Collecting Or Hoarding?

Collecting or Hoarding? That is the question. I’ve been accused of both at one time or another and while a room like this freaks a lot of people out, I find it to be both beautiful and intriguing. And also that there could be some scary-ass bugs in there. That’s not all bad, though, I don’t mind poking around abandoned buildings or playing in the junkyard, but that’s just me rambling, so let’s hear what the professional has to say:

A passion for collecting is a healthy outlet and an activity that keeps people connected to the world around them. But it can become a deadly enterprise when it crosses the line into hoarding. Both hoarding and collecting involve assigning special value to possessions, often value that goes beyond the physical characteristics of the object. For collectors, new possessions become part of a larger set of items and considerable time and energy go into organizing and displaying them. When collecting is healthy, the display or storage of these things does not impede the use of active living areas of the home. When a collector expands acquisitions beyond well-defined collections and loses the ability to keep these possessions organized, it becomes a hoarding problem… read more >