The cleaner: One woman’s mission to help Britain’s hoarders

1/23/2026 at 4:08:50 PM

My wife and I have been helping a friend of the family move and part of it was dealing with the hoarding. The part in the article about "just buying a new umbrella" is so relatable. We where moving our friend and she needed an extension cord, rather than looking through her boxes, her first instinct was to just order a new one (she already have 15, but she didn't want to look for them, in her 40sqm apartment).

Deciding on what to keep and what to get rid of it also mental struggle for those helping. In our case we just watched as kitchen equipment, complete, and expensive, dinner set, furniture, art, family heirlooms and new unworn clothes got de- prioritized in favour of unread magazines, hundreds of VHS tapes, and thousands of DVDs and BluRays with endless recording of talkshows and random TV programs. She has been following a second rate pop duo band since the 1970s and the idea of missing an article or a TV appearance is unthinkable, so tossing valuable belongings is preferable to throwing out 5 years of unopened magazine on the off chance that there might be a nugget of information she didn't have. It's mentally taxing seeing someone basically throwing away their life that way. We know that she'll never look through those magazine or even hook up the VHS player to figure out which tapes to keep. When she dies, all that's left is a ton of junk which her family do not care about and it will all go to the dump.

I have such huge respect for anyone spending their time helping hoarders every day, the mental load is just massive.

by mrweasel

1/23/2026 at 5:00:37 PM

I have a hoarder friend, who is very cognizant that she suffers from a mental illness.

Her motif is a bit different: she has childhood trauma from her mother secretly throwing away her things, and assigns emotional value to anything that might be usable in the future (essentially safeguarding it against secret destruction by the mental image of her mother).

But likewise, her sense of value is all skewed.

by IAmBroom

1/23/2026 at 10:13:17 PM

I've known someone like that too, and in her case it's because she never had anything when she was a kid. So she can take agonizingly long to let go of anything even if it's obviously ruined or worthless because it might be useful in some undefined way in the future.

by throwway120385

1/23/2026 at 7:43:16 PM

While I don't think this is trauma in the traditional sense, it might be something similar. My father-in-law, who known her for decades, told me that it's a crush on one of the band members. Basically a teenage crush that never got resolve or replaced by actual relationships.

by mrweasel

1/23/2026 at 4:36:25 PM

Ok, I really want to know the name of the "second rate pop duo band".

by NoSalt

1/23/2026 at 2:52:56 PM

I had a couple of thousand books in my flat in london, including about 500 technical computing ones (design, languages, other stuff). I got my nephew to fix up the flat, for sale. He asked me "Which of these books do you want to keep?", my response after a few seconds "None".

It's so easy to hang on to things you really don't need.

by zabzonk

1/23/2026 at 3:26:06 PM

That's particularly true of tech books. I want to hang on to my copy of "Tinker Tailor" but "Adobe Air in Action" 2008?

by davidwritesbugs

1/23/2026 at 3:45:47 PM

That's a sad indictment of tech.

Most underlying technology is timeless (see TAOCP, SICP, CLRS, K&R, GoF, Dragon Book, Beej's Guide, Sipser,...); but we seem set on producing an endless, pointless, churn of frameworks and minor language differences in the name of progress.

by biofox

1/23/2026 at 3:53:18 PM

> Most underlying technology is timeless (see TAOCP, SICP, CLRS, K&R, GoF, Dragon Book,

True enuf, but how often do you actually refer to the books underlying ideas? I've had (now gone, presumably) TAOCP on my bookshelves for years, but how often did I use it? Stuff on RNG a bit, I guess...

by zabzonk

1/24/2026 at 3:36:30 AM

TAOCP is trash. I wish I grew up in the era where you could just hit up zlib for an accessible book on any topic instead of highly rated and hardly read 'classics' like TAOCP.

by fud101

1/23/2026 at 3:43:59 PM

Yeah, well, I do kind of miss "The Design & Evolution of C++", but I can't convince myself I actually need it.

by zabzonk

1/24/2026 at 6:38:22 AM

True for many, but I actually have been acquiring some computing books I had enjoyed reading in my youth (e.g. Organick's Multics). Perhaps living permanently abroad strengthens nostalgia...

by jz391

1/23/2026 at 4:46:53 PM

There’s need and there’s want I suppose.

