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Hoarders

That won't work in the car though, we'll still need a fag lighter connection for that, hence the collection of them in the boot. ;)
 
They work in fag lighter connectors. It's just a simple adapter. 8)
(Same as satnav leads).
 
A couple of years ago my wife finally persuaded me to get rid of my old darkroom gear, enlarger, developing tanks, whatever. I took them to the charity shop then spent much of last summer buying it all back again, along with about* 15 SLRs.
That's me finished with giving stuff away.

*I've no idea how many I have.
 
One of Techy's workmates had some HUGE speakers in the loft for a few years. His wife persuaded him to put them on ebay.

For technical reasons they ended up at my house and I've just waved them off with a very happy purchaser who's shelled out all of 99p. :lol:
 
Long article, begins:

Keep your clutter – I know I miss mine
As a survey reveals one million Britons are hoarders, Esther Rantzen explains the agony of downsizing and parting with her beloved possessions.
By Esther Rantzen
7:00AM BST 09 Jun 2011

One month ago I moved from my five-storey family home to a two bedroom flat. The children are grown up, I live alone, it was sensible to move on. Sensible it may have been, agonizing it certainly was. Because, you see, I am a hoarder.

So, according to the survey published yesterday, are more than a million other Britons. We hoarders clutter our lives with pictures and musical instruments, holiday souvenirs and our children’s school reports, clothes we no longer wear and shoes we wouldn’t be seen dead in but can’t bear to part with.

Every inch of my home was crammed with this stuff, most of it mine, some of it my children’s and I loved it all. From the little rocking horse in the attic, to the hat box belonging to my grandmother in the basement. Even if I hadn’t seen it for years, had actually forgotten it was still there, it was all part of my family history, and throwing away felt like throwing away my life. As moving day approached, inexorable as an execution, I became paralysed with fear and indecision. My daughters got so worried about me they booked a professional de-clutterer. :shock:

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/85 ... -mine.html
 
This is a very sad story.

Says she who did indeed have a ruthless friend help her declutter.

Im trying to get my dad to get rid of his scrap cars (There are at least four) but he wont.

I pointed out the money a scrap car is worth these days, but hes having nothing to do with it
 
If you're a pleb, you hoard stuff in your house.
But if you're posh, you put it in storage!


The self-storage craze
By Tom de Castella & Kate Dailey, BBC News Magazine

People are leaving their possessions in self-storage warehouses for longer than ever. But why are people paying to store stuff they rarely use?
It's a monument to our acquisitive society - the brightly lit shed on the edge of town offering "storage solutions".

Society has always had its hoarders. But in the 21st Century people are farming out their junk to the growing number of self-storage facilities.
It begins as a temporary solution. You load up the car with the retired pushchair, an African sculpture you never found room for, old letters, bin bags full of clothes, Betamax tapes and your cherished back issues of National Geographic.
Shortly afterwards you're at one or other of the huge hangars offering space for your beloved objects.
With summer the busiest time of year to move, many will have recently contemplated a similar scenario.

The mania for storage centres began in the US in the 1960s and the country now has over 50,000 such facilities. They arrived in London in the 1990s but didn't take off across the UK until 2000. Britain has 800 major self-storage units, the same as the rest of Europe put together.
It's the ideal stopgap while you get organised and there are knockdown three-month offers to entice you.

But out of sight is out of mind. Recent statistics show that people are leaving their junk in storage units for longer and longer.
Data from the UK Self Storage Association suggests that the average length of stay has risen from 22 weeks in 2007 to 38 weeks in 2010. :shock:

And newspapers have found horror stories where people have forked out thousands of pounds to keep their possessions in storage for years on end, despite never visiting the warehouse to take them out.

The consumer society means many people are gradually running out of space, says Cory Cooke, a professional organiser based in London.
"More and more stuff comes in and it's not going out. I want to say it's a throwout society, but it's not the case because people are keeping their things around."

The increasing proportion of business users during the recession is one reason average storage time has increased, says Rodney Walker, chief executive of the SSA. Business users stay for 56 weeks and private individuals stay for 27 weeks on average.

