Hoarding..... A mini episode.

[1footouttadefog]

I have been  cleaning up around the house in small burst between other projects and obligations.

These other projects involve moving the belongings of others and cleaning up homes etc.

This has triggered a desire to clean and sort my own spaces. A sort of anti-hoarding reaction I suppose. Additionally there are stages of life transitions taking place as my kids are both in college now and we no longer homschool.

Among the items that needed rehomed are two boxes of beanie babies.  It has been very hard to get rid of them.  I know this means there has been an emotional connection, or memories attached to them.

I have moved them in and out of the trunk of the car to make room for other things and have not gotten rid of them yet.  I have been curious what the hidden connection is.  There  have been several discussions on outofthefog.net about hoarding and these two boxes have come to my mind. 

I took time to think about beanie babies and when I first heard about them.  It was from a high school friend. He was buying them to sell on eBay.  He as collecting them and keeping up with which ones were valuable etc.  And he deep down thought they were super cute and wanted them as the toys he had been deprived of as a child. 

I recently lost this friend to freak accident where fell from a step ladder while decorating his home.  I guess I had not completely grieved this loss, as this connection has opened some backed up emotion.

If this mini hoarding episode is a sign of what is behind other people's hoarding there must be a huge back log of emotional stuff in their lives.  Mercy, when I think that some have houses pack to the rafters.

[Prototypian]

I understand it's difficult to separate strong emotional feelings from things that help us with our memories and sorting through good and bad thoughts.   

I think that the hoarding of PDs has different directions and causes.   For my spouse it's mostly fear of waste or fear of someone eventually needing "that thing".   

There is emotional attachment but yours sounds like something legitimate.   I've seen my spouse deeply upset over the loss of a stack of out of date advertising circulars with concerns that "there could still be coupons someone could use" (we don't use coupons).

[1footouttadefog]

While different there is an emotional connection with the items, perhaps even the coupons.  But on the other hand mental illness does not have to make sense.

Wanting to be in control of who gets an object is another thing I have discovered about myself recently.  I guess it's because I want it to be used and wanted, not just tossed in garbage.

I am good about tossing junk and garbage.  For example our used workbooks went into trash easily, but the text books and reference materials I wanted another home schooler who valued them to get them.  I feared of they went to a thrift store their worth would not be recognized. I took them to a used bookshop that caters to home schoolers and donated them to the owner.

I suppose a need to control who gets the coupons might have an emotional basis.

I recently moved my mother who is on that  fuzzy grey dotted line between hoarder and not a hoarder.  It was a longer than needed process with her Changi g her mind about what to keep and what to let go of.  We did a lot of rearranging of furniture from room to room and from home to storage. 

It really triggered myself wanti g to nest and realign my belongings with my current life stage. 

[Poison Ivy]

"Stuff management" behaviors are on a spectrum. Some people throw nothing away, some people throw everything away. Most people are between. I think that occasionally having difficulty getting rid of stuff that could be useful to someone else but isn't useful to the owner isn't hoarding, but it still can be frustrating. My house is relatively neat, but there are things that I've struggled to get rid of, and I know this is because of emotions and feelings, not always rational (wanting to avoid waste, fearing poverty, wanting control, missing my children, etc.).

[Fortuna]

I think this mini hoard makes sense for you right now. You are not ready to let go of the things reminding you of your deceased friend. Once you deal with the grief of it you may want to take a single beanie to remind you of him and donate the rest, or you may be willing to let them all go, but grief takes time and for some people they have a lot of grief which starts literally looking like a lot of baggage.
Hoarding also has roots in lack, lack of control, lack of stuff in childhood, lack of love, so the physical things can be stand ins. And that's not even going into the massive amounts of decisions that need to be made in decluttering. Add in mental illness and further trauma, it's no wonder some people hoard.