Hoarding

dj1701 · Sep 23, 2022

Hoarding, it happened to me, and it can happen to you.

I inherited my folk's house a while back. Being the nice guy, I let my sisters live there with the understanding they pay the taxes and keep up on the place. To make a long story short, I was left with a very big mess.
I was never the kind of person to keep things that did not serve a purpose. I always kept a pretty tight ship and thought my family would be the same. I never had to deal with hoarding, it was just something that was on TV.
After my debacle I am even more aware of not acquiring things that waste my time and space.

The following article sums it up pretty well.

Dave

How Minimalism Can Change Your Mind and Your Life

Would you believe clutter and over-consumption might be killing you? Find out how minimalism can change your mind and life here.

www.whats-your-sign.com

MossRoad · Sep 23, 2022

dj1701 said:
Hoarding, it happened to me, and it can happen to you.

I inherited my folk's house a while back. Being the nice guy, I let my sisters live there with the understanding they pay the taxes and keep up on the place. To make a long story short, I was left with a very big mess.
I was never the kind of person to keep things that did not serve a purpose. I always kept a pretty tight ship and thought my family would be the same. I never had to deal with hoarding, it was just something that was on TV.
After my debacle I am even more aware of not acquiring things that waste my time and space.

The following article sums it up pretty well.

Dave

How Minimalism Can Change Your Mind and Your Life

Would you believe clutter and over-consumption might be killing you? Find out how minimalism can change your mind and life here.

www.whats-your-sign.com

I am a hoarder to some extent and you are correct. And sorry you had to deal with something like that. It can be overwhelming.

At least I keep my hoarding to my domain (garages and basement) and organized in numbered tubs with list. We have a single story ranch house that's neat and tidy. You'd never know I had that much stuff unless I showed you. My wife tolerates me. Probably because I cook pretty well.

jaxs · Sep 23, 2022

Hoarding is subjective depending on how tall of horse you view from,how large of hat worn while drawing opinions and how much you desire belittling the hoarder and how much you desire to impress other people with your opinions.
After 40 years living the same place,I moved 3 years ago. According to landfill receipts I disposed of 19.42 tons of which I would classify about 2 tons as junk I should have already got rid of. The move stretched over a period of 5 months so I had opportunity to sort and cull. When i came accross something I thought one or more people might like I placed it in a particular spot in one of my buildings. By email ,text,phone conversation or face to face I offed items as found them. Very few were claimed so I either sold them or tossed them into dump trailer. During the 3 years I've been at my new place I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked "you know that _____you were trying to get rid of,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?" I answer with "it's somewhere in the landfill and you are welcome to it if you can find it". Many times they replied "well didn't you keep one of them?" To which i reply "yes I kept a keeping one and throwed the loaning and giving away one in the trash". As is the case with many hoarders I used to have 2 or 3 of things because when i needed it,it was back at my shop so I bought another rather than drive home after it.
What I concluded from the above is,people viewed what I owned as junk so regardless what I offered they considered it junk until one day they needed one. I've offed to sell a few things for half what they sell elsewhere but they seem to believe since I threw so much away I shouldn't expect them to buy anything. At this stage HERE'S HOW I FEEL

Diggin It · Sep 23, 2022

I don't really hoard. I just can't find the stuff under the stuff on top of the box of stuff in front of the shelf full of stuff.

scootr · Sep 23, 2022

My friend is a fabricator and a hoarder. Whenever I need something for something.... I go over there.

shooterdon · Sep 23, 2022

I have hoarded many things but not junk. In the last 20 months I have sold about $20k of “stuff”.

With the economy getting worse, many things we have hoarded can be turned into cash.

If you have stuff you do not use, will likely never use, and no one wants to buy, you have hoarded junk. I know one guy who built a good sized pole barn for his “treasures”...of which more than half are junk.

OldMcDonald · Sep 23, 2022

My wife and I have been married 51 years. In that time we have had farms in England (2), Australia, Scotland and Portugal, retiring last year from Portugal to Orkney.