My oldest computer book I won’t part with is Alan Simpson’s dBase III+ Programmer's reference guide, circa 1987. This book was transformative and allowed me to get a gig as a coder, so much self driven practice on a crappy underpowered generic clone PC. That crappy hardware was an advantage I didn’t see at the time, having to think about routines that were fast enough based not because of faster disks and tons of RAM.

Do I need this book? Not so much. But it brings me joy carefully flipping through it on occasion.

by julesallen

1/23/2026 at 3:21:34 PM

You're not afraid you're going to need that UCSD Pascal book from 1986?

by criddell

1/23/2026 at 3:37:26 PM

My physics textbooks look impressive sitting on a bookself even if I never open them again. I only need a few books like that to prove I'm smart though. "I swear someday I will open my calculus textbook again and do all the exercises..."

by bluGill

1/23/2026 at 3:41:32 PM

It's fun to find a colleague's collection of Knuth's Art of Computer Programming Books books and open them to hear the crack of a book that's never been opened before.

by criddell

1/23/2026 at 10:14:56 PM

We buy them to pay homage to Knuth more than to work through the exercises.

by throwway120385

1/23/2026 at 11:15:08 PM

That's why if you're a poser like me, you buy them used in poor shape.

by klatchex_too

1/23/2026 at 11:17:41 PM

Of course you do! Any student who has read/seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince knows: the most dog-eared, worn-out, scribbled-up textbook is the best textbook you could hope for!

by B1FIDO

1/24/2026 at 12:45:31 PM

I like when there's stuff underlined and scribbled in the margins. You get to see exactly how far the last user got--often just a chapter or two.

by c22

1/23/2026 at 4:04:17 PM

I've gotten rid of a bunch of books. Don't care a lot so long as they now fit my bookshelves. But will probably dump another bag or two to my library's next book sale next fall.

by ghaff

1/24/2026 at 3:11:16 AM

Oof, that's hitting below the belt, man ....

by ThrowawayR2

1/23/2026 at 6:11:27 PM

That does not mean they were all useless, of course; maybe you have absorbed some of them.

by esafak

1/23/2026 at 2:29:40 PM

I've moved houses 3 times in the last 3 years. The pain of moving all my personal belongings made me realise how much unnecessary stuff I had accumulated. So I made it a point to throw or give away many things that was no longer really needed. It was a revelation and now I am more mindful to storing anything for long-term without thought. I still have more than 2+ decades of stuff in a storage - books, sentimental stuffs, things I thought may be useful or needed in the future etc. Still figuring out how to go through all that.

by thisislife2

1/23/2026 at 2:50:46 PM

This applies to both physical and digital goods. I've tried to think hard about how to keep my digital life in order in a way that my kids will be understand to make some sense of. I'm not there yet but I am mindful of it.

Trying to explain the sentimental value of your belongings to others is like trying to explain a dream.

by laborcontract

1/23/2026 at 2:53:29 PM

I'm not a hoarder, but my dad is.

I have a couple of items from my dead grandparents, and it's a connection.

It's a tangible connection that feels more real than something intangible like memories.

As for my dad though, I have no idea. He recognizes that it's a problem, but can't stop. It's stuff like plastic ship models, or stuff he wants to buy on eBay - postcards from defunct airlines that he used to fly on.

by rationalist

1/23/2026 at 2:56:16 PM

That makes sense, but don't you think hoarding muddies the signal? Do you know what of your father's you'd want to keep of his hoarded goods?

by laborcontract

1/23/2026 at 2:59:48 PM

There is nothing that he has hoarded that I want to keep. I have told him that.

I have told him that he has so much stuff, that it would be impossible for me to recognize the $1,000 model boxes from the worthless model boxes, and that when he dies, I'm just going to have to wholesale the lot for probably a penny on the dollar.

