How do you stop WANTING to hoard? I mean I can try to control my impulses but it rarely works especially since one of my favorite thrift stores gets so many donations that they have a free pile the size of a small house. How do I get rid of the impulse altogether though?
Start posting stuff for free on Craigslist and try to find it a good home.
I like to post stuff for super super cheap just to feel like I won. If it’s worth $100 to somebody but will take 3 weeks to sell, post it for $5 and feel like you won because you didn’t throw it in the trash.
I did that when I was moving, I had 2 big plastic tubs full of DVDs, maybe like 200-300 including a bunch of seasons and I hadn’t touched them in 15 years, plus an Xbox 360 and a few controllers and a bunch of games, I dumped it all into a giant contractor bag that barely closed and put it on OfferUp. I told dude if he comes and picks it up before I get my next UHaul load ready, he can have it for $20. He was over there within half an hour and acted like I forgot a zero on the end of the price. Dude was stoked and I was happy to be down two more plastic totes of bullshit.
There was probably a couple of George W Bush era pornos in there too.
low value items i post for free but ask for donations of beer for my time.
people will look at free shit a lot more often then paid listings. on the phone ill ask them for donation and if they say no, i sayd "thats fine, come pick it up anyways"
i have no idea. maybe realize that space is as important than stuff.
Realise that it's harming your relationships with people. You'll get older and you'll have things not memories
It's an addiction like any other, stop fooling yourself. It often starts after trauma , get professional help. good luck anon
Put your stuff back in their pile, then put a hold on it and they’ll store it for you,
Find out why you are hoarding. If it's because it was free, realize it will be free in the future too. Keep one, swap it out if there's something better.
If you hoard because you think you may use it, think back to when the last hoarded similar item was used. You probably don't need it.
If you hoard because you like collecting, you are no better than a Funko Pop collector and you disgust me.
I work with someone who is a really bad hoarder. He'll hoard the most moronic items because "it might be useful". Like foam offcuts or plastic clips specific to one model of overhead light. I have thrown these out without telling him and he hasn't noticed. The reward for hoarding is the dopamine rush for getting something new. You don't actually need the thing, now you're stuck with the thing. You are a sub human consoomer.
This is what helped me break the cycle. I grew up poor with a hoarder parent and was forced to move and leave my own stuff behind multiple times through my adolescent years. It finally hit me that I was holding onto so much junk because I was afraid that I couldn't get it again in the future and because I was exerting control over something I couldn't as a kid. I realized that the peace of mind that comes with having a comfortable living space would help me to improve my life in other ways and that I could focus my energy on finding and maintaining a few things that I really loved instead of a bunch of stuff that I kind of liked.
When you get married your wife will go through all your shit while you are at work, and chuck it in the garbage.
You will be angry for a bit, but it will pass when you realize it took you 6 months before you realized it was even missing.
Eventually, you’ll start to collect more shit, and your wife will power-play you into throwing it out yourself, rather than doing it herself.
At this point you realize the futility of material possessions and you are cured.
True story.
>When you get married your wife will go through all your shit while you are at work, and chuck it in the garbage.
I'm so glad my wife never does this shit.
+1, she knows the garage is off limits except for her one cabinet of cleaning supplies and 5 totes of holiday decorations. As soon as we moved in, I laid down the law and said “These are your holiday bins. If you buy more fall or easter crap, it better fit in here or else it’s getting stored in the kitchen next to your bakeware”.
That being said, I do not frick with the spice cabinet oraganization.
I enjoy cooking, so I manage the spice cabinet. But we've always been pretty good at cooperation instead of some boomer fudd ball-and-chain shit.
I cook a decent amount too, I just let her organize it. I don’t care enough about that space as long as the shit is in the same spot it was a week ago. I let her have the decor and all that so the place doesn’t have a “man cave” look and she doesn’t mess with the garage because she’s too busy with the whole house. It’s not a boomer thing, it’s that I had to instill in this woman upon putting that ring on that you do not touch a man’s tools unless he’s under the car and asks for a deep 10mm socket in 3/8” drive and the short handle flex head ratchet.
And she’s always good for a beej after I clean the grease off. Sometimes I gotta eat a little pussy though but that’s just fairness.
first thing I did when we got married and moved in to a house was tell my wife that she can do whatever she wanted with the rest of the house, but my room was off limits. she had no say in it.
this pic is from about 10 years ago.
she had girlfriends come over and ask why she let me have my own room?
