Imagine that you are going to go over to your friend’s house to have dinner for the first time. You pull into their white picket fence lined driveway and realize their white house looks nice with their blue shutters and their bright red front door. As you smell their fresh flowers outside, you can only imagine how lovely the inside of their house looks like. You walk into the front door and are immediately greeted by a wall covered in antique doilies. You think that it’s odd but still continue to walk into their living, which is also covered in doilies. There aren’t just a few doilies here and there; the walls are covered top to bottom with doilies. What is that strange material on their couches? - Doilies! Small doilies, large doilies, rug doilies, and lamp shade covered doilies everywhere. What have you gotten yourself into? Your friend comes in and starts to tell you about her “collection”. You wonder how it could be a collection when it has taken over her whole house. At this point you think that she is more of a doilie hoarder rather than a collector. When is having a collection something more serious like being a hoarder? Why do people even start collecting things and what makes an object collectible? These are just some of the questions I will analyze in this paper. Before going any further, the definition of the topic should be discussed to understand the problems with it. The meaning may be obvious to most people, but when looked at in the dictionary, many flaws arrive. A collection means the act or process of collecting; a group of objects or works to be seen, or kept together ("American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2003"). The definition causes a problem because i... ... middle of paper ... ...of Mental Health and Addiction (2014) ProQuest. 26 Apr. 2014. Maycroft, Neil. "Not Moving Things Along: Hoarding, Clutter and Other Ambiguous Matter." Journal of Consumer Behaviour 8.6 (2009): 354-64. ProQuest. 28 Apr. 2014 . Anderson, s, H Damasio, and A Damasio. "A neural basis for collecting behaviour in humans.." Brain: A Journal of Neurology. 128.1 (2005): 201-212. Print. Belk, Russell W. "Collecting as Luxury Consumption: Effects on Individuals and Households." Journal of Economic Psychology 16.3 (1995): 477-90. ProQuest. 26 Apr. 2014 . Feller, Ray. Collecting Away their Suffering: Meaningful Hobbies and the Processing of Traumatic Experience. Order No. 3493085 Antioch University New England, 2011 Ann ArborProQuest. 29 Apr. 2014 . Lehman, H, and P Witty. "The present status of the tendency to collect and hoard." Psychological Review. 31.1 (1927): 48-56. Print.
To collect is to bring things together. However there is an art to collecting, as it is not simply just bringing miscellaneous things together. There is a common theme for the objects and together they serve as a special meaning to their collector. In both texts “The Museum and the Public” by Stephen Weil and Walter Benjamin “Unpacking My Library” by Walter Benjamin, and in the film “Mardi Gras: Made in China”, the purpose of collecting is to tell a story and to showcase the significance of the objects in the collection.
Although I didn’t necessarily put anyone first, I was able to think of my family as well as my friends as I was shopping. These items have a lot of value, but now the ones I bought for me have no personal value and the ones I bought for others will hopefully have personal value for them. Which makes me think, is that the true goal of buying items for others. Hoping that they will hold some sort of value for them.Or is it knowing that they love certain things, and buying those things for them is the point because they already have value. Although It’s not so much about “grabbing for the gaudy babble” as it is grabbing for something that has personal value to you. And personal value all depends on your memories, and the moments the object's attribute toward you, that make them worth something. Personal value will be different for everyone, but ultimately it is the most important, because it defines attention and sight as well as our lives in general. Dumpster diving is not necessarily about digging through trash, it is about finding something out there in the world that could possibly have meaning to you, and thereby cherishing
1. The main idea is not only that owning stuff is not the key to happiness, it’s also that consumers today own more than they need to thrive which directly impacts the environment. Hill illustrates the environmental impact by showing statistics of global warming today versus the past century, and how consumerism is leading to a hotter climate. Hill debunks claims of buying happiness by discussing a study where stress hormones spike to their highest when people are managing their personal belongings. Hill’s most prominent example that consumerism is not the answer is himself, as he discusses some of the most stressful times of his life being right after coming into a large sum of money and buying whatever he fancied. When Hill concludes his article, he states that “I have less—and enjoy more. My space is small. My life is big” (213).
You may cling onto your favourite fashion magazines, seize the sea shells you once collected as a child, even nestle notebooks from high school, however compulsive hoarding is much more than this… it’s a severe anxiety disorder. Many fail to realise the severity of this desolated illness. Hoarding can have detrimental effects whethe...
Addiction can be a disorder filled with denial and regret, and is often sparked by one’s free will. Children are taught, as early as elementary school, to abstain from drugs and alcohol, which constitute the two of the largest culprits of addiction. Naturally, when one ponders addiction, his or her mind automatically travels to the realm of addictive substances, and does not consider what else may constitute as an addiction. What about an addiction affecting nearly a million Americans that does not involve choice? It is an addiction so mysterious that a significant percentage of sufferers go undiagnosed due to hidden mounds of unnecessary clutter. According to Randy Frost and Tamara Hartl, hoarding is medically defined as “the acquisition of, and inability to discard worthless items even though they appear (to others) to have no value” (Defining Compulsive Hoarding). Compulsive hoarding is a devastating disorder that affects an estimated 700,000 to 1.4 million people in the United States (Maidment).
