Are there advantages of hoarding? How do hoarders think?

30 September 2013

How do hoarders think?

What's this?  Who knows?

One of the plus points of having a hoarder for a father is that nothing is thrown out.  Things I threw in the bin years ago in my teens are turning up.  Most of these things should have gone out with the bin collection when I threw them out in the 1970's, such as some of my slightly dubious fashion disasters.  I was 'a bit of a one' in a fashion sense back then. Lots of black, goth, punk, indie whatever. I remember a few occasions actually going to London on the bus with a mate wearing a micro mini skirt with blue and black striped tights, about six chain belts, black fingerless  lace gloves, a Carnaby Street jacket with pins, zips, chains and studs and a black geisha style wig with an electric blue fringe and a matching blue bow.  To match this we had blue lipstick and thick black eyeliner.  I thought I was the bat's danglies at the time.  I found a few of the belts last week and I have kept the wig myself and used it from time to time (purely for fancy dress purposes you understand).

There are, however, also a few knitwear disasters and some old skirts which, on hindsight, were a bad decision even back then.  They re-surfaced recently and have finally been consigned to the bin for ever.  I threw them in the skip myself. The other problem is the smell .  Nothing has been washed for years and there is a horrible musty smell throughout.  It is a mix of sweat, dust, musty mould, wet dog, old person and feet.  One or two of my shirts and jeans from back then which I had kept in my drawers but forgotten about have since re-surfaced and they are, ironically, back in fashion.  They appear to be too big if anything as I appear to have become skinnier (although I seem to remember back then everything bag and baggy were the in thing).  Sadly though, these clothes pong something chronic.  I have tried washing the clothes on a very hot wash and only just managed, after the third wash to get rid of the smell.  It is like having a whole new wardrobe all for free.

I found a whole bunch of Cosmopolitan magazines from 1989.  These were very funny as the fashion and the articles are now so very dated.  One article was 'Our lives in 2020'. The magazine editors had tried to predict what life would be like in the future. Some bits such as the mobile phones were spot on but others were way off the mark.

I also found a letter I had written on 3rd April 1989.  I had worked in Les Carroz ski resort in France in a hotel called 'Le Front de Neige'. After four months of being away for the whole winter season I had just been given the date for my return to the UK and was writing to let them all know at home. Here is my final paragraph of an eight page letter 'WHEN I GET HOME I WOULD LIKE MY ROOM INTACT, FREE OF RUBBISH, JUNK AND DUST, AS I LEFT IT, READY FOR ME TO MOVE BACK IN'. I can see that I almost expected Dad to have filled it with junk and odd bits and rubbish he had not sorted through.  That was in 1989.

From memory, he did not disappoint. I believe that was the year I got home on the Friday at about 2pm and by 11pm I was in hospital after having an asthma attack. I had spent a full four months in the French Alps breathing pure mountain air and being able to ski for at least 4 hours every day totally asthma free.  The change to opposite ends of the fresh air spectrum was too much and I was ambulanced to hospital for the night (again).

So, if I had known then what I know now, what else may I have put in that letter?  Possibly 'Don't let the junk get out of hand'. 'Save up for a house deposit and get out while you can'. 'Don't go home!' There was nothing I could have done differently in reality.  Every time I put something in the bin it would resurface in the house weeks or months later.  Perhaps I would have been a bit sneakier and liaised with the neighbours to use spare space in their bins.  For a time I thought I was going loopy.  Things I knew I had put in the bin were back in the house.  I remember confronting him a few times to be snapped at with some excuse about he hadn't sorted through it yet or that it could be burned in the open fire.  I would put stuff in my bin in my room.  He would collect the bins (as in most houses in the UK I guess).  Household bins emptied into a bin bag the day before bin day so that everything can go out in the bin wagon.  Back then there was no sorting and recycling.  Rubbish was rubbish. Why then did he feel it necessary to sort through everything?

I guess a hoarder thinks differently from us regular folk.  A normal person would think 'Aha, I have had this jumper for three years, I have not worn it very much, it was not one of my better fashion decisions, it has a hole in the front and is has become very tatty and stretched. It is no good for charity so therefore I will put it in the bin'.
A hoarder thinks 'Aha a jumper which I have only had three years, I see it has a hole but this can be sewn up, I see it is stretched but it is still wearable, perhaps I will keep it to wear around the house. I see the design was a bad decision but hey it may come back into fashion. I will keep it to one side just in case'.  That 'one side' over time becomes a dusty pile which has more and more and more 'just in case' items piled on top of it until it is buried and forgotten for months which turn into years, possibly decades.  Finally it becomes just one enormous pile of 'just in case' items which all merge into each other.  The individual items become a wall which becomes part of the landscape in a house whose interior is strangely shrinking at the same rate that the 'just in case' items are being kept.

Eventually all the hoarded items are forgotten and none can be found in the rare event they are actually needed or even remembered.  The hoarder then goes shopping and sees a nice new jumper and buys that.  If the new jumper is lucky it will be worn.  If not, it will be put, likely as not still in its bag, on top of the mountain of junk and gradually over the months/years/decades it will turn into hoarder fossils and will for ever remain in the layer of junk corresponding to the year it was put there.

(For the record I do consider myself to be a 'normal' person although my mates would possibly disagree).  I think I am as 'normal' as can be expected under the circumstances.