Monday, June 17, 2013

People who are collectors and others who find things they just plain like so they become...



Hoarders! Who are people that are collectors, savers, accumulators, squirrel-ers, magpies, stash-ers, and most recently considered mentally ill according to how much and how severe the hobby turns into?
There is definitely a fine line. Below is the hoarding definition:


Hoarding is the excessive collection of items, along with the inability to discard them. Hoarding often creates such cramped living conditions that homes may be filled to capacity, with only narrow pathways winding through stacks of clutter. Some people also collect animals, keeping dozens or hundreds of pets often in unsanitary conditions.
Hoarding, also called compulsive hoarding and compulsive hoarding syndrome, may be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). But many people who hoard don't have other OCD-related symptoms.
People who hoard often don't see it as a problem, making treatment challenging. But intensive treatment can help people who hoard understand their compulsions and live safer, more enjoyable lives.”
  • “Symptoms:
  • Cluttered living spaces
  • Inability to discard items
  • Keeping stacks of newspapers, magazines or junk mail
  • Moving items from one pile to another, without discarding anything
  • Acquiring unneeded or seemingly useless items, including trash or napkins from a restaurant
  • Difficulty managing daily activities, including procrastination and trouble making decisions
  • Difficulty organizing items
  • Shame or embarrassment
  • Excessive attachment to possessions, including discomfort letting others touch or borrow possessions
  • Limited or no social interactions”
Thanks to and for more info goto: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hoarding/DS00966
The only reason I investigated this issue is that my mother-in-law was a big saver, no one could walk into her basement and she had to know you a real long time before you could even see it and her two car garage could not fit even one car in it and now she is in a nursing home with severe dementia at ninety-two and I just wonder if being that way your whole life could mean that can cause it or play a role in later life, dementia? Hers began with people giving her things and her elderly friends passing away and their families giving things to her, and even her own parents things, large items like furniture etc…but she also would shop for items on sale and collect them and never wear them or use them and have many items in her closet with the tags still on, as well as food, can goods, on sale, coupons items, two for one things etc. And never using them and storing them in her basement pantry with dates from decades ago! Her upstairs looked fine except the rooms that weren’t being used, her adult children’s bedrooms after they moved out and were stuffed with things she hadn’t gotten to… even paper things that were mailed to her would pile up and placed on the stairs to the attic! Some how she did keep up with her bills in spite of her odd filing method and her being a bank teller for over twenty-years!

She also had the distinct issue of checking several times before leaving the house to make sure again and again that everything was turned off electric wise and that all the doors were locked over and over again… and ten years ago our nephew was diagnosed with the same OCD and so I wonder, ya know?

Fortunately, our sons have not shown any signs of that behavior, thankfully.

What brought this whole thing up is a Facebook friend who keeps making purchases for future donations to charity, she has a great eye being a grad of an excellent art school, but it concerned me and so I blatantly asked, “Do you have a shop to sell all your collections?” And no she doesn't.
She goes to Flea Markets and Goodwill and the Salvation Army etc. and admitted to having a full basement, whoa, that set me off!
I told her to open a shop and sell her stuff and donate the monies to all those pet associations she helps by being a poster of the cute babies needing homes, pets people, pet babies, some are adult pets too, got that?
When someone tells me they have a full anything when they live in a small but adequate home, like I consider ours… it’s time to purge friends!
Sure I too have closets that need a once over now and then and a desk and a file but really not anything severe or considered a mental disorder.
It’s been easy over these last several years when things are destroyed things don’t mean as much as one might think, people do!
Sounds corny to some, but realistic to many who, let’s just say in Moore OK and places like hurricane ravaged areas as in Sandy, as our own home here was destroyed back in 2004!

My point is that things that enter our home must find a place in our heart or realistically where they will be put before they succumb to our cottage lifestyle.
Donations are wonderful, but having an actual time frame to do that in is always a good way to be and cataloging as if a store in that basement wouldn’t hurt either and no one should ever have a fire hazard or damage possibly by flooding beneath their roof and so always err on that thought and minimize or know to whom you are going to give that loving jester to, just a thought…mettle-ing momma here, but with love and concern too…

On that way too long elaborate note, allow me to be the first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share all those overages with you know who and we will too!
And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

PS Hubby, has shown some symptoms of saving over the years, but nowhere near as severe as dear ole mom, thankfully! PSS My parents saved nothing! So I'm good, I hope! Although, I do like to save containers from take out food for leftovers.

A retraction is due for that Facebook friend vaguely mentioned, what she actually said is that she has a full basement to me and I misinterpreted it in her saying that her basement was full. She actually meant that it is the full length of her home and I do apologize for the misunderstanding, but since she has unfriended me... OOPS! Not the first time this has happened and won't be the last sadly, but what a shame, just the same.

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