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Hoarding

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Re: Hoarding

#31

Post by bombcar »

ksec wrote: post #4

I am not sure if I am in that group. But somewhat counter intuitively I would actually hoard a lot less if I have huge amount of money. i.e Most things could easily be replaced or bought. I do have videos and music files, but I dont think I hoard them. I keep them because I know none of the file / video / music streaming services can be trusted. I think of it as a Distribution problem. Not a hoarding problem.

Some of the most prolific hoarders have quite a bit of money; in fact it can be part of the annoyance dealing with parents who have millions in the bank and yet insist on not throwing away that old bottle of dried up shoe polish "because it's still useful".

Re: Hoarding

#32

Post by bombcar »

thelastparadise wrote: post #7
jackallis wrote: post #2

Curioulsy, what about digital hoarding? endlessly bookmarking things to never visit them again.

this is a sign the person hasn't yet fully ubderstood and accepted the inevitability of their own death. in their mind, they will live forever and eventually have time to visit each bookmark.

I do poor-man's bookmark hoarding; I leave tabs open on things I am interested in, until said tabs fail or the browser crashes.

If I don't bother reopening them, that part is passed.

Re: Hoarding

#33

Post by jonhohle »

javchz wrote: post #9

I think should be a balance. I went full digital Marie Kondo a few years back, and I regret it. I'm into a lot of niche media, like covers or small indie band scenes. And at the beginning having everything in Spotify or YouTube seems nice... Until there is a rights issue or something worse (like an artist being doxed) and the song it's deleted and became lost media. Now I backup everything in a 2x2TB HDD just in case…

That’s what’s sad (imho) with moving away from physical releases. Getting a pressed CD was cheap, even for the most cash strapped band. I could take it home, rip it and have copies on an iPod, a CD-RW for the car, on my computer and media server. Should anything happen, the original disc is right there to rip again.

Movies are the same. With the demise of video rental shops, and content going in an out of half a dozen streaming services, it can be really challenging to find obscure movies that used to be easy to find. Browsing sucks now as well. And if I throw that into a watch later list and get back to it in a few weeks, there’s a chance it won’t be there.

I’d love to pair down my physical collections, but that concern of losing something and not being able to find it again is a huge impediment.

Re: Hoarding

#34

Post by Tao3300 »

ksec wrote: post #4

I am not sure if I am in that group. But somewhat counter intuitively I would actually hoard a lot less if I have huge amount of money. i.e Most things could easily be replaced or bought. I do have videos and music files, but I dont think I hoard them. I keep them because I know none of the file / video / music streaming services can be trusted. I think of it as a Distribution problem. Not a hoarding problem.

> I keep them because I know none of the file / video / music streaming services can be trusted.

That's not an emotional attachment, that's just practical. My kids are going to be like "Neil Young? Sorry, never heard of him" because he pulled his music off Spotify -- a blunder that lies somewhere in the space between a disservice to future generations and an "own goal".

Re: Hoarding

#35

Post by bruce511 »

sheepscreek wrote: post #27
phaedrus wrote: post #13

I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoard…

I’d fail every time to word it as well as you did. I suffer from a familial dysfunction with “things”. It isn’t hoarding for the sake of hoarding. It’s a complex mix of genetic and socioeconomic nuances of my parents’ upbringing (scarcity of resources), truly knowing the value of things and an inability to throw something broken away that we can fix - yet don’t have the time or willingness to. Along with ADHD (out of…

Upbringing does play a part. My father grew up post ww2, his parents went through the depression. He grew up on a small-holding and while there was a lot of fun, not a lot of money.

The times and circumstances meant a lot of fixing, and creating. You didn't throw stuff away, it could be useful, and usually was.

He was successful, had a good career, lived in a big house, but never lost the urge to build, recycle, fix and so on. When the oven door broke after 30 years he replaced it with a spare one he had in the garage. [1].

From him I learned to despise waste. I don't like throwing stuff away. But I'll happily give stuff away. And we live far enough up the food chain that there's always someone happy to take my broken junk and turn it into money.

I've come to learn that I don't have my father's desire, or time, to actually fix things, but I have his sense of not-waste. Sometimes it takes effort, but I try to make an effort to discard things that are truly past it, or at least pass them on to someone else.

