This is such a gross misrepresentation of those suffering from the myriad of mental health issues that can manifest as hoarding.
Hoarders aren’t stupid people “collecting” trash on purpose. It is a manifestation of unhealthy coping mechanisms surrounding resource instability, so they have a tougher time mentally letting go of things because they might need it later and not be able to obtain replacements, or an issue of executive function where the trash becomes a mountain too large for them to climb and they have spiraled out.
I hoard, except what I deem is actually useful for a business someday. Yeah, in my bedroom I have some boxes of computer parts from different times (so that in the PC repair business I could locate a spare that’s otherwise forgotten 10-20 years ago), and then in my garage there’s about a dozen boxes of bicycle parts (many spares, just enough to build another bicycle or two, then give away to a relative), and in between is a box of plastic resealable food containers (washed, of course) I saved because they can be reused and I find it awful to throw them away (unlike cups and straws and really disposable things).
OTH, a cousin and her family constantly buy a lot of different things, but can’t store them properly, have no time ever reorganizing, so about a couple rooms are filled with things they barely ever used.
IMO, hoarding happens to some people because they lost a lot of things in the past and thus impoverished, and once they get in contact with sufficient wealth would try to buy and keep almost anything.
Unless things today change hella drastically, that ‘someday’ won’t be any day
Old or rare does not make something valuable or collectable. I’m old and a one of a kind, but that doesn’t make me valuable. I ain’t worth much at all anymore.
What makes something collectable and other things not? Age doesn’t much factor into it all the time, sometimes it does. See: Baseball cards, comic books, Beanie Babies or Barbie Dolls, and Lego kits. And the collectable needs to rare enough to not be seen every day, but have just enough of them around that collectors can have a reasonable hope of getting them.
So who knows, people collect the dumbest shit. From pretty rocks to 1930s kitchen gadgets and Barbies. Maybe someday people will be collecting to soda lids and straws.
The best selling comic book of all time was X-Men #1. No it’s not the first X-Men comic from the 1970s, it was a comic Marvel released in the 90s. The collectors all bought it because it was a #1 thinking it would be worth a lot of money some day. And this is exactly why Marvel did this.
Right now there’s probably at least a million copies of that comic preserved in mint condition by collectors. It’s worth about what they paid for it in the 90s… because there’s so many out there.
I do remember a neighbor years ago who had a pile of X-Men issues from different times, and they were just ready to be read. No special covers, no gloves, no… while I hung around their house after school, I was asked to go freely read any of them, and it was truly entertaining reading comic books than just trying to hoard them.
The 90’s were a golden age for companies to trick people into thinking they were going to get rich someday. It had to do with the rising popularity of shows like Antique Roadshow and the expanding reach of media and stories about old comics and paintings being discovered in yard sales and auctioned for tens of thousands or millions of dollars.
I still have boxes and boxes of “first issues” with die-cut, holographic covers and other stupid gimmicks. I already dumped my old collection of trading cards and action figures all trying to cash in, I’ll probably have a big free box of comics and donate or burn anything leftover.
Seems like some things are the same. Seen those pictures of huge Funko pop walls, people expecting to those figures to rise in value. Now also we have other “get rich” gambling scene in loot box collectibles like labubu or similar. It do feel like burning everything of these would be good.
I remember, around this time, Spider Man relaunched with a dozen different holographic covers, and there were a million variations of The Death of Superman. Everyone thought they were going to be worth big bucks down the line.
They probably have to wait another 40 years, then it’ll be totally worth it!
It’s not always about what it might be worth later. It’s often about what it’s worth to the hoarder right now, and how much anguish getting rid of it would cause.
People will develop attachments to the most bizarre of things. Even a straw and a plastic lid.
Source: I’m pretty much a hoarder. Thankfully I don’t develop attachments to rubbish and recyclables like the character in this comic, but I have far too many books, clothes, knick-knacks and household items that I can’t let go of. Many were gifts.