But even before the recession, private users were staying longer, mainly because of cramped modern housing. "More people are living alone in smaller homes without garages or attics," he says.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14718478
 
You have a human right to hoard (even if your junk can be seen from space). Court victory for eccentric homeowner
By Claudia Joseph
Last updated at 10:08 AM on 21st December 2011

It was an astonishing case. Eccentric hoarder Richard Wallace had accumulated so much rubbish in his back garden that it could be seen from space - much to the fury of his neighbours.
But when his local council served a notice on him to remove it, he took his case to the crown court – arguing that it was his 'human right' to hoard junk on his land - and won.

Now, in an extraordinary twist, the case has taken a new turn – without the need for lawyers and judges.
Mr Wallace, 61, has already cleared the rubbish from his garden, which was so out of control it showed up on Google Earth – and he was helped by the very neighbours he had been in dispute with for years.

The battle between the inhabitants of the picturesque village of Westcott, in the Surrey commuter belt, and the man they dubbed ‘Stig of the Dump’ after the children’s novel, had been rumbling for years.
Living in a designated area of ‘outstanding natural beauty’ as well as a conservation area, the villagers were naturally keen on their environment, competing annually for the Britain in Bloom competition.

Priding themselves on their sense of community – the village has a gardeners’ club, amateur dramatics, Japanese martial arts classes and line dancing - they were appalled by the collection of junk, including a mountain of 25,000 newspapers, which spilled out of Mr Wallace’s million-pound home.
Words such as ‘eyesore’ and ‘health hazard’ were bandied around as his two neighbouring properties – a three-bedroom bungalow where he lives and a semi-detached house used for storage - became barely visible beneath overgrown vegetation.
But it was the six rusting cars – three Jaguars, an Audi and Two Wolseleys – which jostled for space in the garden with piles of wooden pallets, bags of empty cans and bottles, an office chair covered with moss, pushchair, tarpaulins, old front doors and kitchen sinks that fuelled their rage.

Finally, in May 2009, Robert Primrose, a senior planning enforcement officer with Mole Valley council, served an order on Mr Wallace under the Town and Country Planning Act ordering him to clear up his garden.
But he had underestimated Mr Wallace, who had maintained a sense of community spirit despite having become ostracized from some of his neighbours. He delivers newspapers around the village, providing a bespoke service to collect any readers’ offers, shovels snow from the road outside his home and often takes the milk from people’s gates to their doorsteps.
Representing himself with research from his local council library, he took his case first to magistrates and then to the crown court arguing that it was his ‘human right’ to hoard junk on his land.

Recorder Christopher Purchas QC agreed. ‘The evidence does not go far enough to show Mr Wallace in his use of his property interfered with the amenity of other people who live in the locality,’ he said, awarding him £250 costs to cover his photocopying and Internet use.

But now, 22 months after Mr Wallace's victory at Guildford Crown Court, comes the extraordinary conclusion to the story.
He is now working on the house, fuelled by home-cooked meals from locals, is waiting for an appointment to see a psychologist, and has had his first haircut in years.
And in it lies a lesson for us all. It shows that a bitter dispute can be resolved with a little care and understanding on both sides – and a community working together is more effective than the law.
It just goes to show that, if the bureaucrats had taken more trouble to find out that Mr Wallace had an obsessive illness, the case would never have escalated so far.
...
Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder is on Channel 4 at 9pm today
....
Full story and pics here:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1hA9xCrWO
 
The bit that said 'Priding themselves on their sense of community[...]' made me laugh - that sense only seems to have extended to their sense of what a community is. Obviously it didn't include people being able to what what they want on their own land, eccentricities and all... ;)
 
Dad is clearing his house...I am so proud!

And so jelous of the fun he is having!

I have asked him for his scrap car collection for my Xmas present. He was grumpy but seems to be getting used to the idea.
 
29 March 2012 Last updated at 17:48
Long Eaton hoarder woman's body hidden under rubbish

The body of a Derbyshire woman whose house caught fire was not found for three days due to the amount of rubbish in the property, an inquest has heard.
It took crews hours to put out the fire at the house on Welllington Street in Long Eaton in January 2011, as papers were stacked floor to ceiling.

Derby Coroner's Court heard how "obsessive hoarder" Linda Parkes, 59, had refused help for her problem.
The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.

Giving evidence, Derbyshire Fire and Rescue's station manager David Paul said the most likely cause of the fire was piles of rubbish in the kitchen being set alight by gas rings on a hob which Miss Parkes used to keep herself warm.
"We had been unable to locate her anywhere," said Mr Paul. "Several rooms were full of debris, from the floor to the ceiling."

