The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: Victoria Waterfield on March 18, 2012, 10:56:27 pm
-
A cursory search tells me we didn't have a thread about this (http://techland.time.com/2009/11/17/are-you-a-hoarder/) two and a half years ago. For some reason, Onstad has put a link up to it on the main page now.
-
I know this pain. I have lived with a messy hoarder for seven years, and I have not been able to have a solitary bout of straight thinking in all that time. Damn it all to hell.
"Unabashed mustache with a frigid fanny in tow below" is basically treasure. The kind of treasure I will hoard..........in my mind!
-
I am a recovering hoarder. No, that's not the right term for me, I'm a collector. I still have a lot of stuff which I am slowly liquifying. I don't want to get rid of it all at once, it might be too traumatic. But I no longer take in anything new.
I told my mother I was thinking about getting rid of my Grandmother's dining room table. She was aghast (I get my collecting tendency from her). She asked me what I was going to do with the space. I told her I was going to turn it into space.
-
I'm a collector. My wife is very understanding.
-
Collecting and hoarding are not the same thing. I collect records; there are probably several thousand here. There are more books in this house than the village library. I can accept that. What I cannot brook is the hoarding of bits of cardboard, broken appliances, bits of masonry, promotional stuffed meerkats, and so on.
Well, I mean, I can accept it from you people, I don't have to live with you. In truth, I accept it in real life too, just exceedingly grudgefully.
-
I told her I was going to turn it into space.
Bless.
-
Collecting and hoarding are not the same thing. I collect records; there are probably several thousand here. There are more books in this house than the village library. I can accept that. What I cannot brook is the hoarding of bits of cardboard, broken appliances, bits of masonry, promotional stuffed meerkats, and so on.
I'll take the promotional stuffed meerkats!
-
I could be a hoarder if I had a sadder life. I watched all of the first season of the A&E show back when it first hit Netflix, and I watched a couple of episodes today (inspired by this thread and a recent article in Slate). I think the thing that disturbs me most about the show is that I really feel for the subjects. When they get pissed at people for throwing things away without their permission, when they have a story or intention to use every object in their homes, when they just break down and cry because of the overwhelming nature of the problem, I totally get that. I think to myself, there, but for the grace of God, go I.
The one that really got me today was the 40 year old firefighter who lives an organized and regimented life at the fire station but whose home is in absolute chaos. There were aspects of his home that were really tidy -- he had a mountain of papers in labeled boxes dating back fifteen years. He didn't feel like he had time to go through them to see what could be tossed, so he just put them in boxes and stacked them up until they swallowed his entire spare room. I get that. It's not a lack of organization; it's perfectionism. Feeling the pressure to deal with things thoroughly, which is time-consuming, ultimately leads to indefinite procrastination, which is something I've certainly fallen victim to in my own life.
I have an attic full of things I didn't have time to deal with when we moved, most of which I haven't missed in two and a half years and could probably be safely thrown out. I just can't do it -- not without looking. But unlike most of the people on Hoarders, I have a support system and the emotional distance to be able to make the decision to throw stuff away when I need to.
My weakness is usefulness -- I want to keep things that are "still perfectly good" or that I have some kind of intention to use, however farfetched. (I'm going to use those broken plates to make a mosaic...trivet...or something.) Pedro is a sentimentalist -- he is afraid if he throws away something connected with a memory, he'll lose that memory and hence a small piece of himself. (When we got married, he had a huge box containing every birthday card he'd ever received.) But we are able to help each other make decisions instead of dragging each other into a downward spiral, like a lot of the co-hoarding couples I've seen on the show. That's the difference, I think -- we're able to call each other on our bullshit instead of enabling each other to make bad decisions.
-
It's not a lack of organization; it's perfectionism.
Yes, this.
I have a lot of the same impulses as Pedro I think. When I was a kid my locker was full of old lunch bags. Because they had my name written on them.
-
I'm pretty pissed about all the shit I don't have. I had a storage unit in Idaho crammed with all kinds of crazy books. The place sprung a leak and my B-I-L went in and threw everything out. I'm missing a lot of shit that I would really like to have.
-
When I was a kid my locker was full of old lunch bags. Because they had my name written on them.
This made me smile.
-
I'd like to think I'm getting better about getting rid of stuff. Yesterday we went to our friends' apartment for dinner and they have a tiny spare room. I found myself looking at that room and thinking "if everything I owned could fit into this room, I could live with these cool babes." One of my roommates has very few material possessions, and that is really attractive to me. I think a huge first step is going to be getting rid of a lot of my clothes. Fewer items of higher quality is the way to go.
-
Everytime I read this thread I go out into the house and look around for things that can be dealt with. I don't always do anything, but I am thinking about it. It's a very very slow process.
-
The other day, cleaning my room, I reflected on the fact that the day after I clean up everything looks messy again. One big culprit is that when I play guitar I pull my amp out to the middle of the room, get out all of my cables, my pedals, etc. What a shame! Then I had this bizarre thought:
...
what if, when I finished playing guitar, I put everything back away?
Right now my maturity level is such that I am considering this idea from a safe distance.
-
what if, when I finished playing guitar, I put everything back away?
Right now my maturity level is such that I am considering this idea from a safe distance.
Consider this TCODP from a safe distance, too. You never know when one of those things is gonna blow.
-
I'm pretty bad about this stuff, but I've gotten better in the past couple of years.
Books are my downfall. I still have most of my college textbooks. I'm more prone to the "usefulness" thing -- I hesitate to get rid of anything that could come in handy in the future. This has resulted in rooms full of potentially but highly unlikely to be useful in the future stuff filling my house.