>let me
anon, where can someone find those very long screws to do that shelf?
>where can someone find those very long screws
They're already in most ceilings. You can use a magnet to find them, then scrape away the drywall and unscrew until they're the height you like. You'll go through quite a few drywall screws but keep at it and eventually you'll find the really long ones
home depot or any hardware store.
God, you kids are stoopid!
It's a pain to use one long threaded rod. Do it like the illustration on the right side of pic-related and you only have to thread the nut a short distance. Saves lots of time.
You people hurt my brain.
I see what you did there using the failure method of the walkway collapse of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Kansas City...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse
Fun fact, my trig professor at the local community college was one of the engineers on that job...
Nice catch, anon.
from your link: "A surgeon spent 20 minutes amputating one victim's pinned and unsalvageable leg with a chainsaw; that victim later died."
>Saves lots of time.
that'd be great if I was doing an assembly line of them but my way in that picture is better.
I started collecting random stuff as a kid. we would go for walks near our house in an industrial I would find all sorts of things in the fields near these plants.
I would bring them home and put them in a large cardboard box under my bed. when it got full my mom would make me go through it, and toss things out.
when I went to college I brought with me 1 trunk full of belonging. when I left I had enough to fill a datsun 200sx floor to ceiling (except for where I sat) and the overflow went to the back of a pickup truck of a friend.
over time I acquired all sorts of thing. Things I thought would be useful since I like to fix things. Also I was poor. at one time I had filing cabinets full of old motherboards, and daughter cards of every type. the floor of my home office was full of old servers and computers. over time as the stuff became very obsolete I would get rid of it.
now I am in to old radios, small engines, and other hobbies and have amassed a lot of parts and pieces. I find it hard to get rid of things like electrical components since it's easier to hold on to them than having to order stuff and wait a week.
I have plastic crates filled with various things things. I put stuff in the crates in a layer, take a picture, and repeat. this way if I need something I can look it up in my storage folder and go right to that crate.
now that I am older I have been trying to down size (death cleaning as the swedes call it). It's hard, I had a large collection of booze bottles from college, and at one point I no longer cared about them because drinking booze did not define me, and I threw them all out to make room for what mattered now.
I had several bose wave radios which is like printing money, but I held on to them too long, and the bottom dropped out of the used bose market.
yeah I sold a bunch of stuff on ebay but that's a pain in the ass.
is that a fricking xray machine?
well I have no Idea exactly what you are referring to, so I will guess that you are referring to the telescope on the lower left side. since an xray machine would not fit on my shelves.
looks comfy anon
Make more money
Hoarding from my experience with me and my mother is a reaction from being without at an early age.
Mother was raised in poverty so basic shit like housewares and clothing get hoarded.
I was raised without access to certain tech so there is an instinct to make sure that never happens again.
You have millionaires and billionaires that will claim to own 10 personal things, of course it's really easy when the moment a possession is lost or broken it can be replaced in minutes.
You don't have to be a millionaire to have this mindset. You just have to get out if a poverty mindset and understand that things can be replaced and despite the many issues as there is with the modern economy, being without is hardly a concern anymore.
As soon as I started to make more money, losing things stopped being a concern. By all means take care of what you own, keep it running and don't impulsively replace things but you can learn to let go and leave things alone. Now having your living situation filled with junk makes you feel better, it really does.
Good mindset. The only things worth keeping and being "obsessed over" are things that cannot be replaced by going onto eBay.
Think of it this way, if your house was on fire and you had to save a few things, what would they be?
For me that would be
> Family pictures
> A couple heirlooms
> Family recipe book
I would also include ornate hand made furniture from my dads side of the family. Gorgeous pieces but breaks the "spirit" of this list. Regardless you get the idea
if you have kids just imagine the mess you're going to leave them when you die
my grandpa passed away and he left me and my family an absolute shitshow of a 10 acre property to clean up. I've started to toss a lot of my stuff along with his as we go through it
>if you have kids just imagine the mess you're going to leave them when you die
hoarders/collectors don't see it that way. my dad left me with a fricking storage locker of toy trains and fire department related stuff.
took me 5 years to get rid of it, and I only made about 1/10th of what it was actually worth.
my mother left a house full of junk (not trash at least) took a year or 2 to get rid of that stuff.
my mother-in-law died and we had to have an estate sale to get rid of her stuff, and we through in a bunch of our stuff. she had a giant collection of over priced stuffed bears. shit she paid hundreds of dollars for a single stuffed bear. little tiny stuffed bears that had price tages of $135 dollars, she probably had $5000+ of raikes bears, steiff bears hand made one of a kind bears. none of them antiques. no one wanted to pay more than $20 for them, and b***hed about the shipping charges. pic related is just 1 table of bears, and that was after my wife had sold or given away dozens of them.
