I wanted to offer a topic for a future podcast: Scarcity. I think especially for people who are poor or grew up poor, it leads us to feel so much fear of scarcity that we hoard every little thing that comes our way, even the most useless things, and that "just in case" seems so important. I adopted this mindset from my upbringing, and after I started making money as an adult, it took a few years to realize I was just creating more problems for myself, namely anxiety. A key lesson: Hoarding is not the same thing as being frugal.
My husband was raised by his grandparents who lived through the great depression. He hangs onto EVERYTHING. You just described him to a T. He caught me listening to this podcast and I could see the rage building in him. I cannot live like this.
Wow this sound exactly like my friend. Been trying to help her, but it’s harder then I thought. Starting to make sense why she keeps everything and doesn’t let go.
I love the comments that are always posted on this channel, always so polite, friendly and really insightful.Such a nice change from the aggressive filth you see elsewhere.
I grew up with genuine hoarder tendencies. I'm only 22, but it's a constant effort to keep it in check. My last apartment I lost my security deposit because the clutter made it impossible to move out on time. Now I'm playing the minimalism game every month. It is extremely difficult, but there is a real difference. Paper is the hardest, it's disproportionately terrifying to lose the information contained. Even find myself keeping grocery lists, doodles, scrap paper filled with physics problems. Everyone likes the before & after, the overnight fix, but the only sustainable way when you have those tendencies is slow progress, except in cases where there's a hazard to health and safety of course.
my mom is a hoarder. i grew up to be a hoarder too. but then things changed. i think that the turning point for me was when i learned how to say no, how to set boundaries, and how to decide what i want and what i dont want. first i got more tidy with what i had, established routines. then i started discarding. everything i own now comfortably fits into my studio appartment. i still go thru my stuff every 3 months and whenever i am starting to feel stressed to keep things minimal. but being able to say "no" to bringing stuff into my home was key. my ex is a serious hoarder. it didnt work out with the two of us, but we are great friends and got the respect thing down.
Hi Lena, similar situation - my mother suffered a lot of trauma in her life and her hoarding got worse after the age of 40 (head injury did not help). I also struggle with hoarding (not rubbish, but cute little things, amazing op shop finds, books,books, books!). I am only just really 'getting it' with what it sounds like you have accomplished - the setting of boundaries! I find it hard to say no and want to please people ... I'm improving but it has taken years of really focusing on it. Congrats to you!!
I working my way through your wonderful insight throughout this isolation and you guys are really helping with my journey- I love this episode! Your friendship really shines through and I loved it!
This may be my favorite episode of all. It hits so many sweet spots and makes me uncomfortable how much I can relate to this. The one that hits the hardest: Josh's thoughts about perfectionism. I've been working on a short novel over the last 20+ years and have written virtually nothing because I want it to be "perfect". OUCH. The truth hurts. Time for change :).
It's funny, because here is 2021, we kind of need "space age macaroni and cheese". At the start of the pandemic, where I live at least, the shelves were pretty bare.Especially from toilet paper and mac and cheese and raman noodles. What a difference a few years(and a global pandemic) make.
My grandparents' house burned down when I was about 20. I thought I would never have trouble with STUFF because I went through that experience and the huge gratitude for my grandparents' safety despite the material loss. Yet, here I am struggling to minimize and still maintaining silly emotional attachments to my belongings.
Actually, an experience like that at such a relatively young age, I would think, would be traumatic and more likely to make you react by hoarding things. I'm sorry that happened to your family, but I'm glad your grandparents were not hurt. Best of luck on your journey.
There's a lot of research into hoarding, and the experts almost always seem to say something about hoarders having experienced some sort of trauma (especially a loss), often the death of a loved one. I've seen episodes of the show Hoarders in which the person who had a hard time detaching from items had suffered a brief, one-time trauma inflicted upon them by someone else (for example, one woman's beloved doll was burned in front of her by a parent, as a cruel punishment).
I hit a harsh realization this year that I have way too much. It seriously causes anxiety seeing so much stuff so I have spent the past month or so cleaning out and getting rid of things. I still have a long way to go and know I'll probably never be a true minimalist but I am trying to establish better cleaning habits and learning to let go of more and more each day. The biggest roadblock I face right now is living with someone who doesn't see eye to eye with me on not needing as much and thinks that if there is an empty space anywhere some kind of knickknack has to cover it. It has gotten so bad that I have had to push stuff aside just to have enough space on our kitchen table just to have space to eat. I hate living like that.
