. The photos I care
about are shared with friends and family and are safe from hardware failure or
house fire. The only scenario they aren't great at is the inter-generational
one, but if dad gives kids access it's no worse than a shoebox under the bed.
They'll just have to pull stuff down into their own digital lockers before
MasterCard and Google realize I'm dead.

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drannex
Consumer capitalism caused by an infinitely exponential increase in
advertising compared to any other era of human history.

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acidtrucks
For me, it was growing up with Sonic the hedgehog. I was trained that keeping
as many rings as I could would ensure my survival.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
If Sonic had really trained you, you'd have learned a different lesson: you
can survive anything if you can keep just one ring.

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Haga
It's a Symptome of schizophrenia. Not everyone with it runs around as hobo
rambling. Instead you have plans, a myriad of them, and each item you got is
justified by its usage by the recombination disease.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
While it can be a symptom of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder,
hoarding itself isn't really a symptom of schizophrenia when by itself - just
like you can have hallucinations and delusions caused by mental illness
without having schizophrenia.

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crb002
More disposable income and larger living space.

~~~
Casseres
That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate
everything'. Buying junk to fill a house that's too big is not the same as
hoarding.

Please read the article.

~~~
Supermancho
> That alone won't cause people to have an 'uncontrolable need to accumulate
> everything'.

My fiancee's grandmother (from a post-Great-Depression era) wasted a fortune
(~$500k) on ordering from late night infomercials and anything else they could
buy (buried in the hoard were total gyms and horse saddles, stacks of unread
subscriptions piling for decades, etc). Their house was a veritable hoarder
home that only stopped filling when they ran out of money. I'll counter your
"nuh-uh" with "uh huh".

~~~
stordoff
That doesn't counter "That alone". A single example doesn't prove that that
alone may may cause it - even within that example, there may be other factors
at play.

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Nasrudith
The multiple unused copies sounds like impulse control issues coupled with
memory problems.

~~~
Supermancho
There was no issue with memory. The subscriptions were each individually
fulfilled. It was just a mass (stacks of individual magazines monthly). It was
fueled by relatively disposable assets plus anxiety. Storage space is a
function of assets, which is why hoarders end up with renting storage for
housing their junk.

