Along with one vague memory of a large chunk of square ice being delivered by the Ice Man to my Grandma for her "icebox," before she acquired an electric refrigerator, I have a memory of Tinkers. These were the men who would repair a hole in one of your metal kitchen pans. No kidding! I never actually saw a Tinker but Granny had several aluminum pans with small circular pieces of metal screwed into the sides. There was also a Ragman. He would come around periodically, in the alley, and collect anything you didn't want if he thought he could use it.
In these days of high unemployment, we all know that, if we can't use something that someone else may repair, we just put it on the curb beside our garbage cans the night before collection and it will be taken even before morning. I've seen people in pickup trucks roaming around to see what is new and picking up odd items. Other people will snatch something off the street if they think they can use it. This kind of collecting is done out of necessity. Perhaps something can be repaired and sold for a little extra income.
Have you had to help clean out an attic after someone's death? It is usually an incredibly difficult task. Even my parents, who had downsized to a small, two-bedroom apartment in their later years, and who were extremely neat and organized, had a lot of things to divide up. Very little had to be thrown out; some clothes were given away and the rest of their things divided up among my three brothers and myself.
I've promised myself that I never, ever want to move to another house again! It is such a huge task! My biggest move was downsizing from a 6-bedroom house into a 2-bedroom townhouse. It took me 9 months to clean out the attic of many years of storage of things that 'might' be fixed or needed. Then I did what my mother did when she and dad made the big move from Dayton to Sacramento in 1970. She informed my brothers and me, "I've separated your stuff into piles. If you want it, come and get it, I'm not moving it." And we did!
Then there are stories on the news once in a while about a house condemned by the health department due to someone keeping 100 cats and not cleaning up or a person never throwing out their garbage, etc. The 'organizing' shows on TV show the 'before' photos of rooms so crowded with possessions, floor to ceiling, that it is impossible to crowd in even air!
These are the truly mentally ill folks, the Hoarders. They buy, buy, buy, never enjoying any of what they have, they just have a compulsive need to acquire. Nothing will satisfy them. When there's absolutely no room where they live for more of anything, they rent storage buildings. If they can't pay the rent on storage, there are blind auctions at which the highest bidder takes a chance that what's inside the storage room will be more valuable than what was paid for it.
The Hoarders think they are collecting, but they are not! The difference between a hoarder and a collector is that a collector will look for a specific item needed for the collection, enjoy it quit a bit when it is found and bought. On the other hand, once the hoarder gets more of his/her special category, it will be stored and forgotten.
It would be very unhappy to be married to a hoarder, unless a hoarder married another hoarder and they had quite a bit of money to satisfy their cravings. I'm not sure there would be a way to discover these hoarding tendencies before marriage. I'm not sure that if you discover your spouse is a hoarder (assuming you're not!) it would do any good to try to prevent your home becoming ridiculously crowded with junk. What could you do? Make sure he/she didn't bring anything not needed into the house? Usually, the hoarder is not at all aware that it is mentally ill to accumulate so many unused, unneeded objects!
Has anyone dealt successfully with the problem of hoarding, either in yourself or in a loved one?
Dear Lord, perhaps if we remembered who it will be who will have to divide up our possessions when we die, we will accumulate possessions more wisely. We ask you today to help us be careful when we buy anything and ask ourselves, "Do I really NEED this?" We don't want to burden our relatives with the task of either calling the Ragman or renting a dumpster!!
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