Regarding the "how do I keep it from happening again" question: as a reformed cosmetic addict the best advice I can give you is don't drink the Kool-Aid. watch what you are putting into your mind on a regular basis. advertisement both in media and in real life is a drug.. its sole purpose is to make you buy things you don't need. they invest billions of dollars into making you buy things that you don't need. unfortunately a lot of blogs, RU-vid channels , Etc are nothing more than paid advertising.. whether they're getting paid in actual money or in free goodies, trips ,advertising opportunities, Etc. if you can stop all of that from coming into your mind in the first place suddenly buying new things isn't that important to you anymore. it really does work I promise you. the only difficult thing is figuring out what to do with all the time that you spent consuming that advertisement and actually physically buying things... you have to find a new hobby that is not damaging to either you personally , your home, or your pocketbook.
last summer i watched soo many minimalist videos, listened to hours of poadcasts, watched minimalism jouneys and wardrobe/room/studio tours and got so inspired. i began my decluttering process and as i went around my room i knew i had alot to tackle but i loved the process dearly. at the end of each session i would have 2 or 3 plastic bags full of things i was going to donate and a trash can full of crap. days, weeks, months on i reckon i have decluttered around 20 plastic bags full of clothes, books, etc etc. although i am not a harsh minimalist ( i will admit i do still have alot of clothes still which i can cut down ) but i am hesitant to do away with my decluttering journey because i find it so enjoyable. overall so pleased i learned about minimalism, thanks
I have an emotional attachment to one object : my motorcycle. But then, it's more than two wheels and an engine to me, it's the promise of wonderful journeys. Brings a smile to my face, every. single. time.
When I met my current bf, I made him rpomise never to get a motorcycle. Two of my ex-bfs and an uncle have died as a result of motorcycle crashes in the last 10 years. Two of them died a few months apart. One of them was at fault, one of them was a a victim of the weather (just bad luck), and one was the victim of another person's terrible decision (ran a red light while texting). I will never date a person with a motorcycle. They make me soooo anxious.
I'm so sorry about your loss, I really am :( Thing is, we all know it might happen to any one of us.. it's just that the pleasure we get out of it outweights the risks. I know, we're very selfish in that way, but the road is a very difficult thing to resist when you're a biker. I completely understand your stance on it, and to be honest I don't blame you. Take care of yourself and don't forget to enjoy each and every moment, that's what matters most!
Thank you, Goran. Yeah, I totally get where you're coming from. All of the people I know who died in motorcycle crashes LOVED riding their bikes. They were like little boys with a favoite toy. :) Just please be careful out there, and watch out for the idiots who don't respect others on the road.
Lol the other day I actually bought two can openers. I had to because my can opener broke and I couldn't finish making dinner. it's winter time, I don't have a driver's license, and I have a small child. So when I finally got to the store, I bought an extra can opener because I know that this one is going to break at some point.
I was thinking the same thing. A few years ago my husband and I toured a house for sale that had a huge part of the unfinished basement filled with hundreds of packages of TP piled from floor to ceiling. Every other part of the house was uncluttered. TP was clearly an obsession. In 2020 when we couldn’t find toilet paper I mused that maybe we should have bought that house even though it was not in a good location, too large for us and generally not to our liking! But of course we would have had to predict the TP shortage and included those thousands of rolls in the purchase contract... 🤔
My own 50+ year marriage is proof that it’s possible for a pack rat and a minimalist to live together. I can’t say it’s easy, though. My husband brought ALL of his childhood collections with him into our first home together and he has never parted with a single item. It’s all stuffed away behind closed doors and we’ve had to move it to many different houses, including overseas and back. That overseas move was the toughest. I literally had to get rid of 95% of everything we owned to afford the freight charges and that included several of my beloved items that I still miss now, 20 years later, all so he could keep this useless rotting unused junk that he will never get rid of. 😢 In a way, it’s as if I married someone who weighs several hundred pounds more than his body.
Your email today pointed me to your podcasts, specifically this one on hoarders. I have neighbors who are hoarders. I am a minimalist and want to help the family get started. They don't have a healthy or safe environment for their three young daughters. I'm excited about clearing out the clutter. So much useless stuff. Thanks for the inspiring podcast.
I'm in a similar situation as the caller whose wife is opposite. My wife (and teenage daughter )are hoarders while I'm very minimalistic now. Complete opposites. The guys say they couldn't live in that situation and I don't want to but stuck with it. I think people like my wife have a mental reason for hoarding while she thinks i'm OCD for wanting very few things.
I can relate to that especially when I was still living with my parents and siblings. I live in my own house right now. However, I still need to go back to my parents' house on the weekends to check their house condition. Because they couldn't care less but will still complain about everything. My whole family depends on me to keep the house clean and maintained. It is still crazy but it is not as worst as before. I loathe it but I have to do it. The most important reason is I don't want them to live in my house if their house is wrecked.
