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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 11:18:51 GMT
I have always been fascinated by the phenomena of people who hoard "things". I know that my parents generation it bore out of the need to not ever again be without because of the Great Depression. There's that and we may already be seeing signs of that occurring again . What I'm referring to is those that hoard seemingly nonessential things be it newspapers,thread,string and some even more extreme cases I encountered when working in the mental health field. I had 3 spinster aunts who hoarded linens,beautifully embroidered sheets,tableclothes. They never used them. After the last of them died they found hundreds of linens tucked away in closets. all in pristine condition. As there was an auction because the estate was divided 63 ways the antique dealers from NYC went bonkers for these. I have this same tendency. Is it hereditary?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 12:06:53 GMT
My grandmother always made sure she had 5 liters of oil and 5 kilos of sugar on hand at all times. This annoyed my mother, who thought it was ridiculous to do this in modern times. My grandmother had lived through two world wars, and I felt that she was fully entitled to take whatever precautions she deemed necessary.
I don't think I actually hoard, but I would last much longer than most of my friends if all of the stores suddenly closed.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 12:27:49 GMT
What about the hoarding of superfluous type things?
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Post by spindrift on Mar 8, 2009 18:23:19 GMT
I never hoard. I try to keep my place tidy(ish) in case I suddenly die and leave a mess for my children to clear up.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 18:26:52 GMT
Not having children I'm not worried about that but after the last three visits to my mothers I wish she had your sensibility. Jeez.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 18:29:46 GMT
My boss is one of those people who piles up hundreds of newspapers, brochures and magazines (in his office!), and he also goes searching through rubbish bins in the street. We are all certain that his house is one of those places turned into a labyrinth of ceiling high rubbish.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 18:32:27 GMT
Mr. c. worked for the City of New Orleans EMS for 25 years,you can imagine what he saw.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 8, 2009 18:39:35 GMT
I have bins and bins of non-perishable foods, usually bought at Costco. I got in the habit of buying in semi-wholesale lots when I owned a bakery. The hard part is keeping inventory. Storage space can be a problem, especially as friends who return to the U.S. give us their surplus seasonings.
We are now overstocked with coffee mugs. I'll bet that we have more than 20, and there's only the two of us in the house.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 19:03:44 GMT
In terms of food items, I am sometimes vastly overstocked in pasta, generally after a trip to Luxembourg, the country with the highest percentage of immigrants in the EU (and hypermarket departments catering to every taste). Luckily, it is not perishable.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 8, 2009 20:15:58 GMT
I buy herbs and spices in bulk, and always overbuy unintentionally. I have cupboards full of jars and bags of spices slowly losing their potency...
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Post by rikita on Mar 8, 2009 20:56:17 GMT
i don't hoard food, i occasionally find myself without just after the supermarket closed...
i do however like to collect things, and i don't like throwing away things... so i have lots of plastic bags, for example (i reuse them as rubbish bags, but they seem to get more faster than i can use them up) - don't want to just throw them away for environment reasons, and i already try to only take one when i have to, like when buying vegetables it is sometimes unavoidable... i have lots and lots of little souvenirs from places i traveled to... and i still have lots of the xeroxes i made and handouts i got for my university classes.. i have various old computer screens and various computer parts standing around that are hopelessly outdated but since they aren't broken it seems like a shame to just throw them away...
the mother of my american ex amazed me with her food-hoarding tendencies though. she always went for every "buy one, get so-and-so-many free deal", even if it was things she didn't really like... she had two huge refrigerators, a huge freezer and a huge closed full of food, and since her son very rarely ate at home and she rarely had visitors, i always wondered what she wants with all that food...
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Post by spindrift on Mar 8, 2009 21:48:42 GMT
When I'm shopping with friends I am influenced by them. In company with my Japanese friend I'll buy packets of various seaweeds, rice noodles, soya sauce and even frozen fish from South East Asia. With another friend in an Indian store I'll regularly renew my spices such as garam masala, dhania, mehti and dried chillies....and yes, they lose their potency and end up in the bin (especially the seaweeds).
Another friend had a husband who brought loads of newspapers home every day. He soon filled up his sitting room and then started stacking them elsewhere in the house. She had to divorce him.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 8, 2009 21:55:55 GMT
Casimira, if you're fascinated with the phenomena of hoarding behavior, you must read Bee Season. For that matter, anyone who loves good novels should read it -- I've read it twice. And after you read the review, don't bother asking what this has to do with hoarding, just read the book.