The court heard Miss Parkes was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder in 2005 but had declined offers of help from medical and social services staff.
Two months before her death she had been issued with a notice ordering her to tidy her garden.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-de ... e-17554767
 
It seems hoarding is good TV!

Britain's Biggest Hoarders

Presenter Jasmine Harman calls on expert assistance to help her mother and other chronic hoarders combat the condition that is ruining their lives and those of their families.

TV presenter Jasmine Harman's mum Vasoulla is a compulsive hoarder. This secretive and often shameful psychological condition is putting a big strain on the entire family, and they are not alone. Up to three million British families are affected, but little is known about this disorder, and support is practically non-existent.

In 2011, Jasmine tried to help her mum tackle the extreme clutter, which had taken over the entire family home and compelled her 13 year-old brother to move out. Despite a huge family effort, only a few rooms were tidied. Jasmine searched everywhere for solutions; none seemed forthcoming. But now Jasmine thinks there might be hope.

In this programme, Jasmine calls on expert assistance to help her mum and other chronic hoarders combat the condition that is ruining their lives and those of their families.

Alan lives in a property so heavily hoarded that his wife, Marion, has nowhere to sit or wash. The council have given him just two weeks to clean up his garden; if he fails, the couple face prosecution.

Richard's hoarding has turned his home into a health hazard. The stairs are so thick with rubbish and rotting food that even moving around is dangerous.

Vasoulla, Jasmine's mum, can only fully access one of her five bedrooms. Torn between wanting a better life for her and her son, and a deep emotional attachment to her belongings, she has nonetheless agreed to a total house clearance.

Each hoarder presents a unique challenge, but together they help Jasmine understand this complex and debilitating psychological disorder. Will hoarders ever willingly clear their homes? Do new techniques and treatments really offer hope? And can hoarders ever be cured? On an intimate, emotional and deeply personal journey, Jasmine finds out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... _Hoarders/
 
Am I the only one who finds hoarding totally hilarious?!

I've been watching Hoarders on TV with friends and family, and on 3 or 4 different occasions I've gotten some pretty weird looks, because when they were totally appalled by what they were seeing, I was hysterical. I even did a spit-take once.

I don't know why I find it so funny. I guess something about the hoarders being "ok" with their surroundings really tickles me.
 
Human_84 said:
Am I the only one who finds hoarding totally hilarious?!

I've been watching Hoarders on TV with friends and family, and on 3 or 4 different occasions I've gotten some pretty weird looks, because when they were totally appalled by what they were seeing, I was hysterical. I even did a spit-take once.

I don't know why I find it so funny. I guess something about the hoarders being "ok" with their surroundings really tickles me.

I know what you mean. AT times though I wonder if I should be laughing: a lot of these people are realy disturbed.
 
Human_84 said:
Am I the only one who finds hoarding totally hilarious?!

I've been watching Hoarders on TV with friends and family, and on 3 or 4 different occasions I've gotten some pretty weird looks, because when they were totally appalled by what they were seeing, I was hysterical.
It does seem to indicate you lack empathy with the hoarders' problems, especially as your friends and family were appalled.

The link I gave above reveals how such hoarding behaviour often stems from loss of family members when the hoarder was young.
 
TV's hoarders show us the dark side of consumerism
The stories in TV programmes such as Britain's Biggest Hoarders fascinate us because we glimpse ourselves in them
Suzanne Moore
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 May 2012 20.00 BST

Hello, my name is Suzanne and I have a broken blender at the back of my cupboard. In fact, more than one. And an old kettle that could be useful for someone, surely? My friend – who, like me, is totally normal – has stopped herself buying a fifth sewing machine; a neighbour has racks of clothes she has not worn for 20 years. Vintage, right? We are just waste not, want not. Not like those people on programmes such as The Hoarder Next Door, for these people are unwell. They have a mental illness, OCD, anxiety or depression.

Currently, there is a glut of TV programmes about these sad, compulsive people who have to tunnel through their own junk. Why would anyone live like that? And why would we watch them? Because although hoarders are the latest freaks in the freak show, every conversation I have had about this has not been about how deranged they are but how many of us are on the verge … of hoarding.