He teaches his readers two valuable lessons that he learned through his experience of dumpster diving; take only what you can use, and the short existence of material things. I agree wholeheartedly with these two principles. Spiritual and mental things last for a much longer time than any knick knack ever can. And indeed it is easy to believe that an object holds a sentiment to us, think backwards to what that object first transformed from. A treasure chest, a block of wood, a log, a tree, a small seed. Look at that sentimental object for what it really is and it truly is nothing more than what we make out of it. Yet we still have the sentiments and memories that object supposedly holds. I too believe that there is no reason in holding onto things that we don’t need either. Eighner is trying to explain to us that we shouldn’t place our happiness in such things that clutter our lives and are really just
Van Den Haag, Ernest. "Conspicuous Consumption of Self". National Review VI (April 11, 1959): 656-658.
Several months ago I began to suspect that a new acquaintance had some unusual ideas about money. Her Facebook posts and conversation starters revolved around living a frugal lifestyle and her approach, at least at the time, seemed quite novel. The Great Recession has certainly forced all of us to reevaluate our spending behaviors and tighten up our proverbial belts a few notches. In fact, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) conducted a poll in January that shows many of us are experiencing “frugal fatigue.” Cunningham, an NFCC spokesperson, says that “…66 percent (of respondents), indicated they were tired of pinching pennies… ,” but, “(t)he interesting finding is that more than 20 percent… had implemented financial lifestyle changes that they found to be positive and intended to keep them in place" ("Majority of Americans Have Frugal Fatigue”). I could not find any estimates about how many Americans have adopted extreme frugality, but the 20 percent of respondents in the NFCC’s poll that believe they will continue their frugal ways suggests the number may be very high indeed. At any rate, my new friend talked about her frugality with the same fervor as a religious convert. The only other person I knew who could rhapsodize so joyfully about reused plastic baggies and thrift store finds was my maternal grandmother. I was intrigued and inspired to research this co-culture, or perhaps counterculture, of extreme frugality.
Compulsive hoarding has been universally defined by researchers as a chronic behavioral syndrome that is categorized by three unique qualities: the extreme retention and failure to dispose of an abundant quantity of useless objects, living environments so condensed with clutter that it compromises day-to-day living for its occupants, and finally a significant provocation of anxiety or distress caused by the hoarding (Franks et al. 79). Although the definition of compulsive hoarding is universally accepted, the cau...
While hoarding ranges from mild to severe, only the worst cases make it into the news. After viewing pictures of such homes, one wonders why no one intervened to throw a few things out. Where is the logic in keeping so many things that they start to overpower you and trap you inside your home? Hoarders however, lack the ability to simply throw away a possession. The motivation behind retaining such an encumbrance of items lies in the fear of wasting and losing important information. Hoarders attach emotional meanings to each item, giving it personal and special characteristics.
Jonides, J. & Smith, E. (1999, March 12). Storage and executive processes in the frontal lobes. Science, 1657-1663.
According to International OCD Foundation, “Serious hoarding problems are present in at least 1 in 50 people, but may be present in as many as 1 in 20.” There is a story of a child who lived with a hoarder, her mom. She didn’t choose to live like this. She dealt with shopping sprees, nine cats and three large dogs, which was normal to her. Her house was filled with stuff from wall-to-wall. The reason her mom was like this was because it helped distract from her long battle with cancer. Compulsive hoarding is a disorder where people keep items that may not even be useful.
...wo influences: “scarcity and socialization hypotheses”. The scarcity theory explains how "an individual's priorities reflect one's socioeconomic environment: one places the greatest subjective value on those things that are in relatively short supply" (1990, p.68). Thus, people who are less economically advanced focus a greater importance on material acquisition then the more affluent people. The socialization hypothesis explains that "one's basic values reflect the conditions that prevailed during one's pre adult years" (1990, p.68), and these values are persistently stable over a long period of time. Consequently, the people whom experienced a lack of possessions in previous years are more likely to develop an obsessive desire for material goods, while people who originated from wealthy families may focus on personal fulfillment at the expense of higher incomes.
“Hoarding is the excessive collection of items, along with the inability to discard them. Hoarding often creates such cramped living conditions that homes may be filled to capacity, with only narrow pathways winding through stacks of clutter. Some people also collect animals, keeping dozens or hundreds of pets often in unsanitary conditions” (Mayo Clinic). Hoarding seems to be a growing problem that affects millions of people in the United States today. It can affect anyone, ranging from a thirteen year- old child anywhere to an eighty year- old. Behind every problem, is a cause and consequences that go along with it. Unless you are a hoarder yourself, you may not fully understand what exactly causes someone to become a hoarder, the consequences that may arise from having your life affected by hoarding, or the possible solutions that are out there to help over come this compulsive disorder.
This happens through minimising everything in one’s life, including their households as well as other belongings. However, over time people will realise that those things they currently own are not requisite, therefore throwing them away is not an awful thing at all. In fact, when a person removes all their possessions at home, other things will open (Gardner, 2018). When getting rid of all their expensive belongings, people will realize that those things are not a necessity, therefore can be discarded, and they will end up saving a lot of money. Subsequently, people will save plenty of time due to the several amounts of work load they have removed. Moreover, plenty of money can be saved easily through applying a minimalistic lifestyle. The simple thing needed to make their life much easier is very easy to carry out. People will realise some day that when they need less money, they do not have to work as much (Gardner, 2018), and this is what minimalization does, it makes life simplistic. Therefore, having a minimalistic lifestyle helps a person become more relaxed since they will have more time to complete less things, which is what everyone hopes to achieve in their life, joy, and