How many things would you say you have in your home? According to the newspaper times In Los Angeles, American homes on average contain about 300,000 items. In recent years we have doubled our holdings and adopted a lifestyle of acquiring and accumulating. However, we are accustomed to living in balance so that our house is not filled with indrums and furniture, and we make regular cleanings, selections and donations of things that we do not need and that could have a second or third life. In other hands, but not everyone leaves so cheerfully. We all know more than one person who calls themselves a collector, and keeps things because “you never know” or because “it might come in handy some day.” Collectors know what they have, where they have it, and what they are missing. They keep it well sorted and in ideal conditions. Accumulators, on the other hand, don't know or remember what they have or where they store them, and may have more than one box in them due to moisture.
Save without thinking
A hoarder hoards without knowing exactly what they will use it for, hoards without thinking, and in some cases compulsively buys or obtains free or old items, even unwanted ones, and takes them home. The big difference with one that flows is that the complex remains constant. Doesn't leave. For many hoarders, getting rid of or donating is a loss of money. But they don't realize that they are giving up hard work to get the peseta, because they buy more furniture to store their things and pay rent for storage rooms every month to store everything and more. One way to avoid getting stuck in accumulation is to ask yourself: “If I lost this now, would I buy it again?”
Living with a hoarder is complicated, because they fill the house and invade the space of the rest of the family or roommates, causing discomfort and even arguments. “But if you never wear it” and “Throw it away, you won’t use it” are phrases they hear so often and for which they always have an evasive answer. Or even defensively: “You also keep everything and I don't tell you anything.”
In fact, it's quite common to accumulate some things, such as clothes we save “for when we get thinner” and books that don't make us look good and haven't been touched on the shelves for years. Most of us have accumulated one thing or another, and this does not indicate the presence of internal turmoil. For example, hoarding the magazines we subscribe to and saving them to read later, buying lots of family-sized bottles of shampoo because they were on sale, saving the samples given to us at the pharmacy or perfume shop “just in case we take a trip”, storing a kilo of different flours. Because they gave us a bread machine for Christmas or there are a lot of sports clothes in the wardrobe that we do not use because every time we decide to start running we buy everything new to motivate ourselves.
Solution: Agree and determine the space
First, let us be clear that we can actually give them a simple sermon, that we will not change the councils. It is necessary to agree and determine the space for them so that this does not affect coexistence. Accumulators can rent storage rooms or storage spaces. Outside the home and with their resources (every couple knows how their economy is organized) they can do whatever they want. The important point is that we respect our space and the way we live inside the home.
If you collect pieces of iron of all sizes to create works of art, which is your hobby, keep them in a workshop or in a specific place in the room. But do not scatter everywhere, otherwise it will be chaos. If you collect cosmetics, you need to share the toilet space. For example, a shelf or a drawer for each. As for the rest, he can keep it in his closet in the bedroom, where he won't piss us off. Consent is the way to avoid arguments for claiming your space. Or we may not ask for it, but we may feel that our needs for order and space are being ignored.
If we need quite a bit but our partner wants a lot of things, we have to come to a compromise. You can keep your memoriesIn boxes, put only certain things in sight. More than we want but less than the other wants, and without the radical need to get rid of him; Just to hide it a little. Whenever possible, keep it in your furniture or room. To mix our things with theirs is to create a swampy land.
What we want to avoid, in order to have a good coexistence, is that the accumulation of our partners, parents or roommates invades our space and gradually advances. Although it is also possible that there may be a case of sudden buildup, as in bereavement.
This is the case of Carmi, who lost her mother to illness and had to empty the deceased's house herself, because her sister did not want to know anything about the matter. Although she had friends who helped her, she did not have the courage to get rid of anything, even if it was old and in poor condition, or donate usable items to charity. But he didn't need it, and he didn't want it. Faced with the impossibility of vacating the apartment, and seeing months pass by shuffling things around while the apartment was still full, he took everything home. He left the stuff in the garage in half-closed boxes, and crammed the rest of the stuff as much as he could into his house. Over time, getting rid of all (or some) of these elements that make up the entire house will depend on how sad Karmi is and on various factors, such as her fear of lack and clinging to the past.
Alarm signals
Sometimes there are warning signs in the buildup, although they may not go any further. Accumulation of waste, such as empty medicine boxes, moldy shoes, or broken appliances. Such as the case of Marty, whose parents were elderly, and since they lived as farmers, they had a lot of space to store everything and the philosophy of not throwing anything away, that everything was used. One day, when his daughters stayed in the afternoon to play at their grandparents' house, he entered his father's office and became upset. There was trash up to the ceiling. Newspapers, suitcases, boxes, machines, books, old encyclopedias, dust… After talking with his parents and even arguing about it, he made his father vacate the office. It's been six trips to the dump and the truck is full. Well, four months later, the office was the same again, or worse. He put it all back together again. This is common in cases of severe accumulation, which is not resolved by tidying up and passing the window. You must go to the causes of this accumulation with a mental health specialist and follow up so that the problem does not worsen.
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