I told him him that the people who will pay money for plastic model kits are the same age as him, and if they all die around the same time or before him, there will be no one to buy the model kits.

by rationalist

1/23/2026 at 3:36:54 PM

I've had the same discussion with my parents. They wanted me to go through their home and mark down everything I want. I don't want any of it and frankly dealing with a full house of stuff after they die is something I dread. I wouldn't even know where to start. Are there companies you can hire that will take care of everything?

by criddell

1/23/2026 at 9:14:47 PM

Australian here. I paid a garbage removal company to basically empty a house. Their qebsite called it "estate cleanup". It took a whole day for a team with crowbars to smash up every piece of furniture and load it in a truck and take it.

People take this offensively and insist someone must have wanted an old chest of drawers or something if only put it on facebook marketplace and work with interested parties and assist with them obtaining it - but those people dont realise how much they are asking of someone who is dealing with loss.

by technion

1/23/2026 at 3:57:35 PM

Yes, they’re called clean out companies. They’ll swoop in and put everything in a dumpster. You can engage an auction house-+cleanout company if you think they have anything worth selling.

by a2tech

1/23/2026 at 4:04:33 PM

The only people who want to pick through a hoard to find the "good stuff" is other hoarders and flippers.

Also, 90% of the time that the act of hoarding ruins the objects hoarded so everything becomes trash anyways.

by astura

1/23/2026 at 4:16:25 PM

> 90% of the time that the act of hording ruins the objects horded.

I can also attest to this.

by rationalist

1/23/2026 at 3:04:09 PM

> don't you think hoarding muddies the signal?

Yes, which I am thankful now that I only have a couple of items and haven't had to make the choice of what to keep or not.

by rationalist

1/23/2026 at 3:19:53 PM

Thank you for sharing.

by laborcontract

1/23/2026 at 2:47:06 PM

I’m in a similar situation, after dealing with the deaths of multiple parents I don’t want my descendants to have a huge burden of stuff and I’ve been on a mission to purge as much as possible. Facebook Marketplace has been great to get rid of a lot of the more bulky stuff. It’s great, you post a picture and someone comes to your house to pick it up cash in hand. Low value stuff gets donated to goodwill or my local Buy Nothing/Free Stuff group on Facebook. Also been doing a tidy amount of sales on eBay for smaller/more valuable items.

Still have a lot of progress to make. At least my game collection on Steam will be easy to clean up.

by Bluecobra

1/23/2026 at 3:30:12 PM

Put it into a storage locker. Pre-pay 5 years of fees on the locker. Wait 5 years.

This is what we call a 'self-sovling-problem'

by mythical_39

1/23/2026 at 11:22:48 PM

Where I live none of the storage companies will let you pre-pay 1 year of rent let alone 5.

A major part of their business model is giving low initial rates and then raising the rent over and over knowing what a pain it will be for the renters to move to a different storage place.

The industry acronym for the strategy is "ECRIs", existing customer rate increases, and it is a profitability metric they track.

by klatchex_too

1/23/2026 at 3:37:26 PM

To be clear, it is in storage for the past 2+ decade. It was moving houses every year, the last few years, with only the essentials, that made me realise how much of a hoarder I was. Nevertheless, dumping it somewhere and "forgetting" about it is not much of a solution - as someone else said here, you are just passing on the problem to the next generation.

by thisislife2

1/23/2026 at 4:04:07 PM

I think the implication is once the fees stop being paid it ceases to be your problem. The storage company will sell the contents of your locker.

by tonyedgecombe

1/23/2026 at 2:48:42 PM

A few years back we "decluttered" our house in order to make it more appealing for sale and put all the stuff in storage. After the property eventually sold we went back and looked at the stuff we had stored and probably threw out 80% of it.

by arethuza

1/23/2026 at 3:57:02 PM

I’m attempting to do a weekly bite-sized version of decluttering - one problem area, 1-2 hours, once a week.

I am calling it Swedish Death Cleaning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_death_cleaning) to sell it to my spouse. Not sure the marketing is working but we are making progress.

by shermantanktop

1/23/2026 at 4:13:47 PM

I'm storing small items in numbered bags. I take a photo and have a web UI for easy searching. It also tracks which items are used frequently vs not used at all in years.

Bags are stored in numerical order for quick storage and retrieval.

With this you do your decluttering from the web interface: search for items that haven't moved in years, flag for removal.

For frequently used items the system doesn't make sense - the storage and retrieval overheads are too high. But it pays off for any item you might forget the location of, or forget if you have it at all.