Yes, I've inherited his sensibilities through genes and upbringing, but I've also become self-aware of it and so j recognise when it's happening.

[1] because his mothers stove broke years earlier, same model, and he kept the broken one for spare parts ;)

Re: Hoarding

#36

Post by frankus »

I find a reversal test is sometimes useful when considering whether to keep something: if I didn’t already own it, would I buy it for an amount that it might sell it for.

Re: Hoarding

#37

Post by me_again »

phaedrus wrote: post #13

I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoard…

I don't know any hoarders personally myself, so I many be off-base. But it doesn't seem that they are unable to make any decisions - they are quite able to buy new items without agonizing over (say) which brand of polyurethane to buy. They can decide what to have for dinner or which pants to wear. It's specifically decisions around whether to throw away an item which they find difficult.

This makes me wonder whether there is some other psychological process which makes those particular decisions hard.

Re: Hoarding

#38

Post by me_again »

Tao3300 wrote: post #34
ksec wrote: post #4

I am not sure if I am in that group. But somewhat counter intuitively I would actually hoard a lot less if I have huge amount of money. i.e Most things could easily be replaced or bought. I do have videos and music files, but I dont think I hoard them. I keep them because I know none of the file / video / music streaming services can be trusted. I think of it as a Distribution problem. Not a hoarding problem.

> I keep them because I know none of the file / video / music streaming services can be trusted. That's not an emotional attachment, that's just practical. My kids are going to be like "Neil Young? Sorry, never heard of him" because he pulled his music off Spotify -- a blunder that lies somewhere in the space between a disservice to future generations and an "own goal".

Maybe... but I doubt Spotify will exist in its current form in a generation's time.

Re: Hoarding

#39

Post by JackFr »

bruce511 wrote: post #35
sheepscreek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d fail every time to word it as well as you did. I suffer from a familial dysfunction with “things”. It isn’t hoarding for the sake of hoarding. It’s a complex mix of genetic and socioeconomic nuances of my parents’ upbringing (scarcity of resources), truly knowing the value of things and an inability to throw something broken away that we can fix - yet don’t have the time or willingness to. Along with ADHD (out of…

Upbringing does play a part. My father grew up post ww2, his parents went through the depression. He grew up on a small-holding and while there was a lot of fun, not a lot of money. The times and circumstances meant a lot of fixing, and creating. You didn't throw stuff away, it could be useful, and usually was. He was successful, had a good career, lived in a big house, but never lost the urge to build, recycle, fix…

Growing up my brother and I had to do many items of yard work using a wheelbarrow my father had taken from his father who had pulled it out of someone’s trash in 1939. Eventually my brother and I had real landscaping part-time jobs in high school and realized just how painful our wheelbarrow was and bought my dad a new one.

To be clear my grandfather was basically a farmhand from Bavaria with an 8th grade education who found himself in NYC in 1936 to marry his sweetheart and get the heck out of Germany.

Re: Hoarding

#40

Post by Dalewyn »

magicalhippo wrote: post #18
phaedrus wrote: post #13

I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoard…

> it's an inability to make decisions I think your polyurethane example mirrors what I see with my mom, and to some degree in myself, and it's something different. It's a fear that you're throwing away something useful. It's not that me or my mom is unable to decide, it's just that we don't want to throw it away because perhaps one day it might be useful (to us or someone else), so we decide to keep it. I'm trying to…

>I think your polyurethane example mirrors what I see with my mom, and to some degree in myself, and it's something different. It's a fear that you're throwing away something useful. It's not that me or my mom is unable to decide, it's just that we don't want to throw it away because perhaps one day it might be useful (to us or someone else), so we decide to keep it.

This to a T.

My hoarding, which fortunately is mostly digital, is grounded in the fact I came across far too many fucking instances of "Why the hell didn't I keep that?!" such that the prospective cost of throwing something away (deleting it) far outweighs the cost of just keeping it.

Hence I've kept even files that I know for an absolute certainty I would never need again but still hoard because what if I need it?!

As an example: I have a PDF scanned copy of my passport renewal application from over 10 years ago. I will never need it again, the form itself is no longer valid, literally nobody would want it. But I keep it. Why? Because "Why the hell didn't I keep that?!".

I fear what would happen if I learn the same lesson in the physical world.

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