The books are the worst because I feel like they’re tainted by having been in my house. If they ever leave here, the best place for them might be landfill or incineration and that feels like a waste. So here they languish where they might have some use.
You can’t wash a book.
I had a clear-out 10 years ago - anything that could be cleaned up went to charity - and still have regrets about some of that. The next one probably isn’t going to happen any time soon.
You list the books, the condition, add pictures if you choose, people can request it from you if they want it, it’s their choice and you don’t have to feel bad about it, and you ship it to them. In return you get points you can use to request books from others.
I’m a bit of a hoarder, but not because I’m sentimentally attached. I feel like I would later need it and not have it. To my bane, I sometimes end up using some seemingly useless piece of trash one day without having to buy it, thus affirming my beliefs.
Also if you finally throw something out that you hoarded for years, you end up needing it within like a week.
It’s a universal law *nodnod*
DIY-ers unite!
I’m 100% gonna use all of those niche, one-off cables. Maybe just the connector will be useful…
That little metal bracket thingy? Uh, I don’t remember what it was for… or actually I do but I don’t have that thing anymore… But if I end up making something similar in size, I’ve already got a bracket!
Was this the box of good parts, or the box of bad parts? Eh, I don’t have time to test right now, better just keep both boxes… (followed by, "why isn’t this working? I just swapped in new parts…)
Ah, this completely useless thing I made! Ha! How foolish I was to think this would ever serve it’s intended purpose. I’d better keep it to remind myself how dumb I was.
My great-grandmother turned 20 during the Great Depression, and she helped raise me. I think that’s why I’m like this too.
Hey, what do you mean your books are tainted by having been in your house? It’s clear you love your books, they aren’t tainted for having come in contact with you. There are plenty of people who would love to have them if you just put a sign out.
When I was younger all I had to pass the time was a random assortment of books my parents had collected over the years. That set introduced me to some of my favorite genres
I’m just too lazy to toss it right away so I stack it until I hate the stack more than getting up.
Then the cycle repeats.
What are you talking about books? The one thing I sold and bought used the most are books.
After having to deal with the shit my hoarder parents had accumulated after they died, all I can advise is make sure you get that shit sorted out or cleaned out before you pass away if you have any family at all.
Having to manage those hordes of shit was fantastically difficult. It’s not “The Sims” you can’t just drag everything to a taskbar and exchange it for cash. The time investment alone of trying to auction or yard sale or swap-meet everything makes it almost completely worthless to attempt.
The number of things I managed to recover and sell that weren’t improperly stored and had value was probably less than a couple thousand dollars in various antiques, which took me years to sort out and find buyers for. From nearly forty years of accumulated shit that cost more to store than could have ever generated in return.
all I can advise is make sure you get that shit sorted out or cleaned out before you pass away
I know you mean well, and I hate to say it, but this is roughly equivalent to telling a depressed person to “cheer up”.
I’m well aware of the burden this would leave someone having to clear out my house, because I’m the one with that same burden right now. This is not the motivation someone in good mental health might think it would be.
Mental illness does not imply stupidity. I mean, I’m plenty stupid a lot of the time, but the two aren’t connected. And I can see the problem where a lot of hoarders can’t. And yet, if I was capable of fixing the problem, it wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
I am well aware of how mental illness works. I am saying don’t leave it on people, nothing more and nothing less. Your mental illness may not be your fault but it is your responsibility.
Strange how this is one of those cases where someone who is clearly incompetent to meet a responsibility must nonetheless meet it. I should maybe pick myself up by my bootstraps while I’m at it.
I know how my comment makes you feel, maybe better than you.
I want you to ruminate on that one thing, that it’s your responsibility. Whatever challenges are in your way, those are what you need to organize and figure how many of those challenges are surmountable and how many are products of your brain seeking safety. If you’re not reaching out for help and spending every waking moment reading and watching how to change your thoughts and feelings so you can accomplish that ONE goal, you are not owning up to your responsibility.
