Hoarding and Cleaning are very different but are very much the same in the fact that they can become unhealthy when overly done. Hoarding can save someone sometime but then inconvenience them the same day and cleaning can just be summed up as moving the waste somewhere else. Diagnosing someone as a packrat or a hoarder is hard to do due to the vagueness of the description of it. What I learned from this class is that you cannot stop yourself from cleaning or somewhat hoarding only just to recognize it when it becomes a bit too much and too think about what really goes into cleaning and hoarding of products and too think outside of what happens to it outside of our lives.

There are so many things in my life that I believe people would call me a hoarder for having. I collect things from my travels. All sorts a small things that remind me of the places I’ve been around the world. It is a really great thing to do if you scrapbook, but I have a hard time remembering to put them in scrapbooks then you justhave a collection of random things that you eventually forget where you got them.  The holding on to things even when you don’t need them would qualify me as having hoarding tendencies. The only difference that I would justify is that I have the intention to use them in a meaning fun scrapbook but just never get around to it, which is a shame.  For example, I have a small collection of small ripped up paper from the netherlands and the UK that I got this last summer. They have very little value and mean nothing to everybody but me. I have held on to them and now they hold a special place in my mind just for them. The memories that come out of them make me smile and thats why I’ve held on to them. Its a great reminder that a different world is out there. Another example is the amount of clothing I have. I have much of my clothes from my childhood that no longer fits that I keep because I want to have the remembrance of wearing them. Along with wanting to give them to my kids when I grow up. I think that hoarding has to do a lot with the past experience of people. There is a chance that If people grew up without having things that were stabbly their own, then they might feel the interest to hoard things that are now their own things. A coping mechanism that makes them trust themselves and their things more. Just a thought.

I have a lot of bubble mailers. I enjoy supporting small artists so I have ordered many items from various artists. Most would be clips, stickers, prints, and some larger items such as clothes. I am also a patreon subscriber for a few artists that ship out monthly items such as pins, prints, and stickers. Because of that I have ended up with a lot of shipping envelopes that I refuse to throw away. I have a specific box in my room that I put them in, it may be at capacity but I don’t do as much online shopping anymore! Yes I still have 8 active patreon memberships but most of them are now just digital and the one that still ships me pins, they only send every other month! I really like packaging material, tissue paper, holographic resealable bags, confetti, pretty envelopes, ziplock baggies and i will even keep those clear single use self adhesive bags if they are cute. Some people, especially my parents, may see this as a hoarding problem; but I know I will use it some day! I even actively use them now. It’s useful for organizing all of the stickers, prints, postcards and items I have gotten from those shops! I also am actively working on my own shop right now and have shipped 3 packages so far. Packing materials are very expensive to buy at the store and I have disdain towards Amazon (and other overconsumption online shops) so it makes sense to save the packages. It’s not like they are strewn across my room (anymore), they are in their own spot hidden away from view. I would probably cry if I had to throw them away because it is such a waste to do so. I mean that, thinking about my dad throwing away my packing materials while I am off at school makes my heart drop and dread begin to brew. If they go in the trash then I can’t use them and I will feel guilty. I hate that so much. So I will simply keep them until I use them. WHICH I WILL!!!

I have so many bike parts. Just in my dorm room alone, I have several pairs of pedals, a few handlebars, and a spare wheel just to name a few, and that’s before counting the stuff I actually need on my bike when I’m out on a ride. Back at home, I probably have enough parts lying around my basement to assemble two whole new bikes now I think about it. According to DSM-V, this isn’t a symptom of a hoarding disorder, as it is best explained by “restricted interests in autism spectrum disorder.” I think the clutter in the basement is a result of a lack of cleaning; I get so fixated on wrenching on whatever project I’m working on that the cleaning just gets left for later, leading to all my tools, parts, and consumables getting churned into The Pile, making it look like there’s a lot more stuff than there actually is. I did a big round of cleaning at the end of the summer, and its amazing how little space things take up when they’re packed in an organized manner. I also try to offer parts to people who need them for their projects, even if I just give them away for free. I feel guilty for every cool cheap vintage component I have floating around the basement; I didn’t buy them for paperweights, these components are meant to be used.

A sampling of the various spare parts in my dorm

I have a significant amount of a lot of items including graphic t-shirts and bags but neither of those compare to the amount of yarn that I have. There is yarn in a plastic tub, a basket, one of my desk drawers, in random bags and on my desk. There is probably yarn on me somewhere right now. There are also many completed crochet items around my room and that doesn’t even touch on my room back home which has an entire corner dedicated to it and even more finished things downstairs. This could be seen as hoarding, especially if I was a hobby crocheter, people always joke about a yarn addiction, but my yarn is technically materials for my small business and the completed items are my stock. When it all comes out of a tiny dorm room it can really seem like a problem and it probably still is at least a little bit but I am able to explain most of my hoarding fears away by reminding myself that the yarn provides a portion of my income. Where the actual problem comes in is when I keep buying yarn that I don’t actually need, which is a problem I am currently working through by refusing to buy yarn unless completely necessary. 

I collect jewelry, I have about 65 bracelets and necklaces, 30 rings, 20 pairs of earrings, and about 35 nose studs/rings. I make jewelry and in my family, there has been a tradition of passing on jewelry, and for many years I have acquired a growing selection of jewelry. I see this as a way for me to connect with my spirituality while also bringing personal enjoyment. I adorn myself with jewelry because I think that it is a beautiful form of expression. Over time I have also gotten more piercings that have allowed for different sub-sections of my collection. I have significantly downsized my jewelry since moving out, but there is still a large amount of pieces that I currently have in my space. I think that someone could definitely make the argument that this is a form of hoarding, seeing that it takes up a large amount of space and that I have a personal connection with almost all of my pieces. It was very hard for me to leave some of my jewelry behind and I also have lots of tools to make more pieces. My collection does not usually affect my cleaning routines, but it is very easy to make a mess with jewelry; I find myself leaving jewelry on different surfaces and forgetting about it until I need to use the surface. Despite these worries, I will continue my collection because it is something that is important in my life and gives me personal satisfaction.

I have a friend who likes the same groups as I listen to and she got me an album which I still have and I am grateful to have a friend like her. Ever since that day, I had like a bit of an adrenaline-filled feeling of happiness. I thought that it was gonna be my first and last, but. was wrong. I started buying albums in mid-2018 and now I have about 10-ish albums that contain stickers, photo cards, photo albums, and some other goodies. Then I started buying merchandise like fan-made photo cards, blankets, stuffed toys, dolls, and some pillows. These items make me happy that I recently bought tickets to see one of the solo artists this October. Luckily I’m not buying as much as before because I’m managing my account pretty well so I think it was like a type of hoarding addiction at some point but not anymore. 🙂

I believe that I have more trinkets than the common college student. I love buying trinkets, and organizing them, and having them to look at and on display. I personally don’t think that people could make an argument about this being a hoarding situation. People could probably say that it is a waste of money, which I would strongly disagree with. I have these to make myself feel good. They bring me joy, and I don’t see a problem with it. They don’t over consume my space or time. I also have found ways to budget for them. I don’t overspend my money on them anymore, and when I did I recognized it as a problem and worked to fix it. I believe that these trinkets can produce waste. They often come in excessive packaging and even when you get them from a vintage shop, they proceed to wrap them in tons of tissue paper. I do wish that they were packaged differently than what they are. The production of waste from my collection is my least favorite thing about it. I don’t know how to fix the waste from the packaging but, my trinkets themselves are not waste.