I feel we're overdue to have these types of digital front ends over our household item storage.

by tim-fan

1/23/2026 at 4:50:56 PM

Absolutely agree, have been looking for something like this for a while now.

Did you build this yourself? Would love to know more if you’d be so kind to share.

Used to do similar things with Trello before the focus went all in on enterprise (getting acquired by Atlassian will do that).

by julesallen

1/23/2026 at 5:28:45 PM

Here's the repo, I've just added a demo video to the readme:

https://github.com/tim-fan/hordor

I was learning Django when I wrote it, today you'd probably get further quicker vibe coding from scratch.

I have about 100 items in storage today, I intend to add more, would like to optimize the workflow as I scale up.

Going forward I'd like to add:

  * more optimized storage/retrieval flow. The overall goal for the project is to  minimize this friction, as far as possible
  * AI enrichment - generate descriptions, aid with search etc. I'd love to be able to query my storage "how can I connect this thing to this old speaker?" and the storage responds eg "you have this cable, this adaptor, plug that into this cable, etc"

I've seen a few related projects but can't find the links just now. There's some cool projects that store items in little trays each with an LED, when you request the item the LED blinks for rapid retrieval. The numbered bags I used are slower for retrieval but cheaper and easier to set up.

I do enjoy thinking about the different options and tradeoffs for cost and storage/retrieval time. Also tradeoffs between time and (physical) space.

edit: formatting

by tim-fan

1/24/2026 at 4:07:26 PM

Thank you for sharing this.

by julesallen

1/24/2026 at 10:54:54 AM

I travelled for 3 months out of a backpack with my wife and then 10 months old daughter. Needing to carry all your stuff necessitated a brutal prioritization. The strongest emotion on coming back to my really not all that full apartment was being overwhelmed with all the stuff. It has just become worse with my now two children growing up. My dream as an an empty nester is to emphasize the empty part.

by nasmorn

1/23/2026 at 11:12:00 PM

My grandfather was a hoarder. It's impossible to exaggerate how much stuff was in the house, garden and outbuildings when he died. I can say with confidence that most people have never seen anything like it. It took weeks and weeks of daily trips to the dump to clean everything out, and countless fires. A small fraction of the stuff was sold or kept, but not many people want a thousand milk bottle tops.

I was a teenager when he died and it's had quite an affect on me and I think my siblings too. For most of my adult life I've been extremely reluctant to accumulate any "stuff" at all. I've moved 10 times in 10 years and the only way you can do that is having not much stuff.

But I think I went too far. I have a slightly more healthy attitude to stuff now. I have things like pictures on the walls, books, just things I like that aren't necessarily useful or necessary. My partner, though, I think she tends to hoard stuff. But it's hard to know whether she's actually normal and this is just my latent fear of stuff kicking in.

by globular-toast

1/23/2026 at 3:32:02 PM

If folk would stop hoarding browser tabs too; the internet would be a tidier place.

by doublerabbit

1/25/2026 at 4:28:44 AM

Wait, you're saying y'all aren't browsing the web through a small sliver of screen under dozens and dozens of rows of browser tabs?

by jfil

1/23/2026 at 2:32:21 PM

If there’s one thing I learned watching those Hoarder reality tv shows it’s that you can clean up after them all you want but that’s just a bandaid.

by pipeline_peak

1/23/2026 at 2:47:10 PM

I once had a patient in a nursing home who was a hoarder and she would hoard pinecones from outside the facility in her room. Garbage bags upon garbage bags of pinecones. When she would go to dialysis the staff would clean out her room and toss the pinecones. So she started begging the EMTs to bring the garbage bags of pinecones with her to dialysis so they wouldn't get thrown out.