I'm on an antique radio forum and there are multiple instances of old radio collectors dying and leaving whole warehouses or barns full of radios. they try to sell the whole collection but no one wants to buy a whole collection, and the radios are often damaged from neglect and mice.
but none of them cared, and in fact thought they were leaving their kids a gold mine.
My name is Chad and I collect iron. Steel, heavy equipment, tools, firearms, machinery, trucks, tractors, and pickups... I have zero desire to stop collecting these things.
T. Absolute Chad.
Bruh I have so much scrap iron and steel.
A corner of one of my sheds is dedicated to just pieces of railroad track
I've been moving and organizing some of my stuff for the past couple weeks. I'm about tired of moving things. I still have a lot to move yet.
So far I have a bunk with telephone/power poles, One with bridge timbers, one with long pipe in both big and small diameters, and then the one pictured with "short" pipe that are mostly 8-10 feet long. I still gotta set up another bunk for a pile of angle iron, guard rail, purlins, bridge decking/steel grating, and I-beams...
Oh and I still have more power poles to clean all the hardware off of and drag home. They're big ones too. Probably cut them in half because I really don't have a use for a 60' pole.
do you have a use for a 30' pole?
>do you have a use for a 30' pole?
Pole barn. Bury one end 10' in the ground and end up with 20' walls.
I dunno man I just go through with contractor bags every few months and just start throwing shit away. Sometimes I feel a little guilty but my dad was a giant packrat and I have nothing but memories of spending weekends completely emptying garages/sheds/etc. and then putting nearly everything back in with extra bullshit we got for "organization."
Also dealing with FB marketplace is a pain in the ass, I've literally had people arguing with me over text about things I listed for free.
i think the secret is selling stuff so you don't feel like you're "wasting" it
i wish i knew how to sell stuff
I used to be terrible about this, but what I started doing is categorization. I keep an inventory list with part numbers, descriptions, pictures of manuals and dataplates If I want to buy some lot of equipment, I ask myself if it even worth putting into my database. If not, I pass. I still have about 4k worth of lab chemicals and equipment that need to be put into the database.
The guy that has a shed full of rotting 1930s radios he bought at estate sales is a schizo hoarder. The guy who went around to hardware stores buying up vacuum tubes by the pound, categorizing them and keeping them in a climate controlled skid with fork pockets is wealthy and forward thinking.
Raise your standards.
I got started hoarding because I was poor as a kid.
I couldnt afford new tools, so I hoarded a ton of old tools at garage sales. I couldnt afford new materials, so I hoarded a ton of old materials. Same with all sorts of shit.
I got a real job. I got good at building things, started doing projects that were actually nice.
It gets to a point where you have a project in mind, you have some old materials laying around but you go out and buy new anyways. Your project is too nice to reuse old shit youve had laying around a decade.
My biggest problem with with audio equipment. I spent years collecting vintage stereos because you could get top of the line equipment for nothing.
A few years ago I spent a large chunk of change on a real home theater/audio system.
Sold all my old stereos and speakers. Its a collection, like someone collecting stamps or rocks. You arent actually listening to that old stuff, it sounds objectively worse, it takes up a ton of space.
Just rid your life of it.
Take the metal extraction pill.
I don't hoard, but I like to buy tools or items for projects when I have cash flow. Old me made some good purchases that future me was able to use. Just try to stick with purchases that you have a plan for. Limit yourself to how many ongoing projects you have at a time.
My life seems to go like this:
>do job and be super frustrated because I don’t have the correct tool or I was too lazy to do the research and learn there was a specialty tool
>see tool on sale 2 months later and buy it
>wonder why I bought that tool for anywhere from 3 to 24 months
>do job far more easily second time around
Still waiting for the next time I need to pull an o2 or oil pressure sensor that I’m going to reuse. If the sensor is dead, I just hack the wire and get it with a deep 6pt socket.
throwing shit away is womanly. the males only make their nests bigger.