Who here is a hoarder? I know you do.

originally posted by: Informer1958
I have been in a new relationship for over a year now and recently discovered my partner is a hoarder.

He saves all his take out plastic drink cups, bags of ketchup's, napkins, plastic utensils, plastic bags, it's all junk. I keep telling him please throw this junk out.

We have real silverware, beautiful drinking glasses and so on. When he is not home I have to continue to throw things out and sometimes he finds out and has a fit.

I am one of those people who has a place for everything and like my house to be neat, but now having a problem keeping it that way.

What should I do?

Seriously reconsider it?


Read SpanishArcher's post....that could be you....

Thank goodness I never had to deal with that level of dysfunction.

But we are currently on hoard watch fo one member of our extended family who is showing serious tendencies and his mom was a hoarder. His office is piled high with books, papers, instruction manuals, office supplies, office/computer gadgets, etc. And his garage is an explosion of relics from his past, tools, broken appliances, uncompleted projects, etc.

We all take turns snatching the obvious trash and tossing it without him realizing. But, we're not even keeping pace with what he adds each week. I think an intervention may be needed at some point.

originally posted by: smirkley
a reply to: derfreebie

DeLorean was another genius. Too bad he got caught up with some bad dudes.

My favorite of his is the Pontiac Gran Prix SJ.

I was back in Turkey for a long time... while we were looking
for that complete open-end combo set.
Jim De was a great brain back in the day-- and that beer can with
the jazzed 350 was no slouch either. But I come almost exclusively
from drag racing, though... and feel I accidentally buy redundancies
because the blood all got pulled out of my frontal lobes decades ago.

I have to bow out of this thread, because there's another channel
strip coming from eBay soon. There's another one..audio monkey

My moms boyfriend has filled their refrigerators freezer and a huge ice chest in the garage, with filet mignon and beef tenderloin. There has to be over $1000 worth of meat in the home at all times. I go over for dinner two or three times a week so I'm not complaing. About half of the nights he cooks salmon with the meet but he goes to the store a couple times a week for that. Never a supply like their is for beef. He even sends me home with some for my dog to eat. My dog doesn't even touch dog food any longer because he's used to filet mignon. It's a very odd obsession my moms BF has with meat. My mom and I always are joking that he must have a girlfriend at the butcher.
Until I read the OP I never connected his hoarding having anything to do with his childhood. But he did grow up semi poor with 8 or 9 siblings. I've heard him complain about the food he sometimes had to eat growing up. So maybe he wants to ensure that never happens again.
The only other things he hoards are shoes (I think that's normal for some dudes though). He also stocks up on electronics. He buys brand new tablets a few times a month. Every now and then he'll give one or two away to someone who couldn't afford an iPad on their own. (Not complaining about that either. I've gotten two) Before the tablets it was laptops and iPhones. If he sees them on sale, he buys two or three at a time. Never sells them either.

I love to watch those Hoarding shows. It always makes me go and clean or tidy something. Some of those episodes are just mind boggling.

Well, my tool hoarding paid off today. Daughter came over with the serpentine belt off the car. A little research and the harmonic balancer was found to be coming apart. Decided to replace it, the belt, and while I was in there a new front main seal. Took two hours including a run to the parts haus.

And I had every single tool I needed.

And I was pleased.

My wife has some definite hoarder tendencies. We have an old (non-drive able) trailer, that is packed with bins of "stuff", as well as a garage full of stuff. At least our home doesn't have it there, though I often have to stop it when it starts with a dresser top or a table, etc.

I need to have a major yard sale and get rid of most of it. I want the garage back at least. I just never have the time to organize, price, etc. the stuff to then have a sale.

originally posted by: smirkley
Well, my tool hoarding paid off today. Daughter came over with the serpentine belt off the car. A little research and the harmonic balancer was found to be coming apart. Decided to replace it, the belt, and while I was in there a new front main seal. Took two hours including a run to the parts haus.

And I had every single tool I needed.

And I was pleased.

I think you have misunderstood tools sir.

The best jobs are not the ones that you have everything you need for but the ones that justify buying a tool you do not yet have.

My husband is a hoarder, and though I used to just smile and shake my head at it all, it is starting to really seriously upset me. If I didn't love him so much I would leave him (I did consider it). Instead, the last few weeks, I've been daring to start throwing some of it away without telling him.

It would be nice to know what causes this, psychologically. We've talked about it a lot, but he's not sure. It does often seem to be linked to his childhood memories and somehow, a source of security.
He marks his territory by spreading his stuff around it. He enjoys the search and discovery process.

I'm totally on the other end, not liking to have possessions, because I feel they weigh me down, and have a repulsion to anything that reminds me of my childhood.

Being on opposite ends enabled us to live together for a long time - he spends all the money and fills the house with whatever he wants, and I didn't care.... as long as I could go do my outdoor activities, meditate, or read books.

Maybe it is just because I'm getting older, or maybe I'm getting a bit more grounded in the material world, but I am starting to care about my home reflecting myself a bit!

originally posted by: nonspecific

originally posted by: smirkley
Well, my tool hoarding paid off today. Daughter came over with the serpentine belt off the car. A little research and the harmonic balancer was found to be coming apart. Decided to replace it, the belt, and while I was in there a new front main seal. Took two hours including a run to the parts haus.

And I had every single tool I needed.

And I was pleased.

I think you have misunderstood tools sir.

The best jobs are not the ones that you have everything you need for but the ones that justify buying a tool you do not yet have.

To be completely honest, I like both jobs. And in my latest example, I have identified a new set of wrenches that would have made the job easier.

I hear of a sale coming up soon on these, and I already know where they go in the toolbox.

I just wanted to add, I enjoy learning and knowing how things work. Had that since I was a kid and took apart my moms oven lol.

I have the tools and knowledge to understand, troubleshoot, and build/design anything from microelectronics and complex circuitry, programming in several languages, all the way up to large heavy equipment. This interest has been very useful in many employment experiences and income producing.

My wife hates it. She will tell me something broke, and darnit, I guess we have to replace it with new. I just tell her, give me an hour, and I go to it. Of course I am met with a very disappointed "thanks", lol.

So its more of a hoarding that pays back to me very often.

When I die, someone is gonna get a buttload of stuff they might not care about. That will make me sad, in the next plane of existance.

I totally hoard clothes, it's a major problem and drives my husband crazy Last year we moved to a new place and there are 5 big boxes of clothes that haven't even been unpacked. The closet is spilling out in to the bedroom. Just started clearing it out and will be making lots of donations to the goodwill this weekend. We have company coming over and I don't want them to think I caught the hoarding gene that runs in my family.

Other than that, hoarding isn't allowed in my house. Well, other than my clothes and my husbands mail (he saves junk mail, there are ads from last summer in the mail pile and God forbid I throw it out, the man will get so mad! "Don't touch my snipping mail!"

My grandmother was a hoarder. It got so bad that she stopped answering her door. She had really bad Alzheimer's and I checked on her daily, had to peek through the windows and hope she didn't notice and freak out. When she sold her house, it took months of 12 hour days to clean it out. Don't even know how many dumpsters were used, but it was a lot. We found newspapers from the 1980's underneath piles of magazines from the 1990's. It was a mess and she was so embarrassed, so sad.