The recovery rate for hoarding is under 5%, it's generally treated by SSRIs and CBT. Recently there is potential that GLP1s may have benefits for hoarding and other addictions.

by randycupertino

1/23/2026 at 3:06:33 PM

For people like your patient, is it useful to try to give them any sort of physical agency, control, or tasks?

by bell-cot

1/23/2026 at 6:52:33 PM

Is the <5% response rate with treatment or in general?

by 0cf8612b2e1e

1/23/2026 at 2:29:55 PM

One of my most guilty indulgences is the various TV programs about hoarders and hoarding. They are of course sensationalized all to shit and they basically provoke mental breakdowns out of their subjects to make good TV. The guilt isn't just that it's bad like all reality TV- you can tell these people, a lot of them anyway, have serious mental difficulties that a TV show showing up with 4 1-800-GOT-JUNK trucks and parking them out front of their homes before pulling all their shit out for neighbors to see and then yelling at them for being distressed about it isn't addressing. They offer "therapy" as part of it, after they've traumatized the fuck out of someone already struggling. Woo.

But I watch. I have a mother who's started down the path. Maybe I'm like... training myself for what's probably due in about 15 years. Or maybe I'm just making excuses for indulging in trash TV.

The article is definitely correct: these people need help. They also usually need money. They usually need a lot of both. A lot of those shows take place in dilapidated parts of the world where you can tell, obviously, that the hoarding is certainly an issue but an even more pressing one is poverty. People keep everything when they're broke, far long past the point of reason, because they've found themselves needing... who knows, a tooth brush, a can of food, and had it kept from them by money so many times that they psychologically can't bear to throw one out, ever. Even if it's rotted away.

And what's worse: because throughout any attempt at helping them, anyone, is then a threat. They become animated, angry, and any action that can actually help them is like playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in a 6-shooter. They'll tell you with a straight, red face that yes they fucking need the mayo that's been in the diner packets for 10 years because it's still fine and usable. It's hard to feel sympathy for people so insufferable, and it's not even just you, the helper. They're often estranged from family and have no friends because their behaviors strain every relationship beyond repair.

It's... tragic, in every sense of the word.

FWIW, I also watch a lot of YouTubers who do this in a way that isn't evil. But also the content is less engaging because, well, reality TV wouldn't poke people the way it does into acting the way they do if it didn't make fucking good content. But yeah, I feel notably less disgusting consuming that at least.

by ToucanLoucan

1/23/2026 at 2:43:48 PM

My mother went down this road (she, fortunately, had enough resources that it wasn't a catastrophe), but last year was forced to downsize due to a medical condition. I filled 2 20-yard dumpsters with the trash, donated another truckload, and put the rest (anything she might actually value) in storage. Since then, I've been going through that remainder with her and I think she's finally coming around to the absurdity of her situation. It turns out she isn't actually attached to her parents' monogrammed (but moth-eaten) linens, or the contents of her grandmother's sewing box.

by InitialLastName

1/23/2026 at 2:51:57 PM

In my strictly non-professional opinion, as a watcher of this stuff: the hoarders stuff almost always replaces something. Maybe it's a person who is gone, or was driven away. Maybe it's a purpose they only had before they retired. Maybe it's an event that drove them to crazy places to get by, and even though it's past, it's scars remain. Maybe it's merely the abstract concept of control, and agency; this one crops up a lot with the older female subjects of the shows, who's abusive husbands controlled them their entire lives, almost with regularity exhibiting all the classic signs of Battered Woman Syndrome.

It's hard for me to disentangle this with the inhumane way modern life lets people live.

by ToucanLoucan

1/23/2026 at 2:49:13 PM

It's not for everyone, but I found I was keeping a lot of things "for the memories". I started taking pictures of the thing then getting rid of it. Serves similar purpose and easier to let it go.

by gedy

1/23/2026 at 2:52:59 PM

Also scrapbooking. I've really gotten into that lately as I struggle to get rid of like, strange things. Parking passes and tickets for concerts, receipts from dinners on trips, that sort of thing.

Scrap booking is wonderful for such things. And when I need a boost, I pop it open and get a rush of memories from all the lovely things I've gotten to do.

by ToucanLoucan

1/23/2026 at 3:17:49 PM

I have a wise, witty, charming and personable friend who is a complete hoarder. It was a big deal to be allowed into the house. But, after several years of attempting to help, I eventually had to realize that it wasn't the effort required to clean that was the issue. The issue is that she doesn't like the space that's left behind. If I could snap my fingers and make it all clean and tidy, it would not really help anything because it would be back to the old way in a month or so.

