Hoarding as a Disease: Do we Hold the Cure?
by mathe | Saturday, January 17th, 2009 at 6:00 am | Homing Instincts |
Image: from Google Images
Very recently, two incidents of death happened here in Britain that are related to hoarding. One of the victims was a male who died of thirst and starvation as he could not find his way out of his stuff to get water. His “stuff” were actually rubbish he collected through the years.
The other one was a lady who was crushed to death because of her tons of unopened stuff piled high in her bungalow. Even her car was bursting with shopping items she never got to use much less open. In the two incidents, police had to be called to help find the bodies of the victims.
These incidents may not be a daily thing but they are far from rare. In the US, Oprah featured people with an addiction to shopping and accumulating items that they do not actually use either now or in the near future. I mean, they are just there collecting dust and then their owners go out shopping for more. One of the hoarders Oprah featured in her show, when she saw all the stuff she accumulated through the years spread out and organized in a warehouse many time larger than her own house, she burst into tears as she realized how sick she was.
Hoarding is an addiction which means that it starts somewhere, sometime in one’s life. It can be just a harmless love for shopping and collecting nice and desirable items, but somewhere along the way, such love goes awfully wrong and takes over that person’s existence.
If we, moms and goddesses of the home, stick to tidiness and organization as the rule of the day, we should never fall victim to this kind of addiction. You see, tidiness in the home involves having everything in its proper place, or at least, having somewhere to put away everything in the house (am I confusing you yet?).
I am not saying that we all should go for minimalist or clutter-free homes (c’mon, they only exist in magazines and movies). What I mean is that we should have the sense to bring order to our households so that even if we love collecting or holding on to some mementos, our respective family lives would not be compromised.
One effective way to nip the hoarding addiction in the bud is to give away all our unused items – or sell them in car boot sales or garage sales. Not only will we generate a small income from items we don’t want, or help others if we give them away to friends or charity groups. We are also acquiring more space in our homes to put new items in. Then, we all can go shopping again and be happy!
Influencing the entire family, particularly the little ones, to have this mentality of some stuff in and some stuff out, prevents us from over filling our homes with useless items, thereby enjoying a tidier, more organized and spacious place to live in.
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Tags: Life as I See it
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Hi Mathe, you know my house is a mess too because of me “hoarding” dirty clothes..lol. Sometimes it takes weeks before the washing lady comes in. Tamad , kasi ako..lol…I hate it too when I see things in disarray. kahit madumi huwag lang magulo. This gives me the headaches. Happy blogging.
i’m addicted to shopping but not that bad
kakatakot naman nang case na yan.
have a nice day hot momma.
messy messy house, hoarding etc…what gives? I’m guilty but hopefully this wouldn’t suffocate us to death hahaha
I like this post friend. You just knocked my day!