The example of the art (pushing trash forward like a clock that keeps ticking) is honestly an eye opener. I tend to move my clutter from one place to another. I've gotten a lot better, though, since I've donated 8 bags filled with stuff. I do catch myself still moving things and leaving that task for "later".
I wonder if in the future, clutter will be an old-school American English word. Globalization of languages will butcher the word and it will be called "clotter" but the meaning will be the same, because too much stuff cluttering your home is like having clogged arteries/blood clots or like a cancer. A cluttered home is like a "clotted" home with decreased arterial circulation and can lead to sick feelings/mental pain.
There is not a "definition" of an Alcoholic, but there is a "description" of Alcoholics, please refer to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Love ya all!
I have a closet in a spare bedroom that has a month's worth of MREs for the entire family and about 50 gallons of bottled water. I think the minimalist part of that is keeping it to either a specific short-term timeframe or a specific confined area ...but anyone who doesn't have at least a week's worth of food and water for themselves and their family as well as any pets they are responsible for is not only failing as an adult, they're stupid. It's like driving around without a spare tire or with the spare tire but without a jack there are grown people that live like that. These are the kinds of people that natural selection would have taken care of in the past.
The spouse or significant other question comes up continuously when this topic is being discussed, and it might be one of the most important questions... yet nobody has the balls to answer it . they all dance around because they don't want to be the bad guy or be somehow liable for ending someone's marriage. This is the solution to the spouse and or significant other problem: if you do not want to live a life of misery you have two choices to be applied to every decision/ behavior /action that your significant partner does. you can either accept it... or you can't. if you can't, you can ask them to change .. which they and only they have control over that decision ...and if they won't change then your only other option is to leave . if you stay living in misery everyday you have just sentenced yourself to a life of prison of your own making. If that is your decision, stop griping about it and just deal because you have the power to change it and you have chosen not to. one other option that again, nobody ever speaks about, is simply living in separate homes or separate rooms in the same home. even a few decades ago that was completely normal , for the adults in the house to have their own spaces ..and not just bedrooms either but dens, hobby rooms, offices , sometimes even living rooms or dining rooms. Conjugal visits were simply that ..often times couples had a signal that they would give each other that they were interested. is that a sad relationship? if it works and you're happy that's all that matters. that's the way my paternal grandparents lived... they were married for over 30 years and had three kids, when the last kid left the house they split up went their own ways and lived happily retired lives separate and their own Apartments.
I think you've got it backwards just a bit. while hoarding for an extended period of time and certainly exasperate mental illness and or physical illness, there's a Cause at the beginning as well. in our society we have so many people dealing with so much.. the pressures are just out of control.. and there is so little resource in this country for mental health. people start to self-medicate... either because they can't afford the help, they don't know how to get the help, they're ashamed of needing the help, or they're so ill that they don't realize they need the help. there is a massive association between anxiety and depression and hoarding or shopping addiction (which can be two different things because a lot of times people that have a massive shopping addiction learn to hide it by getting rid of items after they purchased it but they still buy compulsively ). as for what would happen if the hoarders House burned down ...I think that would depend upon the support system both socially and medically they have available to them it would certainly be a horrifically traumatic event in their lives.... but you can take a look at what happens when older people get taken out of their home and put into nursing care . many of them deteriorate or even die very quickly. Think of severe hoarding kind of like a giant cast that is holding a person's psyche together and allowing them to continue to cope with life to some extent, whether that be barely holding on or functioning normally in society. If someone had a severely broken leg you certainly wouldn't just tell them one day "hey you know what it's time for the cast to come off whether you're healed or not" and start sawing away. Since one of you has admitted to having add and the to being OCD, it would be like telling you comparatively to " just pay attention" or to " just stop all of your routines at once".
My parents are both extreme hoarders I grew up in that now I'm an aspiring minimalist i got ridd of all there stuff and mine for 12 yrs of purging still got more todo.
Bob Marley didn't get the surgery for religious reasons. I didn't agree woth the decision, but I'm sure he didn't view it as silly. I'm sure you meant no harm with the comment, but something to keep in mind. Great podcasts by the way.