When you move so many times there is a limit to how much you can transport around the world, but I have a small tin that once contained Jesmona Black Bullets. I doubt any other posters know what they were, but some 70 years ago they were a boiled confectionery made in Newcastle upon Tyne. My late uncle used that tin as a receptacle for any usable nut, bolt, screw or nail he considered was of sufficient size or quality that "it might be useful someday".

The tin ("inherited" from my father) has travelled the world with me, and has been used from time to time when a certain sized screw was needed (including since we moved here), but surpassed itself about 10 years ago in Portugal where everything is metric apart from some older plumbing/water fittings, which are Imperial. The non-return valve on a well pump needed repairs and the the bolt holding the flexible diaphragm needed a half-inch BSF thread bolt because the original was damaged. There was one in the tin. I am sure finding another BSF half inch bolt in Portugal would have been problematic. OK, it needed 2 washers because it was slightly too long but that was a small price to pay.

Slowpoke Slim · Sep 23, 2022

I'm sure "junk" is in the eye of the beholder. To be sure, some folks do get stuck in the "hording" loop, and it can be a type of mental illness. I've been in other folks houses that you literally couldn't walk from one side of the house to the other from all the "stuff".

But many of us have hobbies that bring certain types of "stuff" that we use in that hobby. One person may look at it all and think "junk", but the junk holder looks upon it as part of their hobby and enjoyment. From scrap booking, to fishing, to whatever.

I'm pretty heavily invested into shooting sports, competing, hunting, reloading, etc. And several different disciplines from black powder, shotgunning, long range rifle, handgunning. Each of those comes with "stuff". I'm sure if you asked any number of my relatives, some (step mother) would look down their nose with as much negativity and disdain as they could muster, and call it all "junk". However same person, you can only get into half of their 2 car garage, because the rest of it is piled over with "stuff" that she couldn't or wouldn't part with, old pots and pans, old non-working coffee pots, random clothes that have been out of style and no longer fit for decades, etc. But to her, that would be totally different.

scootr · Sep 23, 2022

Don't make me start a 'what's the oldest tool you have thread? '

Part of this behavior is brought on from once having nothing. I had a older friend who grew up dirt poor as they say... no shoes poor.
He collected darn near everything you could make anything from. Just in case the money he was making stopped coming.

EddieWalker · Sep 23, 2022

In my opinion, a true Hoarder is a person with a mental issue that does not allow them to throw anything away. I've met a lot of guys with a lot of junk, or stuff, or materials that might be needed one day, to the point it looks like Hoarding, but I don't believe that's the correct word for it. They are just being practical and planning ahead.

A true Hoarder isn't able to let it go. They see value in every single thing that they have. If I cut a piece of trim, they want the scrap piece. If I demo a cabinet, they want the pieces, even if I cut them up with a saw, or destroy it with a crow bar. Same with scraps of tile, old faucets, and even lumber full of nails. There is an obsession with keeping it that goes beyond comprehension. In the last 20 years, I've met 3 people like this. All I can do is let them have the junk when I'm making the repairs on their homes. When I do this, they are content. If I put it in my garbage bucket, or the back of my truck, they are stressed out to the point of being borderline angry.

bigtiller · Sep 23, 2022

Today I put a 3" long 2x4 in the "just in case" bucket.

But I'm NOT a hoarder.

BravoXray · Sep 23, 2022

bigtiller said:
Today I put a 3" long 2x4 in the "just in case" bucket.

But I'm NOT a hoarder.

That's a block for use on the drill press, or cribbing if needed.

California · Sep 23, 2022

There's accumulating stuff you might need and then there's accumulating inherited households of 'stuff'. We're still enjoying very heavy traditional wool blankets from a box labelled 'Edna 1988'. Granddad re-married late in life and that widow had inherited enough quality stuff to fill a barn. When she decided to finally give it away, Dad brought home carloads. We're still working though Dad's accumulated stuff here at the ranch, haven't had to buy nearly anything.

