How Hoarding Can Affect Your Life

Imagine a home full of things stacked high like mountains. It begins to feel overwhelming when you feel like you’re being surrounded by things, and more things.

Hoarding disorder is a persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them. A person with hoarding disorder experiences distress at the thought of getting rid of the items. Excessive accumulation of items, regardless of actual value, occurs (Mayo Clinic)

I recently helped clean out someone’s home and I was blown away by how much stuff accumulated. It was crazy to see at first, but by having a big team to work on it, we made a ton of headway.

It required renting a U-Haul, making several trash runs, recycle runs (because we recycle here), and a ton of letting go. Helping clear out someone else’s home makes it easier to get rid of things because it’s not yours and to them, the thing may seem purposeless, but to a hoarder, they believe everything has a purpose.

If you hoard items or have a hoarding tendency, it can lead to a toxic downfall you don’t want to put yourself in. No one wants to be a hoarder, but by the time they are, it’s too late and they need help. A hoarder needs help like an alcoholic needs to attend AA meetings.

What Causes Hoarding Disorder? (According to Cleveland Clinic)

• Having a relative with the disorder.
• Brain injury that triggers the need to save things.
• Traumatic life event.
• Mental disorders such as depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• Uncontrollable buying habits.
• Inability to pass up free items such as coupons and flyers.

Ever since I was a kid, I loved getting things for Christmas, shopping for new clothes, and dropping all my movie theater money on stuff. It felt good to have things, but I realized that it was filling a void.

It filled a void of loneliness, sadness, and a bit of depression. The thing is, stuff won’t make you happier. Love, care, and connections will. Once I was finally able to let go of all the things that served no purpose, I felt so much more level-headed.

Releasing hoarding tendencies allows you to unwind and not feel so empty inside. Just because you have less tangible items, you have more money, more room to walk around, and more headspace to think.

Ever wonder why people study at cafes or libraries? That’s because they’re open spaces and not cluttered. The mind needs room to roam freely in a spacious environment. Your mindset has a direct correlation to the environment surrounding it.

Hoarders Get Too Attached to Things

Getting rid of sentimental items is the hardest part. Old jerseys from sports, sweet letters from my basic training, and old awards had to go. They no longer served a purpose for me, and I didn’t even think about the item at hand until I confronted it.

A hoarder has no idea what matters until it’s time to let go. It’s hard to realize what serves a purpose or not when you attach yourself to an item. The thing is, you can’t take it with you to the grave. Trash it, recycle it, or donate it.

If I weren’t a hoarder growing up, I’d never have the satisfaction of realizing the power of a clean space. Especially with work from home, a clear space allows me to maximize my productivity and get a lot more accomplished.

When my bedroom was a disaster, my mind was a mess. As a social media manager and a writer, I had so many random thoughts pop into my head at all times and this made it very hard to focus. My parents told me to clean my room growing up, and as I got older, they stopped coming into my room, so I stopped being confronted about it.

As a hoarder, you need to take full responsibility for your bad habit and change it as soon as possible. Once your habit is dropped, you’ll feel so much better and promise yourself to never go back to those old habits again.

Hoarders Don’t Recognize What Actually Serves a Purpose

Helping the person I mentioned earlier clean up their place put me back into my old shoes and reminded me how toxic it can be to hoard stuff. You realize that you’re buying useless things that collect dust and pile up.

There’s no use in trying to organize a mess into a clean mess. There comes a point where you have to tell yourself, “Hey, it’s time to say goodbye to this thing”. Ask yourself if the thing you’re thinking of getting rid of provides any value to you.

If you can’t even remember the last time you used it or if you ever opened it, then it’s time to let it go and clean the house. Why sacrifice your mental capacity by holding onto stuff?

People talk about their net worth as an accumulation of all the assets they have. By having so much stuff, that doesn’t make you richer or wealthier, it just looks like you don’t have your shit together and that you have attachment issues.

How You Can Stop Being a Hoarder

If you’re ready to end the bad habit of hoarding, you can do a number of things. You can hunker down and get your trashbags ready to go and throw a bunch of stuff away, recycle, sell, and donate.

Or you can ask for help from a friend or family member to see if they wouldn’t mind lending a helping hand. The great thing about having someone help out means that whatever treasures you find that they don’t mind letting go, you get to keep (but don’t hoard it!).

Holding onto the stuff that you genuinely need is acceptable, but holding onto things you forgot you owned is a problem. End the issue of hoarding by taking full responsibility and doing everything you can to learn to let go.

Once you learn to let go, you’ll allow your mind to think freely, you’ll feel less stressed out, and you’ll feel exponentially better you learned to let go, and you can finally move forward.