I once suggested bins and shelves to help keep it better organized and manageable, and her response (quite negative) was one of the clues that it wasn't the effort of cleaning up that was the issue, and therefore all the help in the world wouldn't make much of an impact. She doesn't like the space left behind after you clean, and feels the need to fill it up with whatever she can find.

Eventually, I had to just accept that this is how she was, and if I wanted to keep her as a friend I had to stop trying to change how she kept her house; if forced to choose between empty space in her house and keeping me as a friend, there was no way she was going to tolerate empty space in her house. Every bit must be filled. (sigh)

And yet, outside of her house, she's great. For example, she loves helping us clean our house.

by rossdavidh

1/23/2026 at 3:28:26 PM

> I wanted to keep her as a friend I had to stop trying to change how she kept her house

This is a hard lesson for those of us who like to fix things: you basically can't change the behavior of adults, without a huge amount of work and/or their active cooperation.

by pjc50

1/23/2026 at 5:07:41 PM

> you basically can't change the behavior of adults, without a huge amount of work and/or their active cooperation.

Odd statement, with the "/or" part. Changing the behavior of adults without their active cooperation is compulsion, not behavioral modification. I mean, we do it in prisons and boot camps, but that's not a solution here.

by IAmBroom

1/24/2026 at 2:42:29 PM

I don't believe GP meant it like they're physically forcing their friend to change - just that there's a big difference when someone recognizes their problem and is trying to solve it; and them not doing so, where you can still encourage them to fix the problem regardless.

by squigz

1/24/2026 at 1:09:27 PM

How do you know when holding on to things you won't use again becomes hoarding? Is it a volume thing? I have a bunch of stuff I keep around for nostalgic reasons. More than the average person I think. But it's pretty contained and doesn't take up any space in living spaces.

by wkjagt

1/24/2026 at 1:47:37 PM

In general, the factor that decides "is this situation mental illness" comes down to whether the situation causes suffering for the person in it.

by estimator7292

1/23/2026 at 10:25:58 PM

Having seem some relative's houses, IMO hoarding is basically undiagnosed or undertreated ADHD.

by trashface

1/24/2026 at 5:15:34 PM

My mom is a hoarder.

It's not ADHD, it's an anxiety disorder. The two things can coexist, but the underlying cause of the hoarding [in most instances, definitely with my mom] is anxiety related to "losing" the items.

This is why you see hoarding triggered by loss so often.

by gesis

1/23/2026 at 2:46:12 PM

I’m on standby as my generation, the Millennial cohort, becomes the true “sandwich generation” in the US. Elder care is such a disaster and farce here. There’s a high profile senior citizen who has no business in leadership but apparently the system likes it this way. There’s going to be a mass passing of Boomers and how it looks - probably a lot like this but without public healthcare so even more traumatic - in the US does not seem manageable.

In the US we don’t even test drivers over age 70 for competence because taking away their licenses means we’d have to look out for them or provide alternatives and that’s not happening so here we are.

by 6stringmerc

1/23/2026 at 3:07:53 PM

>In the US we don’t even test drivers over age 70 for competence

We don't test non-commercial drivers at any age after initial issuance of the license, which is apparent after a few minutes of observation while walking around.

by PopAlongKid

1/23/2026 at 3:41:36 PM

That isn't true. If you move states they will test you again if you don't come from a state they like the testing for. This is just a written test though, there is nothing about do you apply the book knowledge to your real world driving.

Most people never make such a move, but it still happens. (this is an exception that proves the rule)

by bluGill

1/23/2026 at 3:56:09 PM

I moved states a few years ago CA to WY and was not required to take written test. computer in this state. The only thing they tested was my eye-sight.

by Bender

1/23/2026 at 4:26:17 PM

If you were to move WY to CA you probably would need the test. Though I don't know.

I do know if you move from CA to IL you wouldn't need to take the test, but I'm not sure about WY to IL. I moved from MN->IA->IL, and I had to take a test but I remember at the time moving directly from MN would have meant no test required.

by bluGill

1/23/2026 at 5:58:20 PM

Confession of a Quasi-Hoarder:

I have a tendency to keep unfinished projects, many of which are at the "collection of supplies needed" stage. During Covid isolation and depression, combined with a mentally ill roommate who added to all of it, it just overwhelmed my life.