Then there's the stuff left over when wife administered her parents estate and wife said she would sort out unwanted Christmas ornaments etc 'some day'. Yea sure. One definition for clutter is 'deferred decisions'.

MossRoad · Sep 24, 2022

EddieWalker said:
In my opinion, a true Hoarder is a person with a mental issue that does not allow them to throw anything away. I've met a lot of guys with a lot of junk, or stuff, or materials that might be needed one day, to the point it looks like Hoarding, but I don't believe that's the correct word for it. They are just being practical and planning ahead.

A true Hoarder isn't able to let it go. They see value in every single thing that they have. If I cut a piece of trim, they want the scrap piece. If I demo a cabinet, they want the pieces, even if I cut them up with a saw, or destroy it with a crow bar. Same with scraps of tile, old faucets, and even lumber full of nails. There is an obsession with keeping it that goes beyond comprehension. In the last 20 years, I've met 3 people like this. All I can do is let them have the junk when I'm making the repairs on their homes. When I do this, they are content. If I put it in my garbage bucket, or the back of my truck, they are stressed out to the point of being borderline angry.

Exactly.

California · Sep 24, 2022

As Mom got older - she lived to 98 - We would go over and fill boxes with things no one wanted to inherit and she wasn't using. Decent stuff that Goodwill could resell, not trash. Mostly treasures she had collected from thrift store searches to obtain things that decades earlier she couldn't afford and now cost very little.

But I had to negotiate the batches I had selected. I made up a value for each batch: "Would you pay $50 to buy this boxfull if you found it at a yard sale?" Always "Well ...no".

By the time a caregiver moved in with her, things were down to stuff actually useful.

Well mostly. Settling her estate, I took three 4x8 trailerloads of books to Friends Of The Library for their annual sale. I had tried to sell them to a bookstore. The guy came over and scanned barcodes or entered ISBN #'s on the old ones, and refused 99% of them. I gave him the few he wanted, as payment for the time he spent appraising them.

scaredychicken · Sep 24, 2022

I agree with EddieWalker

there is a lot of stuff here - a good bunch of it mine, but with purpose
I do dump runs, recycling, thrift runs, even garage sales on occasion, to clear things out
there is a lot of stuff here from other people that I want cleared out, I need my garage and workbench back

Diggin It · Sep 24, 2022

During the last year, I've hauled three 4x8 trailer loads of stuff. Mostly bits of metal and rusted fence wire, some old tools that were broken in one way or another and of no use

The first went to the dump where I had to pay $10 to get rid of it. Then a lightbulb flashed and I checked on scrap metal prices. The next two trailer loads went to recyclers. Between the two, the total was around 1,400 pounds and I got a little over $100

Larry Caldwell · Sep 24, 2022

If you hoard expensive stuff, you can be a collector. A buddy's brother died a couple years ago, and his gun collection brought $438,000. He couldn't actually shoot them - they were too old, too expensive, and many were in never-fired condition. Old newspapers would have done him as much good, and been a lot cheaper.

newbury · Sep 24, 2022

I've come at it from 2 viewpoints, pre-2010 and post 2010 (when we bought our Mississippi place with about 5,000 sq ft of barn/workshop).
Pre-2010 I had been living for about 40 years in suburban DC area. Had a workshop of about 150 sq ft, full to the brim, so saving stuff was problematic. And my work surface was my 50yr old table saw. I had to justify to myself to save scrap wood etc.

But post 2010 I expanded to fill the workshops. It took several years to "fill" up the workshops, but they are approaching full.
But I save almost everything, even 3" pieces of 2x4. And for almost every project I find my self dipping into my backlog of saved or hoarded material.
I've aisles of plumbing, electronics, tractor-stuff, etc. Keeping it sorted is a major undertaking.
I think that if one has the storage capacity AND can find what they have in less time than it takes to drive to town and get it they come out ahead.

Presently I have most of the 5000 sq ft set up with pallet racking along the sides, set up so there is a "work" area at waist height about 100"x42", and several shelves above. And I have 10 or so "units" set up like this.

I greatly prefer my post-2010.