Hoarding

[Racket_Man]

When I first saw this article I read it with a bit of distracted facination as I occasionally do watch the Hoarder shows on TV.. Then I read the comments and they got my attention.

THe new DMS (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) makes hoarding diagnosis a little clearer

If you look at some of the comments they range from "Yeah the crazy old lady with 100 cats" to "Yeah all those wierdos that collect junk until it falls on them and kills them" to "Yeah all that filth and rot and such".

BUT
A couple struck me as a different view within the "official" diagnosis parameters such as this one:

This brings to mind the meme that speaks of our hypocrisy about hoarding, "when we see a woman who has 100 cats in her trailer house we call her crazy. When we hear of a man who has newspapers stacked to the ceiling of his apartment we say he is insane. But when we read about a man who insatiably hoards money to the point that he drives others into poverty we call him a role model.'

YES there are noteable people like Bill Gates who have and still do donate or give their money away to causes or charities but a lot do not. techniquely they do exhibit the "hoarding" type behavior.

This somewhat reminids me of the Gilded Age Bazillionairs of 100 years ago. Their goal was to aquire as much money as possible throught any means necessary and literally hoard until they reached their senior years then had 2d thoughts and started foundations and charities. people like Carnige, Vanderbuilt Rockafeller, etc.

[HYHYBT]

I'd still like either a clearer distinction between people who feel they have to keep absolutely everything and people who hate cleaning more than they want the space... or an explanation of why they're exactly the same thing when it seems pretty obvious they're not.

[siead_lietrathua]

horder: people that can't stand to throw out things because they are determined they need it or will need it in near future/ keeps things for sentimental reasons beyond a reasonable level.
people that just don't wanna clean: slobs.
the difference is all in the mind. they are in no way the same thing. i'm a horder, i keep the randomest shit and have to constantly check myself if i havent used it in a reasonable time. hubs is a "slob" since he just never gets around to throwing out actual garbage (ie: fast food bags)

[Andara Bledin]

What siead said.

A lazy person or a slob has no real issue if someone else were to come in and clean up after them.

A hoarder, on the other hand, will flip out if you offer to throw away things that are pure trash (empty soap bottles, for example) and won't let anything out of their grasp.

I'm both a very low-level hoarder and a lazy cleaner. I don't have much in the way of actual rubbish lying about, but there's an awful lot of stuff that isn't put where it belongs and an awful lot of stuff that I don't have any rational reason for keeping that I keep anyway.

It's worth noting that the places filled with filth (dirty dishes, rotten food, etc) aren't hoarders and may or may not be slobs, but they are often depressed. In a lot of cases with actual filth, it's a matter of the person responsible becoming so overwhelmed that they just can't deal with the reality of the situation and shut down the part of their personality that is responsible for cleaning it up. Those types don't have any problems with people cleaning for them and can often reset back to keeping up on cleaning themselves provided they have the resources (mostly time) to do so.

^-.-^

[SongsOfDragons]

I'm both a very low-level hoarder and a lazy cleaner. I don't have much in the way of actual rubbish lying about, but there's an awful lot of stuff that isn't put where it belongs and an awful lot of stuff that I don't have any rational reason for keeping that I keep anyway.

^-.-^

Have you been to my flat? You've just described it XD

Although I have to say I have got much better in recent years at not keeping so much crap. Just yesterday Housemate and I decided we needed to tidy the living room so we had room for the Christmas tree, and it turned into a purge of our 'Library' (read: three large bookcases lining a section of our hall) to move all the videos into a cupboard, free up space to move the DVD box sets (and my Horus Heresy series which was piled up all out of order on a shelf now too small for it!!) so we could actually put the rest of the DVDs into a readable arrangement... Housemate can't bear to throw out the videos even though we can't watch them because the VHS keeps spazzing out, but we did bung some broken and crap DVDs. We have space!! It's such a nice feeling

My problem is papers. Lots of papers and notebooks and crap like that. Box files and drawers and actual boxes full of them. >.<