Are you a hoarder?

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I am a hoarder, I over buy things, I can't throw things out.
I am extremely clean though so I don't have any hidden infestations or empty milk bottles full of urine and the like.

I could find anything in my hoard in an instant as I know where everything is. My cat hates when I move things too so I try not to in case I upset him.

I am learning to be tidier. I suspect in the future sometime I will have to move someplace smaller and further from civilization.

My system is the "I´ll-find-it-in-the-third-pile-from-left-betveen-the-yellow-and-the-rosa-sheet-beneath-the-blue-foam" model.

I used to be a hoarder. I filled a 8x12 shed with my old toys and various things, mainly old papers and such. Once I started to take fluvoxamine, I discovered that my hoarding was a byproduct of OCD, and now that the OCD was being treated, I no longer had an urge to hoard. I got rid of most of my hoard, selling what I could in several big garage sales, recycling the newspapers and magazines, and dumping much of the rest. Now my home is uncluttered, and I feel a lot better. I know that some hoarding is a disorder separate from OCD, and that hoarding is harder to treat than OCD-related hoarding. OCD is commonly found in ASD people as a comorbid, so if an aspie hoards he might be helped by medication. I found that fluvoxamine didn't have some of the side effects that other SSRI's do, most notably anorgasmia (inability to orgasm) which is frustrating for males, since young males especially have a physical need to expel the semen in glands in their genitals, and being unable to do so drives them nuts.

that is really interesting that you were helped by that drug. I love it. I love transformation stories. You are lucky to find the right drug for you and you dispensed with your hoard in a thoughtful way too. I was called ugly by my unkind family quite a lot in my early childhood and believed it long into my twenties when i was given a major tranquilizer. After that when peeps told me that i was pretty i believed them and i had never before done that. I think that the drug helped me to get over that. Maybe there was a knot in my brain somewhere with that belief in and it undid the knot. good to hear from you.

Me exactly!
I make these crazy quilts, using scrap pieces of fabric... starting with pieces about 4"-5" and working down to about an inch. Even then, I hate having to throw that 1" bit of fabric away... "There must be something I can make with this!"
Crazy!

No, - WONDERFUL!

Complete opposite. I cannot stand too much stuff. Our place is very Spartan, it rivals District 13.

I have some stuff relating to my main interests (photography, recording) which is reasonably well organized.

I recently moved and never fully organized myself into my new space. There were some empty boxes about and things like that. But a couple of days ago I watched a few episodes of "Hoarders" on TV. It sort of gave me a wake-up call to where things could go if I let them, so since then I have made some good progress on getting things thrown out and better organized. I was like: "Oh no, I've got enough sh*t going on in my life to let that get out of control too."

It's a tough call with me. I do keep things because "I might need it one day." I don't know that I'm so much of a hoarder as I am a collector who is also a slob. The trash that doesn't get thrown away are mostly just because I don't have the energy or initiative to get up and take care of it, not because I'm obsessed with cereal boxes or Styrofoam cups or banana peels.

I DO have a little problem with "souvenirs". When I go on a trip, I'll feel the need to keep everything in connection with it -- photos, ticket stubs, receipts, brochures, newspapers. It wouldn't be a big deal if I ever looked at the stuff again, but I don't.

Paper in general seems to be a problem for me.
-- I LOVE books, and so have hundreds of them. Since nearly everything I have is non-fiction reference, not having read everything isn't an issue.
-- Magazines get me too, and yes -- I do have issues with throwing them away. I'm always telling people stories about things I've read, and I like to keep the magazines in case I need to look it up again. I also can't bring myself to throw away a magazine that I haven't finished reading.
-- I do a lot of list-making and doodling and so forth, and I have dozens of notebooks and loose pages with notes on them. I just know that when I finally throw one of those books or pages away, there will be something in it that I desperately need.

It does sound as though I do have some hoarder traits, but maybe I need some encouragement to be a true hoarder.

EDIT: Oops -- forgot about all my purple stuff. I have lots of purple things, and want more. But my financial situation is such that I can't "hoard" purple stuff as much as I would like.

My parents are terrible hoarders so much it bugs the hell out of me!! !

And i think thats been passed onto me a bit, now a few things have happened.

1. When i was a kid i was very OCD with tidying and cleaning, i would clean and organise my room to a very high level. My room was the only room in the house that was spotless and gleaming. I was obsessed with cleaning products. I would line everything up on my shelves and dressing table and drawers in perfect order. It was OCD heaven lol.

I would even clean and organise my parents kitchen cupboards and table tops. This carried on till i was about 14.

2. When i was 14, the neighbourhood kids became interested in me and got me to join their little group. I was singled out for being weird and would get teased and had a go at because i would say and do inappropriate things. ugh. And one day one of them came round and i said i couldn't come out as i was busy and they looked at my room and teased me about it. And it made me feel bad and ashamed. So i stopped, and became very messy in an effort to fit in and rebel against my own restrictions.

3. This became out of control, i had one spot on the floor that was clear and i would spin around whilst listening to music (stimming) on that one bit. The rest was a mixture of rubbish, clothes, and basically junk. I would have to wade around my room to get things. It made me miserable. Even when friends i may later, came and helped me, i still was in that habit of rebelling and being messy and when i tried to clear up, i would get overwhelmed and upset which would really confuse my mum why i was crying for, to her, no apparent reason.

4. Now i have noticed that in periods where i'm unhappy or stressed, i begin to create mess, as a way of comforting myself. I don't know why i do it. But i call it 'nesting' as a way of comforting myself. For example i seem to do this most often down the side of my bed and also on the bed. And then once i've returned to my normal state, i then go on a cleaning and tidying spree and i feel alot better for it. And this continues in a cycle.

But i still struggle with knowing where to put things or how to organise things. Growing up i lived in a mobile home, so space was small and so knowing where to put things was a bit easier. Now i have more space, living in a spacious one bed flat by myself, i honestly have no idea.

I have always tended to hoard things I consider ?stores of value?.

When I was young, it was candy and baseball trading cards. As I got older, it became money (I dislike spending it) and clothes (I hate shopping for clothes, as it is hard to find things that ?feel? right).

Interestingly, this particular hoarding tendency is a behavioral characteristic of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD).

I still save stuff that says on it things like "50 millionth unit sold!" or "25th anniversary special edition."

I have a few of those. I have an M&M's "millenium" candy dispenser, it looks like a spaceship and you put M&Ms in it and press a button and watch the candy whirl around and then get spit out. I also have a year 2000 antenna ball from an American fast food chain. The millenium was paradise for hoarders, lots of special edition items. I also have a limited edition toy helicopter that was made for a local TV station featuring their logo.

my ed jones financial guy had something I drooled over, but he wouldn't even let me BUY it from him! it was a "Y2K bug" art object.

Yep, I can sometimes get caught up in this kind of stuff. For a while I thought I needed all the memorial editions of magazines and newspapers featuring celebrities that have passed on -- John Lennon, Elvis, etc. I don't do that anymore.

I will also want to keep all my "firsts". I have the first present my nephew ever gave me that he picked out himself (he was about 5 at the time). I have the keys and license plate to the first new car I ever bought (all were used until my 1996 purple Chevy Cavalier), and the contract to the house I bought completely on my own. If I have a magazine subscription, I feel the need to keep the first issue. I'm slowly getting over some of this stuff, but we all know that is easier said than done.