I had to evict the roommate, sadly, for my own self-preservation. I am happy to say that, AFAIK, he's in a better place today, and receiving treatment. MOST of his stuff left with him; a small remnant is stashed in corners of my basement and attic, and I throw out a sackful whenever I remember to do so.

The rest... I extended an invite over Thanksgiving to a friend iby a temp job, far from her family. In return, we agreed she would help me clean up. She had learned from her daughter doing the same for her after her husband died, and very thoughtfully did just as I asked. She'd hold up something and say, "Are you going to finish this project?", and I'd say "Yes, someday... No... Throw it." She'd call me over after assembling a pile, and I'd give approval to throwing it.

I had agency, and am certain I agreed to everything that went curbside. IIRC we filled 5 construction trash bags.

For weeks afterwards, I would continue the trend with another half bag or so a week.

It's given me a new trajectory. Someone ITT described a hoarder disliking empty spaces in their house; I have a romantic image in my head of a magician-type of person with a cluttered but ever-useful house. I am now replacing that with a romantic image of a clean, ordered house, with select places for ordered piles of stuff.

I'm typing from my "office", where hundreds of tools sit within well-labeled bins, one bin deep, all readable from the center of the room. Order. Piles. And for the first time in my life, looking for a thing is something I can do in my head: "Go to my office. On the left wall, just below eye level, on the center of the shelf is a bin labeled 'SHARP THINGS'. You can find an exacto blade there." I can tell you where to find envelopes, DVI cables, electrical tape, and magnifying glasses, from memory. The room is the opposite of a heap... even if I have over a dozen screwdrivers in the bin labeled 'SCREWDRIVERS'.

I say I'm a quasi-hoarder, because I've known people at the actual extreme. A friend who owns three houses, all filled to the brim, with only walkways through the stuff.

Anyway... That's my confession. I have a lot of sympathy for those at the extreme end, because the dysfunction agues me as well. But a friend devoting a couple days to helping me really did a lot to empower me on a new direction in life.

by IAmBroom

1/23/2026 at 6:10:37 PM

I'm not a hoarder like most people imagine, but I have hoarder tendencies as my two storage units can attest. My main challenge has always been that when I have invested the (significant) effort in organizing things in a reasonable way, some life event soon comes along that causes everything to go back into disarray. My "stuff" is almost entirely various types of tools for doing various types of things that I have gained skills in over the years as personal education or hobbies.

My dream, which I'm hoping to soon realize, is to build myself an expansive workshop that has defined spaces for everything so that I can actually do things and make things when I want to, with all the necessary tools present, and without requiring external storage or cluttering my home. Right now most everything I don't use daily is stored neatly in labeled totes which are tracked in a spreadsheet and on shelving units in a storage unit off-site. Certainly not the cluttered mess that most people think of, but at the same time I have many things which are not used every single day that took years to acquire along with the companion skills and I have no intention of getting rid of.

In times gone past, I wouldn't appear as a hoarder because land, housing, workshop space was all massively more affordable and so I would have achieved my dream many many years ago. It's pretty incredible in how disappointing our current timeline is that someone who earns a massively outsized income compared to the average cannot afford to have a designated place to exercise their hobbies, because property pricing is so out of whack with what is reasonable that you need to be a multi-millionaire/billionaire to afford the space to do and have things without it appearing as a mess.

This is a preface to the fact I see these same problems with my older relatives, many of whom are now incapable of ever again participating in some of those hobbies due to physical infirmity. They spent a lifetime learning and collecting the tools to go along with that learning, and in many ways those tools now represent physically the manifestation of their entire life's work, and they cannot give them up, even as they can neither afford the space to keep them organized nor have the physical capability to continue working those skills even as a hobby, so it all just lingers around them as so much clutter and unopened boxes in the attic. This isn't quite the trash bags of magazines level of hoarding that most people think of, but I already know I will be responsible with the mental and physical effort to deal with this situation after my relatives pass, and yet I already find myself in the same situation. Wouldn't it have been so much nicer if they would have been able to pass along the property, the tools, and the skills to the next generation instead of being priced out and it all ending up in a dump eventually?

by tristor