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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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