These shows come with some psychotherapy. These people cannot let go of something and they fill up their loss with stuff. Stuff that may seem valuable to them but worthless to us. A man on Britain's Biggest Hoarders this week could not give up a very old can of kidney beans and half a pencil. Another man had filled his entire garden with semi-junk. These people's lives are destroyed and their families numbed and embarrassed. The very lovely Jasmine Harman fronted this show with enormous compassion because her own mother suffers in this way. She understood what it was like to grow up with the distress of compulsive clutter.

Clutter is, of course, a euphemism. There may be rotting food and junk on every surface, piles of rubbish visible from space. They need more help than "a storage solution". If their unconscious motivations are hard to fathom, perhaps those of us who watch their pain are not.

Popular culture instinctively throws up the underside of what is going on. During the boom years, we were nannied and madeover. Endless experts told us how to sell our houses, clean our houses and have sex in our houses. This genre has now been replaced by sheer gawkery. We watch those whom we think are excessive. Big Fat Gypsies. Or just big fat people. TOWIE or Chelsea girls. We watch people with disabilities and, now, with clear mental health issues.

Hoarding produces both disgust (how could they?) and identification (it could be me). There is a thin line, all right, between "collecting" and hoarding, between positive "cash in the attic" heirlooms and some lidless Tupperware.

Indeed, aren't we all rather muddled these days, for we are told both to consume and to save? In some perverse way this is exactly what these hoarders are doing. When did it become a disorder? When my grandad lived with us, he had jars for pieces of string that were too short to do anything with, and others for burned-out fuses. Or tiny pieces of wire. Nothing was ever thrown away. It was simply explained by Mum as "the war". But it was actually recycling.

One of my own children is deep green and has chivvied me to use all the recycling boxes; another, as if in reaction, announced as a teenager that she was totally against recycling: "These people who put out their old wine bottles and think they are Jesus make me sick." She didn't see the point of recycling, as the world had already been screwed up by all adults (especially me).

Where does my rubbish go? To landfill in China? Sure, I look at my own clutter and wish I could live minimally. To me, it is a sign of class, the flaunting of not having stuff everywhere. I certainly don't come from it, though I tried. When my Mum came to see my first proper flat she said: "It will be not so bad when it is furnished." It was furnished.

It is all rather like fashion advice: just buy the timeless classic, don't Primark yourself up. Do as Gwyneth Paltrow does and buy your flowers to match your vase, not the other way round. The ambition is to have less, just as it is to be thin. Excess is somehow trashy.

Those who cannot filter out what is important cannot afford professional declutterers. They cannot work out which stuff of all the stuff they have needs to be kept. They slide into chaos, trying to fill a void that no amount of stuff can fill. The loss is emotional and it cannot be plugged by any amount of material possessions. The oft-tweeted philosophy "We should love people and use things, not use people and love things" is true. In some weird way, though, the dark side of consumerism is expressed by people who feel they need things so much that they are literally trapped by them. The categories between what is rubbish and what isn't have broken down.

Their stories revolt and fascinate us because we glimpse ourselves in these dysfunctional relationships to things. Even broken things. In times of austerity we sneer at those who have too much. Although all they have is rubbish.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... onsumerism
 
rynner2 said:
The link I gave above reveals how such hoarding behaviour often stems from loss of family members when the hoarder was young.

Loss can be mental instead of physical. My mum became as close as possibile to completely insane when I was five or six years old. My father was a Naval officer and gone for several months every year. I might have been a hoarder, myself: I can understand the instinct. But, I think I was rescued from that condition after my mum threw out all my belongings when I was in first grade. I detached from "things," then.

Although, like all good knitters, I have more yarn stashed than is strictly necessary. ;)
 
Today I found a bit of broken leaf spring.

Now you may think thats just a bit of scrap, but leaf springs are made from laminated steel; the best knives are laminated steel.

if you want a fancy knife and cannot make laminated stock or afford to buy it, you get hold of a leaf spring; Many parang and khukri makers of the East do so.

Im really popular with my metalwork friends now; Im just thinking what I would like to swap it for.
 
Monstrosa said:
Have you reached SABLE yet?

Probably.

But, I am on a campaign to use it up. I've plans for the Christmas season. Need a hat? A scarf?

Or is that encouraging hoarding?
 
