Hoarding
I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents).  I disagree with many of the things said in this article.<p>First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts <i>looking for</i> an explanatory reason of that sort.  (I.e. Freudian bullshit.)  From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoarding independent of any life events.  Certainly life events or the loss of a loved one could make a barely-in-control hoarding situation spiral out of control, but it didn&#x27;t start the hoarding any more than gunshot sounds cause avalanches unless avalanche conditions were already present.<p>Second to the points about inability to describe the objects in detail, to handle the objects for more than a short time, or not being able to reliably tell the animals apart in an animal hoarding situation.  We had 19 cats (in a 2 bedroom), and it was bad for us and the animals, but we definitely could tell them apart!  Photographic memory runs in my family; most of us could in fact describe most of the objects.  That&#x27;s part of the problem!  A tendency to see every object as unique contributes to inability to not keep them all.<p>I feel like TFA was written from the perspective of someone who has no personal experience or understanding.  A recent experience at my mother&#x27;s house provides a much better illustration of why hoarding happens.  Her doorstep had rotted out and I had to rebuild it.  My mother suggested I use some polyurethane coating to finish the wood, but the bottle she&#x27;d been saving had been open an unknown number of years and turned into a disgusting milkshake.  I said we better not use that and would just buy a new bottle.  I asked if I could take the spoiled bottle to the trash for her and she <i>almost</i> agreed, but at the last moment stopped me.  She wanted to look up on the internet whether there was a way to turn the spoiled polyurethane back into usable, and asked me to put it in the separate RV (itself falling to pieces) until she has time to do that.<p>Here&#x27;s the key:  it&#x27;s an inability to make decisions.  That&#x27;s it.  The emotional distress component follows from the stress of being unable to make a decision, not the other way around.  (The reason a decision cannot be made is because the future cannot be completely known, thus it is impossible to say a discarded item will definitely not turn out to have been needed.)  The build-up of things comes from putting off the decisions to keep or get rid of things indefinitely.