Do Europeans or Asians hoard like Americans?

Everything else
1

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of French or German “hoarders”. So I wonder if this is more of an American phenomenon due to our insecurities and lack of a decent social safety net.

In this pictorial a guy paid for a storage locker, and used it to store all his trash. This is clearly a sick individual as he had to go through a lot of effort (as opposed to many hoarders who just use their own house as a dump) to keep his trash around. He would go every morning at the same time to deposit or visit his stuff.

http://blog.imgur.com/2016/07/17/the-storage-life/

2

Might want to check out this blog.

While the United States appears to be far more of a hoarder nation than most others, it remains difficult to determine whether hoarding simply takes on different forms in other societies. Are there more advanced forms of hoarding in highly evolved societies? Is there increased growth in clutterers who hoard information rather than physical possessions? Could this reality alter the established norms of hoarding? Moreover, do less developed societies simply have many more people who hoard food, water, and medicine rather than goods that are considered worthless or extraneous? These questions and more will be among the issues addressed in this blog during the coming weeks and months.

3

Thanks for that link. Looks like I might have been pretty close:

The international community of hoarders is constituted disproportionately by Americans and other western folks. Additionally, 1st World countries with less effective social safety nets are far more inclined to produce a more extremely acquisitive brand of citizen.

In think it’s very tragic that people feel the need to hoard and I can totally relate. The “maybe I will need this someday to save a few pennies” is a strong emotion. But that doesn’t account for hording garbage of course. In the case I posted above… that was in Las Vegas. I can’t image the smell that must have emanated due to the constant and intense heat there.

4

I can actually sort of understand the hoarder mentality. I don’t like change. As well I have anxiety issues. When we finally moved out of the house that my mother and I had lived in for most of my life, I was nearly paralyzed with indecision. I couldn’t take everything that was in my old room and the attic. So I had to pick and choose. Yet everything had a memory attached to it. At one point, while the movers were there, I just went into my room and curled up in a ball on my bed. My wife had to physically strike me to get my attention. It was hellish. And I didn’t have that much stuff.

We got a small dumpster to get rid of everything we weren’t taking with us. We staged the stuff on the front porch first. I was the guy on the porch picking through things while the rest of the family did most of the work. Very embarrassing. But the feeling of loss was so strong. I spent most of the time in a kind of stressful limbo. Feeling like I was losing my past. My childhood.

Yeah. I understand.

5

There’s hoarding and then there’s not getting rid of stuff. My biological grandfather I’m told hard around 200 broken flashlights in his mobile when he died. He was not a nice man and not well mentally long before he actually started to fade.
The great grandparents held onto things… this was the group that hunted raccoons during the great depression so they were used to holding onto things but you didn’t have to wade through their house.

6

My grandparents lived through the Great Depression as well. Grandpa would pick up things in the street like wires and various metal objects and save them. That was the mentality back then. Never waste anything. But yeah, not hoarding. Their home was always spotless.

7

I have a desire to hoard the written word in various forms, but not so much other stuff. I have incidentally hoarded through laziness over the years. Throwing out stuff in a box shoved in a corner of a closet or basement takes work. Easier to let it sit there.

The best thing for me now is we live in a modest sized house with no basement, so we periodically purge by donating. It’s how I got rid of most of my books. I loved being able to see them but I realized I would never read most of them again, so send them to a new home.

8

yes

9

There might be quite a simple explanation why this behaviour is more apparent in the US than it is elsewhere: I understand space is pretty cheap on your side, Jeff ;)
In Japan, you will see tons of hoarders, but the limitation of space definitely mitigates what most of them can do.
Personally, I am incredibly anxious and I used to care a lot until a dozen years ago, but once I was done parting with my childhood stuff, switching countries in the process - and it was a difficult experience, although not as difficult as @RichVR’s -, I just stopped caring anymore. My home is my family, and she carries herself around, how convenient!

What is described in the initial post seems pathological, although I read somewhere that the line was much thinner than I’d thought between becoming overattached to stuff and not throwing away anything anymore. OCDs are so easy to fall prey to, whatever their form.

10

I was thinking that as well. Looking online, it’s about £30-£40 a week for 50 sq ft of storage in London. There’s only so much hoarding you can do before it gets very pricey indeed.

11

With two small kids and a active (at least to me) lifestyle, it is an honest struggle to manage the quantity of our “stuff”. I have a three year old and a one year old. Between them we probably have 10 winter jackets, 8 snow pants, 15 pairs of winter boots. We have five dollhouses, two of them unopened. We have a mountain of baby and kid clothes, literally garbage bags full of hand me downs that have built up in the extended family that no one wants to go through. We tell people gently not to give us gifts but they do anyway. We try and return things and have gift cards we can’t spend. Toys, the insane amount of plastic toys… Giving me nightmares. Don’t say to donate stuff, we do.

