41–50 of 71 posts
OTOH, you can't accumulate crap to where you can't move around it.
Throwing everything away to the point of Steve Jobs' minimalism with a lamp and stereo is another opposite, inefficient extreme.
When it comes to code and product features, most organizations check all 3 boxes.
It's more of a Tragedy of the Commons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 mos…
With physical things it really depends on what you save. I personally tend to keep a bunch of hardware around many people would not. Some of those things will most definitely go out of usefulness date before I get to them, but are hard to get anyway so weird to get rid of. These are liable to become useless. Others are older spare parts that would not, but I cannot be bothered to sell them just yet... They might go out of style and become useless, but are likely to keep their value.
Yet more are some pieces for plans the didn't pan out yet, but they might. These won't break or might get used for something else. And a few fixable broken things that are not quite junk. These might get fixed depending on requirements. I literally have a box called wire box, and another which is a whole bunch of audio cables. That's a lot of copper. It proved useful for a variety of purposes thus far.
That is different from my mom's minor hoarding in that she keeps things that will not get used for anything ever, look cute but are horrible to keep, and additionally I do regularly clean out total junk...
The new meta is to give stuff to people who will make use of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 mos…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 don't have a tendency to hoard, but I do find it useful when I'm considering whether to keep a thing, to consider whether I can easily buy an equivalent or better thing on Amazon or eBay and have it at my house within a couple of days for a minimal cost. If so, then the question isn't whether the thing will someday potentially be needed, but whether I'm willing to potentially pay $X if and when that happens, in exc…
Another strategy I'm trying to adopt is one my brother-in-law lives by, which is to focus on one "thing" at a time. Like he recently wanted to get an RC race car. So he sold his previous "thing" and bought an RC car setup. He'll keep it for a year or two until he finds something else he wants to try and he'll sell the RC car stuff and buy something else.
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…
> Here's the key: it's an inability to make decisions. I think this is spot on. I definitely have hoarder tendencies. A look at my office would easily confirm this. I also tend to hoard code - I'll often comment out old code that no longer applies just in case it might be needed later, or in case I'll need to remember how I did something before. This gets pointed out in code reviews.
I'm betting prehistoric peoples who didn't squirrel away supplies, food, etc. were less successful than those who did. OTOH, you can't accumulate crap to where you can't move around it. Throwing everything away to the point of Steve Jobs' minimalism with a lamp and stereo is another opposite, inefficient extreme.