Emily V. Steinhauser - Compulsive Hoarding

Compulsive Hoarding

Get Help and Declutter Your Life

Emily V. Steinhauser

Gamma Mouse

www.gammamouse.com

COMPULSIVE HOARDING

Copyright 2014 by Emily V. Steinhauser.

All rights reserved.

First Edition: April 2014

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A Gamma Mouse eBook

Published by Gamma Mouse, a dba of Xilytics, LLC.

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Tell me if this seems familiar:

Time to clean up the house! Its been a long time since Ive done so, but now its definitely the time!

Last months Vogue? Well, there was this one article that was kind of interesting.

What about these pants? Theyre quite old-fashioned, doesnt even fit and I think theres maybe a tear somewhere. Well, they might come back in style, and theres a chance Ill get back to my figure before my kid was born.

These headphones dont work anymore, but maybe Ill need them again sometime. Maybe I will watch these DVDs again one day, even though they are all scratchy and wont work properly.

The empty juice bottles, a cracked coffee mug, used gift wraps and empty cartoons why would I want to throw these away?

Theres something foul-smelling in the refrigerator. But maybe I will need it again someday?

Why would I throw anything away? I might need them again someday! Ill have to end up buying the things I already had!

I knew it! Theres nothing that I can throw away! I will need every single one of these things one day!

To some people, this situation may sound hilarious, even to the verge of But thats insane! But to a specific group of people, its possible that a strange sense of familiarity is closing in.

If you are a part of the latter group of people, you may be a Compulsive Hoarder or suffering from Hoarding Disorder.

In formal language, Hoarding Disorder can be described as a compulsive behavior which doesnt allow you to discard anything from your home, causing the used and unused objects together clutter up your living spaces and disrupt your normal lifestyle. Hoarding disorders range from stacking up on canned food for a rainy day to not throwing out objects that are broken beyond repair and completely unusable.

There is barely a person among us who doesnt sometimes go a little overboard on a shopping spree, ending up buying a whole outfit with matching shoes and bag when all we went in to buy was a work shirt. That is, it is easy to lose control sometimes, and barely harmful in most cases. But it is when this becomes a habit is when these little slips begin to mess up your savings and your financial plans.

In many cases, hoarding disorder begins the same way. A person may start hoarding a few old shirts and skirts instead of throwing them away or giving them away to charity; and end up with a closet that is bursting open with clothes. What begin as a saving technique can gradually turn ugly and you might end up in a home which is difficult to move around in, let alone live and relax.

A hoarding disorder is generally associated with a few other compulsive behaviors.

Most of us have emotions attached to a lot of possessions we own, but theres a fine line between which memories are important enough to hang on to, and which memories can be deleted from our lives; at least the souvenirs can be.

Saving our graduation cap is normal, but holding on to assignments, term papers and the books from college? Unnecessary! A souvenir from the first date with your spouse? Romantic? But tokens from every single date youve been to together? Thats a clutter in the making.

Your babys first toy or their all-time favorite toy? Of course! But every single toy that they have played with and grown out off? Isnt it better to head to the charity and give them away to someone who has no toys? After all, your son or daughter wont even remember all of them.

Compulsive hoarders generally tend to attach their memories to souvenirs and tokens. As a result, these tokens which seem important and meaningful to them began to clutter their homes; whereas, they are only unnecessary junk to other people.

One of the most common reasons that people start hoarding is because they think that an object may come to use to them in the future, if not today. This is the reason people begin to hoard up on clothes, food and other personal items; and the reason they are unwilling to throw away anything that they will not need in the present. This particular obsession might be associated especially with misers who would rather save something for the future instead of throwing it away and buy and buying it later when the time comes for it again.

For example, when people grow out of their clothes, instead of disposing of them or giving them away, they hoard it for the future in the hope that one day the next generation can wear them. This can also be teamed with emotional reasons for not discarding them, but mainly hoarders are too obsessed with future plans than emotions in most cases.

A compulsive hoarder and a compulsive buyer very often go hand in hand. Compulsive buyers always end up shopping for much, much, much more than they have originally planned on doing, unable to stop until they have maxed out their credit cards or exhausted their cash. They end up buying things that they did not need and sometimes, things they know they would never use themselves.

For example, a person who has never shown any interest in cooking ending up buying appliances and gadgets for their kitchens that they do not even know how to use. For a person who is not a cook, these are nothing but clutter once the buying spree is over.

As a rule, we all love getting free stuff, be it presents, sample items in the mail, or gifts from our shopping expeditions. But things get seriously out of hand when hoarders begin to fill their houses with free items that are completely useless in most cases: flyers for sales gone by, magazine supplementary, free sample of kitchen supplies from the department stores, coupons from the newspaper that allow for discount prices, even if they dont use the products.