Who Are the Joneses?

There are several Hoarders in my circle of acquaintance. They all save things no sane person would bother saving: old catalogs, newspapers and old magazines, scraps of paper with plans or statistics, every bill, every receipt, even ads received in the mail.  It is really sick behavior.  Periodically, you see a news story where someone is evicted with stacks and stacks of old newspapers in their house.  Some hoarders run themselves or their families into debt or bankruptcy due to their habit of buying many of the same item.  Some who live by themselves may not even throw out garbage.

Clarice is no ordinary hoarder.  Like all hoarders, she saves everything but she is a wealthy woman and can afford to buy anything she wants.  So Clarice has room after room stacked floor to ceiling with unopened boxes of items she bought from e-bay.  Whenever one of her friends or relatives has anything new, Clarice must go out and buy the identical item.  One of her relatives disclosed, "I try to hide things from her, I don't put anything new on Facebook, I'm tired of her copying everything.  They used to call this behavior "keeping up with the Joneses."

Fortunately for us, this extreme Compulsive Behavior is not common.  I only had one patient diagnosed with this in my psych nursing days.

I'm not sure hoarding habits can be prevented or cured.  We just need to make sure the hoarder doesn't try to tap into our finances (identity theft)!  To try to recognize this behavior before marrying into it, look for signs of anxiety, nervousness or extreme neatness.

Lord, in these days of fast and easy credit plus quick loans, some folks are tempted to buy and buy and buy.  Save us personally from being tempted to live beyond our means and save us from having a family member sucked into this particular pit of misery!  We pray that our families can live normal lives.