Hoarding: When is it too much?

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. 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:

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Vance Packard in Waste Makers (1960):

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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.
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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)

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We have Goodwill, and many larger towns have their own such operations.In my home town, two such shops existed: one donated the money to battered women's charities and the other used it to fund local summer school programs.We tend to call them thrift stores, regardless of where the profits go. In fact, there's a 'song' about such stores: