I was chatting with friends this weekend about some of their “stuff” issues. One wanted to know about how to help her husband (who’s starting to some tendencies of his hoarding father), and the other wanted to know how to better deal with the emotional side of purging some of belongings that reminded her of her deceased mother. What I found interesting is how many people consider themselves “hoarders” just because they have a hard time letting go.

There’s a big difference between having clutter, being a packrat, and hoarding.

Clutter happens when people are busy doing other things, or have inadequate storage, or are postponing making decisions about what to do with certain items and stuff piles up. With a little elbow grease, clutter can usually be cleared quickly and storage solutions can be put in place so everything has a home moving forward. However, clutter can sometimes be a symptom of a larger issue like chronic disorganization, ADD, depression, or feeling a lack of control.

Being a packrat means that people pile things up because they like being surrounded by it and they don’t want to throw things away unless they’re forced to. The clutter in this case has some perceived value to it, and packrats usually hold on to things because they “may need it” someday and can usually tell me several things that item could be used for. It’s creative thinking, but it makes for unhappy surroundings because those items continue to pile up even if there is ample storage because there’s just too much of it, and the owners don’t perceive the items as being in the way. Putting things in perspective generally helps here. For example, asking, “How long have you had this item and when’s the last time you used it?” Or, “Tell me a date you plan on using this item” generally help people let go if it’s something they haven’t touched in a while. Another good question to ask is, “What’s more important, keeping this item or having a functional space?” For example, “Is it more important to keep those boxes of old papers in the living room or have a space your baby can safely crawl & play?” People will usually make the right call.

Hoarding is very different and goes much deeper than having too much stuff. The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (NSGCD) grades 5 levels of hoarding. There are lots of reasons for hoarding and true hoarders usually require the help of a therapist, an organizer, and other teams such as mold and pest control specialists. True hoarding can be dangerous to the health of the hoarder and their family and this is the real difference between “packratism” and hoarding. Here’s an interesting article about The Hoarding Syndrome.

An organizer can help get to the root cause of any of these and put organizing systems and teams in place to create organized spaces and organized minds.

What I want to know is, how many of you consider yourself a hoarder and why?