The few times I let myself watch the A&E show Hoarders, about people who live disgustingly in mounds of crap, I've found myself thinking what I bet others do, too: "I know someone who could be headed in that direction."
That program has brought the obsessive collecting instinct to public attention. Now experts tell me the proclivity to let stuff pile up to the point where it overwhelms your life is far more common than people think.
Even if you're not crossing the line into hoarding turf, it can't hurt a bit to clean out the clutter, right? As for me, I think I'm suffering from "bibliomania": amassing large quantities of books I'm never going to read again - or even once.
Maybe it's time to let the husband throw out that dog-eared copy of The Tommyknockers with the unidentifiable sticky stuff on it.
What the experts say
"The expectation that you're going to clear clutter in a weekend by yourself is not realistic. People are held back by fear; they're afraid they're going to throw something out they might need someday. But if people keep everything, the consequences are much worse. Prepare yourself. Get garbage bags, markers, boxes to take stuff to charity. Do not get storage containers. Hoarding is different from letting clutter get out of hand; it requires therapy. To determine if you're a hoarder, check the scale at the Institute for Challenging Disorganization. For the average person, de-cluttering is about making space for what we really want in our lives."
HELLEN BUTTIGIEG, life coach, We Organize U, Oakville
"The first path to hoarding is genetics. Research indicates that 84 per cent of hoarders have a mother, father, sister or brother who hoards. There are three chromosomes with markers in common among those who hoard. People with these appear to be at higher risk. The second path involves factors like grief, life transition points or mental health disorders. Obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder don't cause hoarding, but there's a higher incidence among those with OCD or PTSD. There's often an undercurrent of loss - of health, status, a relationship. The third path is chronic disorganization coupled with a feeling of vulnerability. A traumatic situation disrupts your equilibrium and overwhelms you. People might acquire things to compensate, or stop processing things that come into their life, like mail. A counsellor needs to help people clear the barriers."
ELAINE BIRCHALL, hoarding specialist, hoarding.ca, Ottawa
"A lot of hoarders are no different than you or me, but two or more things happened to them at once. [When] you get to the root, you find out their boyfriend left them, their mom died and they got cancer in the same year. All three of those things can happen to you or me over the course of a life; these people just happened to get them at the same time. There's a scale of 1 to 5. All of us are stage 1 hoarders. There are probably those at stage 5 in every neighbourhood, and in everyone's life there's at least one person who hoards."
MATT PAXTON, author, The Secret Lives Of Hoarders, Richmond, Virginia
"Hoarding's prevalence in the adult population is between 4 and 5 per cent. The most common accompaniment is not OCD. Typically, the issues are major depression, social phobia anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder. It overlaps with OCD in about 17 per cent of people. It's hoarding when clutter impairs people's ability to engage in everyday activities: inviting people over, enabling children to play freely, etc. You've crossed the line when it's interfering with your life. The treatment is cognitive and behavioural. There's mistaken thinking: ‘Oh, I might need this someday,' or ‘I won't be able to tolerate it if I get rid of this.' [In treatment] we would practise, practise, practise so they could learn to get rid of something and tolerate it and change their thinking about what they need to keep."
GAIL STEKETEE, professor, Boston University School of Social Work
"Sometimes hoarding remains a private mental health problem. But sometimes it reaches the point where it becomes a fire hazard or public health hazard. People who hoard are often characterized as lacking good insight. Or they have fluctuating insight. One day they might say, ‘This is a problem. I need help with this,' but a week later they'll say it's not a problem. The age range of onset is 11 to 20, but the average age of those seeking treatment is 50. Some traits to do with the brain's complicated executive functioning - difficulty with decision-making, procrastination - might tip us off long before we see the physical manifestation of clutter."
CHRISTIANA BRATIOTIS, director, Hoarding Research Project, Boston U School of Social Work