So I wonder if part of it isn’t active hoarding but just a reluctance to get rid of things, guilt of putting stuff that cost money in the trash, and a built in attachment to stuff dating to caveman times…

12

Any extra stuff I have falls under this. It’s hard to make time to just get rid of things. You inherently want to go through boxes and piles of whatever, and if you have the space and don’t use it, work avoidance seems like a better option. It’s strange, because I keep certain rooms of my house very clean. Others (garage, extra bedroom, attic,) I hardly ever use, so they remain in a state of limbo with extra stuff until I need to store more … stuff.

13

I think privacy or lack of has to do with it too. There are hoarders in Japan, for sure. Their privacy laws and bringing attention to themselves isn’t likely going to have people lining up for a reality TV show. Despite the extreme and silly nature of the game shows… those are all in good fun. Hoarding is often tied to a illness.

14

The Egyptians built their pyramids to hoard all the grain they produced.

15

It’s interesting you say that. I was thinking of posting that Pharoahs might have been the ultimate hoarders since they wanted to take a lot of their stuff with them to the afterlife. When you decide to kill your servants so they go with you too, that’s pretty intense.

16

Sorry I was just channeling my inner Ben Carson. But yes it would suck if you were one of the hundreds of servants or courtiers chosen to die along with the king. I don’t think you would be able to talk your way out of that one no matter how quick witted. I’m currently reading The History of the Ancient World (recommended in our book thread) speaks of Den who ruled during the First Dynasty and who was buried with 300 servants to aid him in the afterlife. Archaeological evidence points to strangulation as the method of killing the servants. Too bad they couldn’t opt for a swift beheading instead.

17

No, wait! I’m a terrible servant! I’ve been constantly spitting into the Pharaoh’s breakfast cereal and embezzling his funds! I’m utterly incompetent! You don’t want to saddle him with a crappy servant like me for eternity, do you?

18

Your honesty is refreshing. You will sit at Pharoah’s right hand for eternity.

Strangle him.

19

I’ve seen Japanese documentaries on Japanese hoarders so I think this is a global issue and not a cultural one.

20

Interesting thread topic, as it hits pretty close to home. I haven’t checked out any of the links in this thread yet, but for now just wanted to post that “hoarding” wasn’t really anything I ever thought about until one of my sisters visited my home for the first time a few years ago, and said, “I see you’ve got the hoarding bug, just like Grandma.”

I looked around, wondering what she was seeing, and couldn’t see it myself.

After she left, I took another look, trying to be more objective, and began to understand.

I live in a mobile home. When I moved in 29 years ago, I had very few possessions, and not much money, so every item I acquired was treasured and taken care of, placed carefully on a shelf. I simply kept doing that, for about 25 years. A combination of my sister’s visit and finally running out of room killed the acquisition bug, but during the past 4 years, during which I haven’t added much, I have also refused to get rid of anything.

My weakness is media. And my old computers, and spare parts for them to keep them running. I still have for instance, my first PC, a 486.

My media:

Books. Until I replaced them with boxed computer games, they were all neatly on my 10 bookshelf units, in every room except the kitchen and bathroom. Now, they are neatly stacked in many large boxes, which are stacked in the two spare bedrooms I cannot go into because they are filled with boxes of books, among other things. I do have one bookshelf unit in the living room that does contain only books. After all, I do still read.

Computer games. Something over 600 boxed PC games, collected diligently since 1993, occupying the other 9 bookcases. They are mostly neatly arranged, but also mostly in no particular order. I do know where every single game is located, however. And I do still pull one off the shelf from time to time, and play them, sometimes even hooking up an old rig to do so.

DVD’s. Maybe 100. Fortunately, I only bought movies and TV series that I intended to watch again, and that stopped completely when I got into streaming.

CD’s. Around 800. This is the only area in which I am still “hoarding”, primarily because I prefer uncompressed music on my big stereo system, and insist on having the artwork and booklet to look at. Also because I still have room on my CD shelf units for several hundred more. These are all alphabetized, and 80% of them are still listened to, multiple times since I bought them.

So is my sister right? Am I a hoarder? I’ve always thought of myself as more of a collector, as everything is on shelves, except for everything in those two rooms. The rest of the house, including the master bedroom, is clean and open. It’s just that every wall is lined with a shelf unit.

Writing this all just now has actually been somewhat therapeutic, as it’s become clear to me what I need to do. Odd that writing it down is what it took to realize it, as I’m sure it was obvious to everyone but me, but it’s all about those two rooms I can no longer enter. Those rooms are filled with things I haven’t even seen in many years. And I’ve rarely had to wade in there and look for anything (although that has happened, maybe about once a year on average, and it was a major job each time). I need to get rid of virtually everything in those two rooms.

It’s daunting though, thinking about doing that.
Anyway, hey, thanks for listening! You’ve all been a great help, causing me to give this some real thought.