Anxiety is involved, as it is hard to name the emotions connected with all of this nonsense.
I find that my own anxiety is rarely triggered by an inability to assign clinical labels to the things I am feeling; but that's just me.
Do any of you find that not only is one mans junk another mans treasure, but that you have emotional connections to your own piles of junk?
Hoarding is something with which I have always struggled. My parents have four sheds and two stalls of a garage plus the work-shop area completely piled with 'stuff'; they completed another shed about two years ago that is slowly filling up along with its covered deck. This is all in addition to the yard, littered with projects awaiting completion.
It's in my blood and it takes constant vigilance to overcome the temptations to acquire and keep things I don't need and won't ever look at again.
After reading Packard's
Waste Makers I have been wondering whether hoarding is a uniquely American disease related to our nation's materialism or if other, less materialistic, cultures also suffer this 'affliction'.
quote:
Vance Packard in Waste Makers (1960):
Visiting foreigners comment that the abundance of of America seems to spill over into the aisles of stores, spread along the highways, and bulge out the doors, windows, and attics of houses.
...
In a good-humored forecast of things to come, the senior editor of Sales Management asserted on May 6, 1960: "If we Americans are to buy and consume everything that automated manufacture, sock-o selling and all-out advertising can thrust upon us, each of our mounting millions must have extra ears and eyes and other sensesas well as extra income. ..." (p. 25)
Love your enemies!