mind over matter

There was a nice little article on the psychology of clutter in the Denver Post yesterday. By getting into the mental-disorder element of hanging on to stuff (and thus creating clutter), the article touched on but didn’t name the concept of hoarding. According to a WebMD article, compulsive hoarders can’t make decisions about items’ worth and accumulate huge piles of stuff that can take over their homes. In other words, their figurative skeletons take over their literal closets. Yikes.

Many psychologists believe that hoarding is a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), while others argue that it may be a variant of attention deficit disorder (ADD), which leaves people having difficulty with decision making, procrastination, and staying on task long enough to organize their surroundings.

I remember reading an article in Marie Claire this summer about children of hoarders. Plenty of them didn’t even know their parents had a problem until they’d passed away. Childrenofhoarders.com gives advice and, presumably, comfort and solidarity to adult children of hoarders. I’m curious if compulsive hoarding is more characteristic of elderly people than younger folks. If so, is the aging mind more susceptible to OCD or ADD? 

To end on a happy note, I’ll include this brilliant method for clearing some crap out of your own home, compliments of the Denver Post article:

• In a bin, gather items that don’t have a home but that you don’t want to toss.
• No peeking or touching for seven days.
• At the end of the week, every binned item you can name is yours; the rest, you must donate or toss.

Simplified spring cleaning in January. Ahhh…doesn’t that feel good?