I'm a knitter myself (felismonstrosa on Ravelry). ;)

I need no encouragement to hoard. I was taught to treat books and printed material well, which makes it a little difficult to let it go.
 
The thing is, I can understand, say an older person who has lived though the War, holding onto things that might come in handy in the future. But with a lot of the hoarders on tv, they seem to keep rubbish. Old, gone off food & piles of newspapers left out side. Things that won't ever be needed.

It's sad & gross in equal measure IMHO.
 
Monstrosa said:
I'm a knitter myself (felismonstrosa on Ravelry). ;)

I need no encouragement to hoard. I was taught to treat books and printed material well, which makes it a little difficult to let it go.

I send printed material to the public library or to the local knitters' library when I realize that I'm not using it, anymore. That way someone other than me gets to dust it all.

I'm Boldlly on Ravelry, by the way.
 
So its not OCD.

Hoarding Not Related To OCD, New Findings Reveal
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/248862.php
Article Date: 10 Aug 2012 - 1:00 PDT

A report published in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication, has found that patients with hoarding disorder had abnormal activity in regions of the brain that was stimulus dependent when the person had to decide what to do with objects that either belonged to them, or someone else.

Hoarding disorder (HD) is when a person excessively collects objects and is unable to throw them away even though these objects might be useless or invaluable. The person usually has poor insight, avoids any decisions regarding their possessions, and is very attached to all of his/her belongings.

The disorder can be dangerous and cause many health hazards. For example, a clutter of useless objects can put the person at risk for a fire, falling, or even poor sanitation. It can also prevent typical uses of space, like not being able to cook, clean, or sleep because the person runs out of room for their objects and needs those areas.

The popular show "Hoarders" on A&E has shown people struggling with this disorder and unable to toss anything away, resulting in a house full of clutter. This problem has been linked with other psychological problems, like difficulty with attention, and is also associated with perfectionism (the person is afraid to throw something away that they shouldn't).

In order to measure neural activity when people made decisions about whether to keep or throw away objects, David F. Tolin, Ph.D., of the Institute of Living, Hartford, Connecticut, and team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The study consisted of 107 adults from a private, not-for-profit hospital. Among those patients, 43 had HD, 31 had obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and 33 were healthy individuals. In each of these groups, the researchers analyzed neural activity. Paper items, like junk mail and newspapers, that either belonged to the participants or did not, were used as the objects.

Results showed:
Patients with HD had abnormal activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula, compared with participants who had OCD and the healthy individuals.
Patients with HD had relatively lower activity in those brain regions when deciding what to do with objects that did not belong to them.
These brain regions showed "excessive functional magnetic resonance imaging signals" compared with the other groups when they had to decide about objects that belonged to them.
The researchers explained: "The present findings of ACC and insula abnormality comport with emerging models of HD that emphasize problems in decision-making processes that contribute to patients' difficulty discarding items."

Results also revealed that the group of patients with hoarding disorder decided to discard a significantly fewer amount of participant's possessions (PPs) than the other two groups.

The authors concluded:

"The apparent biphasic pattern (i.e., hypo function to Eps [experimenter's possessions] but hyper function to PPs [participant's possessions]) of ACC and insula activity in patients with HD merits further study."
 
Case histories about hoarders always seem to have a melancholy air to them. Does anybody remember Mr Trebus on A Life Of Grime? Poor old boy - you could see how his hoarding habit had its roots in his experiences during the war, and while I could see how what he was doing was unacceptable and a health hazard, part of me couldn't help wishing that there had been some way of letting him live as he wanted to.

Although he did seem fairly happy in the care home, being fussed over by motherly carers and appropriating the odd teaspoon to add to his collection...
 
Thankfully he was found alive.

Hoarder pinned under junk in house
http://www.independent.ie/and-finally/h ... 54571.html

Police in Canada had to rescue a man who was trapped in his home by rubbish

Tuesday January 15 2013

A Canadian man in his 70s was severely dehydrated after being pinned for several days under debris in his home that had piled up almost to the ceiling.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a man called to report that he had not seen his friend in several days.

Police found the doorway and halls of the suburban Vancouver home so choked with rubbish that the fire department was called to clear a path inside.

Crews had to break down the door and chainsaw through rubbish to reach the man. Police said there was no heat or electricity, and the man was severely dehydrated.

He is being treated for possible circulation problems.
 
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