My Stepdad is Kinda Nuts

[Greenday]

Biggest pet peeve: He's a hoarder. It's ridiculous. The basement is filled with tons of shit since he moved in years ago. The spare bedroom is filled with crap. If it wasn't for the fact that my mom is pretty strict on neatness, the dining room would be screwed too. The garage used to be filled but my mom flipped out on him over that and he got rid of half the stuff in there. He'll stop at yard sales and buy useless junk (thanks Antiques Roadshow for giving him false hope of buying stuff for a couple bucks and making tons of money off of it). He'll see something being thrown out and he'll take it home. I want my house back!

Scares the crap out of me when he drives. He's always driving around like he's in a hurry. We'll be doing something simple like going to dinner and he'll take turns really hard. He'll speed up to make lights. I sometimes feel like I might not survive a car ride with him driving. My mom told my sister and I tonight that she yelled at him over it. Ever since, I've been doing most of the driving all of a sudden. He's been better the past couple of weeks but I'm not sure how long that'll last.

My mom and sister are trying to eat a lot healthier to lose weight. I've been cutting down on crap. I've been eating smaller portions. I don't really snack. My metabolism isn't too fast so I'm not losing weight but I'm also not too active so I've hit a steady weight of around 195 lbs (88.64 kg). When I was at school, I bought zero snacks so I couldn't snack. Was I hungry? Hell yea I was. But if I don't have junk, I just suffer until the next meal and not gain weight. My stepdad keeps buying junk when he goes out and tries to use the excuse "I know you like that". Well yea I like a certain brand of cheese doodles or cookies but that doesn't mean buy them. My mom has a weak spot for ice cream so my stepdad just got two cartons of ice cream while getting some stuff we needed like milk.

God forbid you try having a conversation with him, he just talks over you, always interrupting you. It's nearly impossible to get your own side in. His son is like that too...

I love the guy. He's as great a step-dad as I could hope for. He genuinely cares about my sister and I. But he just drives me crazy sometimes with this crap.

[LadyBarbossa]

Wait . . . WTF. If I didn't know better, I'd say my Dad was leading a secret double-life. He's been a truck driver for over 25 years, but I try not to let him drive my truck if I'm going anywhere with him. He'll stick on the car in front of us with less than two feet of space, change lanes with them, etc.

And he used to preach at the rest of us for being so fat and eating so much junk, yet when he's home, he whines that there's no ice cream or soda. Bah!

[ExRetailDrone]

My father-in-law is a hoarder, too, and it's ridiculous. My husband and I went and cleaned out their garage earlier this summer at my mother-in-law's request because she was sick of not ever being able to use it like a garage is supposed to be used. My husband's main stipulation was to keep my FIL away from the house while we worked. But unfortunately he didn't go along with that. He was coming and going all day, getting all whiny like an infant when we were daring to toss something into a trash bag that had been sitting around under other massive piles of crap that hadn't been touched in 20 years. But, of course, he neeeeeeeeeded it. He didn't even know it was there until we unburied it We eventually got the garage straightened up and got rid of at least 30 garbage bags worth of stuff, but even still my FIL went through some of the bags to take back stuff. Talk about frustrating!

If it wasn't for my MIL putting her foot down, I don't want to think what that house would look like. It's cluttered enough as it is!

[Greenday]

I almost kinda remember being able to park a car in there. It was when we had just moved in. That didn't last too long. It becomes a huge issue in the winter when it snows since you can't park in the street. There's four of us and we all have our own cars. We can fit one car on the dirt next to the driveway. And it's a ridiculously tight squeeze to fit in three cars in the driveway. It'd be so much easier with one in the garage.

[protege]

My grandfather was a bit like that. Several of the farm outbuildings were filled with junk. Things like the old screen door, from one of the porches, were simply carried into one of the barns and left. There were tax records dating back to the 1940s, old business (his family owned a feed store) records, etc. We're talking about a building, roughly 16x20 feet, half of which was filled with that crap.

That didn't last long--after he died, nearly all of it was hauled out and torched. What was left, was quickly hauled off. My father and I filled up the family station wagon...twice. You couldn't even see out the back, there was so much shit in that car. Whatever was left--paint, scrap wood, etc. got carted off and dumped somewhere.

[blas87]

My dad is a bad hoarder too. It's a family trait. My great grandma on my mom's side became one after she got Alzheimers.

All of my dad's half brothers from his father's first marriage are packrats. All four of them. The ones that live on farms are the worst, because they have the most room. One of my uncles has an entire shed of crap. He even started piling crap into an old once empty silo because he ran out of room in the shed.

My dad absolutely refuses to part with anything, always finding some excuse to keep something, even if it's trash. He also makes a habbit out of finding random crap on the side of the road or from metal detecting and keeping anything he finds, crap of no value.

[Greenday]

I love it when you ask a hoarder what they plan on doing with *insert random piece of crap they picked up*?

They get all nervous and take forever to answer.

[blas87]

My dad actually finds a quick answer.

It's either "It's still good!" or "One day you will find that you need it!"

He even encourages my brother and I to keep crap "just in case". I can count the number of times that saving crap has benefited me. A....never.

[guywithashovel]

I'll admit that I'm a bit of a hoarder, though I'm not nearly as bad as some people are. Occasionally I'll go on a massive cleaning frenzy and get rid of a bunch of stuff I don't use anymore. However, I'm always a little reluctant to throw things away. I'll confess, I do have that nagging fear that someday I'll need the things I'm throwing out. Though keeping things "in case you'll need them someday" is a bit of a catch 22. If I keep it for that reason, I won't be able to find it if I ever do get in a situation where I need it. If I throw it out, I'll soon find good use for it.

[Greenday]

...My stepdad's hoarding is paying off. We are coming up short on money since my stepdad's car needs a bunch of repairs done to it, wedding gifts, and our new beagle. So my step-dad is going to sell some of his stuff. W00t!

[gremcint]

I am a software hoarder, I have games for windows 3.1

[Sage Blackthorn]

My girlfriend (well, we've been together so long that we're probably considered common law married by now) holds onto everything. She has clothes that she'll never fit into again from when she was in High School. There is an entire room in the house we rent full of things we aren't using that I'd like to turn into a workshop/guest room. I could use the closet to put tools in, have a small workbench and still have room for the Futon. Better yet, I found a company that makes some really cool murphy beds that would save even more space.

Fortunetly, all the 80's styles are coming back into fashion and we may be able to sell all her old cloths at the shop. Giving me a room for my workshop and making us a bit of money too.

While I wouldn't call myself a "hoarder", I am a collector. I love books, movies, music. So I have a fair sized library (text, audio, and video). I love to build things, so I collect tools. I love to camp and to hike, so I collect gear and equipment. Recently a friend of mine has gotten me interested in blackpowder shooting, so now I must collect items I need for that. The difference between a "collector" and a "hoarder" could very well only be whether what they collect is useful or not.