To those with hoarding spouses/partners... it’s a battle every GD day to keep it together ... hubby and I bought a second house for me to retreat to and it’s like heaven to me, but i still maintain the pretense that original house is my primary residence so he doesn’t feel so bad but in all truth, I get physically ill whenever I’m there ... I look at the piles and piles of stuff within the house and the garage that is packed wall to wall to ceiling with totes and boxes crushing under the weight of those haphazardly piled on top of each other and it hurts my soul. The fridge is always stuffed to the gills with food that he buys and takes a bite or 2 of maybe and is then left to rot ...There is so much waste of money and resources it’s just almost unbearable. We’ve been married for 25 years and raised 3 kids and I fought against the tide thru it all but I’m about to break. I go to my house to regroup until I feel too guilty and go back home to face the new horrors that have accumulated in my absence. I know he will never change and I’ve spent so much of my life with him I don’t want to throw everything away but it seriously is exhausting
Hi. Thanks in advance for your suggestions 🙂 Here is my question: how do you let go of things you no longer need but can't let go because they were very expensive. Example: I have a $300 jacket that i have wore once and I have one $5 jacket that I got from a thrift store that i love and wear all the time . I can't throw away the expensive jacket , I can't give it away and I can't sell it cause I won't even get half Of what I paid for it. This goes for Tons of things that have. It's so much stuff that I see as money; money that i work for and that I paid for to buy all of this things. It's hard to get rid of it all.
My best friend of 47 years fells the same way, she needs cash in her pocket and justification. It's all made her life miserable, I don't think mine or any ones suggestion can help because it's a mental illness that needs in depth therapy and medication. Isn't it better to sale it for half or less then to let it constantly remind you, you made a $300.00 error in judgment, we all make clothes mistakes but you can either admit it, sale it and move on or keep it and continue to fell bad about it. Look at it this way, you saved $295 on the $5 jacket so you are breaking even if you give the other jacket to charity. Why not let the expensive jacket to a blessing to someone else instead of a bummer in your life.
OMG, I am a hoarder. First step is to admit it. I thought that happened to other people! I have 5 shoe boxes of writing utensils! None I bought. Husband bringing them home from conferences. Thought they were "his" but they are ours. I am a hoarder. Head is getting hot and getting vertigo right now. OMG!
What a great episode. Man! JP Sears! I'd love to see him. He also has a lot of great advice videos in addition to the funny ones. Look forward to listening to the podcast. I am gonna see you in LA with Rob Bell! Looking forward to it. See you on the 16th :)
Regarding nonprofit donation... I'm also associated with a nonprofit that gets donation offers on the regular . people bring you things expecting it to be used.. if you cannot use that thing you need to be upfront with them and honest and tell them that you have no use for it. take a moment and do a little bit of research in your community and you will find other nonprofits who would have a use for it, I promise you. make a list, refer back to that list and suggest they take it to some place that can use it . we have neighbor organizations that take food, toiletries, clothing, pet food, furniture ...you name it. We recently had an issue in our community during Hurricane Harvey where the red cross accepted donations both from the community and from our local government, and simply threw everything away a few days later when they moved out of the area. We're talking food, clothes, medicine, cots, blankets, pillows... much of which was brand new and still had tags on or was in its original packaging. people were outraged, hurt, disgusted ...and they were completely entitled to feel that way. Luckily someone in the local community witnessed what was going on and we were able to get various agencies in there to rescue this stuff immediately and have it redistributed to people who needed it. The only reason for a viable donation to go to waste is the laziness of someone who doesn't care enough to find a place for it to go, because that doesn't benefit them personally.
I'm a clean freak while my parents and siblings are hoarders and packed rats. It's crazy. It's chaotic. Although I loathe to do it, I have to make sure that my parents' house is in check. Or otherwise, their house will be infested with termites due to their carelessness and hoarding obsession. The most important thing is, I don't want them to live in my house just in case their house is wrecked.
There's no reason whatsoever that you can't speak to more High School age people... unless getting paid for it is the primary goal. simply contact any local school board , or Youth Organization such as 4-H or FFA or the Boy Scouts Etc , and set something up. Start in your local area and see how it goes over. Ditto for college campuses. Again the only issue really is probably going to be funding... these are not private individuals who can pay for your information out of pocket , these are publicly funded agencies who are always short on funds and working off of taxpayer dollars... the best you're probably going to get , if anything, is travel expenses and most of the time they probably won't even be able to give you that . this is something you're going to have to do because you want to.
They're only harming them unless the cats are ALL FIXED, well-fed, receive proper and timely vet care, and have plenty of room to move around in a CLEAN environment. I don't think you could call a person who provides such a home to cats a "cat hoarder," and I don't think cat hoarders are able/willing to provide such a life for each cat.
So if you hoard for others that's okay??? Lol... and yeah, if the library of Congress is archiving every tweet... that's just another form of hoarding. I agree with Ryan on this one. And Josh you can't say the burden of proof is on the accuser saying they are hoarding. Most hoarders if not all will tell you they are not.
It takes very little effort to spend ten minutes a day going through a drawer or a cupboard. Trying to do it all at once is too much. You can also spend ten minutes going through your house and fill a garbage bag with the garbage in your house. Eventually things get sorted out.
Can you be addicted to buying stuff then reselling it online just for the thrill and the communication you get with buyers? Could be heading that way...