Anybody else watch American Pickers. Those junk collectors are a closely related species. Some of these guys (because it's almost invariably men who do this) make me wonder where they get the money to indulge their collecting. The ones that have building after building after building FILLED with stuff. How do they even afford the all those buildings? Sure, it takes them decades to amass that much, but the sheer volume of stuff they collect can be staggering.
-
Anybody else watch American Pickers. Those junk collectors are a closely related species. Some of these guys (because it's almost invariably men who do this) make me wonder where they get the money to indulge their collecting. The ones that have building after building after building FILLED with stuff. How do they even afford the all those buildings? Sure, it takes them decades to amass that much, but the sheer volume of stuff they collect can be staggering.
Yeah, junk picking is the manly word for hoarding. My dad's fellow teachers at his former school called him "The Junkyard King" because he'd take anything off anybody if it was free. I still have a desk he rescued from the landfill in 1966 and a solid pine bookcase that was going to be thrown out because a couple of the shelves were warped. (Go to the lumberyard and buy new shelves, mother bitches.) Once he brought home three boxes of white 8.5x11 printer paper because it was labeled "too old to be used in copier." What the what?
But yeah, he has more salvaged parts and building materials than he will ever use. They're renovating what will probably be their last house, and Dad whipped out some light switch cover plates that they removed from thir first house, which was old when they renovated it back in '65. (Pressed tin, these things are seriously vintage.) He's got a 4-car garage brimming with tools and equipment, coffee cans full of nails, screws, and bolts, old light fixtures, leaky hoses he hasn't got round to fixing, and perfectly good faucet assemblies that didn't suit my mother's sense of aesthetics. I know that's nothing compared to some of these guys, but the fact that he's actually used the majority of what he's collected is mind-boggling when you see what's left.
I can get rid of stuff if I feel like it's going someplace where it will be used and enjoyed. I have a hard time just throwing things away, though. The thought of it rotting in a landfill when there's someone out there that might have benefited from it saddens me. I just gave away a huge desk to a young couple setting up their first apartment together, and I donated four 14-gallon plastic bins' worth of Little People toys to my kids' speech therapist's practice last month, which she has thanked me for about six times. That's the best cure for my kind of hoarding -- realizing that anything that's potentially useful to me in the future is probably also useful to someone else right now.
On the other hand, I did just put a bunch of kitchen stuff in my attic to save for my BFF when she moves out of her parents' house next year. Her ex is keeping all their pots and pans, and since Mom just bought me a new set (for no discernible reason) I thought she might like my old ones. She said she'd love to have them if I didn't mind storing them for her until she's ready, and since I do have the space, I agreed. But technically, I still have them, so although they're dealt with, they're not really gone.
The people that freak me out the most are the animal hoarders. Those homes are the worst, and the eventual fate of the poor cats (it's almost always cats) is horrible.
-
Books are my downfall. I still have most of my college textbooks. I'm more prone to the "usefulness" thing -- I hesitate to get rid of anything that could come in handy in the future.
I was just thinking about my college textbooks yesterday. The "usefulness thing" as you put it is a big factor for me, but even though they are only a couple of years old, these textbooks are mostly outdated technology already.
I should liquify them. And by liquify, I of course mean, set them on fire.
-
I was just thinking about my college textbooks yesterday. The "usefulness thing" as you put it is a big factor for me, but even though they are only a couple of years old, these textbooks are mostly outdated technology already.
I should liquify them. And by liquify, I of course mean, set them on fire.
You got it right the first time.
-
My history and philosophy textbooks are still good.
-
Oh yeah, I'm not going to throw away the history books. I've also got a very interesting geology book from 30 years ago. They may know more now, but the stuff they knew then is still valid.
-
I have almost all my old textbooks. Of course, they're mainly not textbooks in the traditional sense; they are regular books about history that I read for class. And I was nearly an English major, so I have a large collection of lit books and style guides that are still useful. (My MLA and AP style guides are a little out of date, but mainly still good if I cross-reference with the web to see what's changed recently.) I sold back the math and science books, though, because they were practically out of date before I even bought them.
-
I have almost all my old textbooks. Of course, they're mainly not textbooks in the traditional sense; they are regular books about history that I read for class. And I was nearly an English major, so I have a large collection of lit books and style guides that are still useful. (My MLA and AP style guides are a little out of date, but mainly still good if I cross-reference with the web to see what's changed recently.) I sold back the math and science books, though, because they were practically out of date before I even bought them.
Wait, how does a math book go out of date? Was it full of instructions on how to program your UNIVAC to solve differential equations? Were the word problems all racist, sexist, and/or homophobic? Did the numbers only go up to eight?
-
I mean the science books were out of date; the math books are just irrelevant to my life. But I was completely unclear about that. Apparently I need to go back and read Strunk & White again -- which, of course, I still have from college.
-
I mean the science books were out of date; the math books are just irrelevant to my life. But I was completely unclear about that. Apparently I need to go back and read Strunk & White again -- which, of course, I still have from college.
don't make me come down there and post Geoff Pullum on Strunk and White. We talked about this.
-
I know! I was only invoking Elements for comedic effect, I swear!
-
ah, I still have a lot of my college books because I never did learn what was in them. It is a library of shame.
-
don't make me come down there and post Geoff Pullum on Strunk and White. We talked about this.
I almost posted nearly the same thing. Except "fuck" and its various derivations were more centrally involved.
-
I'm sorry I beat you to it, then.