Your breakthrough may feel far off but it will arrive if you start shifting your view to seeing your own thoughts as a challenge or even an enemy to overcome.
In every single case of mental illness, the door is right in front of you but it can take YEARS to turn the knob. If you’re not trying constantly to get there though, you will never turn it. If you’re not tackling like an actual fucking challenge set against you and letting your mind tell you stories for why “nobody understands your problem” and why you’re stuck, you are throwing away something you will regret throwing away later. I promise you will resent every fucking moment you argued with strangers on the internet about if you deserve to feel this way or think these things.
I hope my comments make you mad and you think about them. I won’t see your reply.
There are certain things that I have to avoid thinking about in order that I don’t enter a depressive phase or become suicidal. You are asking me to think about those things.
You are asking a hungry man with no legs to walk a thousand miles for food. “Grow new legs!” you say. “Find a way!”
You are asking me to beat my head repeatedly into a wall until I get through it. I have literally and figuratively bounced my head off a wall. Both made me not want to do that again.
Maybe you’ve got yourself out of this exact situation. Good for you. I am glad you managed it.
I am not you.
My dad with seemingly every piece of lumber he’s ever come in contact with 😮💨
My family is full of semi hoarders, i’m quite the opposite, and i often really don’t get them.
But then i hold two pieces of wood in my hands and contemplate for a few moments if i should keep them.
Son?
I can relate to your dad.
i knew people like this. everything was thrown away after they died.
My parents were like this. Figuring out how to deal with their hordes of shit was one of the hardest things I had to do. Most of it got thrown away, but there was also so much shit with actual value, that I spent years going through it all until finally giving up. I’ll never know how many tens of thousans of dollars worth of shit is now landfill.
The lesson here is that collecting every little thing for some kind of imagined “value” is that you will never, ever, ever have the time nor energy to cash any of that investment in.
Had to rent a full size semi truck dumpster for my mom’s place. Filled it up and had to have them haul it out and bring another, which we filled 2/3.
that’s pretty much exactly what happened. there was a bunch of old stuff that could definitely be used, but it was so much actual garbage thrown in we couldn’t sort through it and had to throw out most of what we couldn’t donate away. they still have some stuff to sort through.
I feel that.
It was kind of a nightmare, I still have dreams about it because it was entire lifetimes of memories and experiences all blended together in piles. Childhood trinkets covered with dust and bugs next to a box of photographs all stuck together from water damage, next to unopened toys in perfect condition but were actually worthless, next to something that would have been worth a lot of money if it had been stored properly, and so on. It was just one heartbreak after another going through it all. It spanned multiple storage units and homes and everyone was angry about it, from the managers of storages to the people who owned the land the homes were on.
That’s before even getting to the unending hassle of storing the stuff I was trying to sell off or get rid of. I never did finish the task, I lost my own home at the time and just had to leave a pile in the garage for the next owners to go through.
Dang that’s fucking grim
Here, let me help - That far in the future that amount of money would probably buy a loaf of bread.
😁
Nah I mean the hoarding. The sad flimsy justification for living in filth and piles of worthless objects
Often the “worthless” stuff can have a purpose though consumism brainwash or force people in to buy new things
Twilight Zone ending theme starts
Yes it is. Feels wrong to poke fun at people with mental disorders.
Okay, but by then 20 million dollars will be considered pocket change.
General rule of thumb for me: if you haven’t touched it in a year and it’s not a valid keepsake it goes…(sorry hoarders, that random chip clip that you haven’t touched in 5 years isn’t a keepsake)
glad to know my method of cleaning up by moving things from one side of the room to the other allows me to keep everything!
$10-20mil in the year 2571 is like $0.15 today
Which means they beat inflation by like 1000%, good investment
I’m not broke, I’m just a temporally displaced millionaire
So that’s what they mean when they say they were born in the wrong generation
Just expecting my paycheck soon…the lottery
Why does he have nft-face