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Post by gringalais on Mar 10, 2009 18:17:25 GMT
My ex had some weird hoarding tendencies, mainly stuff for repairing/building things around the house, like if his dad built something and had leftover wood, nails, etc. he would bring it to our house and stick it in this area of the back of the yard, or his sister gave him some shelves that she didn't need, etc. Stuff would accumulate and he would either not use it and it would get warped/rusty from being outside or start something and never finish it. I would ask him a million times to get rid of stuff he clearly was not going to use, but he wouldn't.
When he moved out he left all that crap there and it took me hours to clear it all out to the garbage bins and regain my patio. Reason 1,000,001 I am better off with him out of my life.
His family didn't have much money growing up, so maybe that is why he has problems throwing things away.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2009 5:53:10 GMT
I have noticed that people from poor families seem to hoard the most.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2009 10:59:21 GMT
Spend some time in that Psychiatric forum K2 and you'll find it's way more complex a phenomena.
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Post by spindrift on Mar 12, 2009 15:47:14 GMT
I've made a rule for myself. If I buy a replacement for something then the old item has to be thrown out or given away.
This week I bought 4 new crystal wine glasses. The old ones have to go.
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Post by tillystar on Mar 12, 2009 16:40:34 GMT
I can't stand stuff. It has to go.
Like Spindrift's friend, my friend's father filled some rooms in their house floor to ceiling with newspapers. His wife left him as well, but I think the newspapers were just one of his oddities that made him hard to live with.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2009 18:23:39 GMT
May I have your crystal discards spindrift? I hoard crystal...
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Post by spindrift on Mar 12, 2009 18:27:29 GMT
Yes, with pleasure. I have a load of Galway Crystal glasses that I never use. My mother gave them to me as a wedding present 30 years ago!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2009 18:43:20 GMT
I break so many glasses that I don't have to worry about giving extras away.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 12, 2009 18:46:07 GMT
Right, but when you're down to two and you have to buy another set (unmatched), what do you do with the first two?
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Post by gringalais on Mar 12, 2009 18:47:48 GMT
I break so many glasses that I don't have to worry about giving extras away. Me too!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2009 18:48:12 GMT
He uses mustard jars
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Post by spindrift on Mar 12, 2009 19:05:22 GMT
I'd rather use IKEA glasses for wine than Galway crystal.
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Post by gringalais on Mar 12, 2009 19:10:21 GMT
For the wedding we bought a bunch of different glasses and we got two sets of 6 wineglasses as gifts. At the rate I break things, all that should last 6 months, a year tops.
I do have these little short glasses that came free with purchases of wine, that are kind of mustard jar shaped. They are cute because the brand is Gato and they have a picture of a cat on them, so I bought a bunch of that wine for the promotion. Since they are small and don't have a base/stem, I seem to have better luck as far as not breaking them. Regular wine glasses are just too top-heavy for me so these days I mainly use them when people come over.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2009 19:53:54 GMT
Stemmed glasses should have never been invented, even though they look nice.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2009 21:31:47 GMT
as much as I love crystal I have way too much stemware...When we were cleaning out my mother in laws house several years ago,which had already been "cleaned out" by greedy others,there was so much stuff,glasses,knick nacks,chotski,how many punch bowls can one person use? There were 3 or4! It was over the top. The one thing my husband wanted was some old photos taken by his father with an old Graflex. Pictures of the invasion of Normandie,Paris after the liberation,D-day. They had been in a trunk that was no longer there,then we found them trampled on the floor,we salvaged what we could. Many were restored and donated to the D=Day museum here.
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Post by spindrift on Mar 12, 2009 21:36:14 GMT
Did you find a lot of crystal decanters too? I used to have several. Maybe I still have one.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2009 22:18:25 GMT
There probably were,when I say stuff I'm talking major ,alot had been picked over. There were some lovely dessert plates that I thought I wanted,they got lost in all the shuffling,I didn't even care .I called everyone I knew that I thought might be interested but it started raining cajuns outside and many didn't show. Regretably, alot got tossed. I was glad to be done with it. It did enlighten me in that I swore I would never let that kind of greed enter my person.
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