Tag Archives: hoarding

Girl Talk: I Have An Emotional Attachment To Clothing

Annika HarrisJanuary 6, 2012 //
Closet Purge
How I got rid of all my clothes and regained my sanity. Read More »
Give A Compliment!
Here are seven reasons to compliment a total stranger. Read More »
My Mother Is A Hoarder
An essay from a woman with a hoarder in the family. Read More »

Throughout this year, I’ve been forcing myself to live with less — less mani-pedis, less happy hours, and most of all less clothing! Back in the early spring, I donated about a third of my wardrobe to my best friend’s mother, who was sending a few barrels of clothes, food, and other goods to her native Jamaica. I was proud of myself for giving away items that I’d held on to for years hoping they’d make a comeback. And I’m always looking through my closet for more clothes that I don’t wear or need, but some pieces hold too much sentimental value for me to give up … even though I don’t even like them. Keeping clothes I don’t like simply because some momentous event happened while I was wearing them doesn’t make sense to me, so I’m going to try to figure this out, and hopefully get to the point where I can donate these unnecessary closet fillers. Keep reading »

7 Celebrity Hoarders

Ami AngelowiczDecember 29, 2011 //
Celebrity Hoarders
Celebrity Hoarders
Celebrity Hoarders
Celebrity Hoarders
Celebrity Hoarders
Celebrity Hoarders
Celebrity Hoarders
View the Gallery / 7 Photos »
My Mother Is A Hoarder
An essay from a woman with a hoarder in the family. Read More »

Mackenzie Phillips is back on TV and this time she is shedding “the last vestige of the junkie [she] used be.” No, she’s not on “Celebrity Rehab” again, she’s on the OWN network’s “Extreme Clutter” with Peter Walsh. Yep, she has a little hoarding problem. She says her “hidden clutter,” which is mostly family memorabilia, is her way of hanging on to the past. With Peter’s help, she’s ready to let go of the things that have negative power and keep the things that have meaning for her future. Good for her for tackling her hoard.[Huffington Post]

Click through to see some more celebs who are rumored hoarders.

Girl Talk: How I Got Rid Of Half My Clothes And Found My Sanity

Winona Dimeo-EdigerDecember 1, 2011 //
My Mother Is A Hoarder
An essay from a woman with a hoarder in the family. Read More »
Purge!
How I purged my life of 90% of my stuff. Read More »
Shopping Ban
This writer banned herself from buying -- and it backfired. Read More »

I have always been a hoarder at heart, prone to messiness and clutter. Remember on “Arrested Development” when Lucille Bluth is watching that news story about the mother who drove into a lake and she raises her martini glass and says, “Good for her”? That’s how I watch “Hoarders.” Some guy has collected thousands of Victorian hair wreaths? Good for him! Some lady hasn’t thrown out a Chinese takeout container in 50 years? More power to her!

When I moved in with my boyfriend I was forced to deal with my hoarding ways because they were threatening my relationship. I remember one night in particular when we were cleaning up the living room and I refused to throw away a little piece of torn cardboard. My boyfriend was sitting there saying, “Why do you need it?” and I was saying, “You know, for crafts?” and pretty soon he got annoyed and moved on to something else. I was curled up alone in a corner with my precious piece of trash feeling sort of victorious when I realized, dude, this isn’t normal. So I went to counseling and learned how to throw things away. Keep reading »

Master Of Puppets, Hoarder Of All!

Julie GersteinSeptember 12, 2011 //


You guys, I would never make fun of another person’s mental health issues. Never. However, when this clip for “Hoarding: Buried Alive: ENSLAVED BY PUPPETS” (the full episode aired last night) popped up in my inbox, well…. Reads the copy on the press release:
“Donna was living her dream, performing as a professional ventriloquist in New York City before she left the stage to raise a family. But after a bitter divorce and subsequent bout with depression, Donna became convinced that she’d one day return to ventriloquism and began compulsively purchasing hundreds of ventriloquist dummies. Soon her collecting expanded far beyond just a career to the point where it has filled her house and left her over $300,000 in debt.”

So it seems, yes, ventriloquism IS a serious problem. Keep reading »

Doll-Hoarding Grandmother Forced To Face Facts

Huffington Post Weird NewsJune 25, 2011 //


By day, she’s a certified nursing assistant in Griffin, Georgia, but by night, Phyllis, a grandmother in her 60s, has a shocking secret: She’s addicted to doll collecting.

She has more than 50,000 of them, according to the A&E series, “Hoarders,” which featured Phyllis on the season premiere episode that aired on June 20. Her explanation for keeping the dolls — which are in varying degrees of decay and shabbiness — is simple.

“When I see their sweet little faces, it makes me happy,” she said. “I don’t collect them because they’re valuable. I just like their company.” Read more… Keep reading »

Hoarding: An Existential Crisis?

Amelia McDonell-ParryJune 17, 2011 //

Before it had a name, I was obsessed with hoarding. I remember seeing an episode of “The Oprah Show” in the early 2000s where a woman allowed the show’s cameras into her home to reveal the unfathomable clutter inside. There was so much stuff that her family could barely find their way through the labyrinth from the kitchen to the living room. There were piles of dirty dishes that must have been months or even years old. Cat feces graced every available surface. The woman was a nurse or a teacher I think. How could anyone live like that? I just couldn’t understand how someone could let so much crap accumulate and do nothing about it. It made me, well, almost angry, especially because of how it affected her family. Keep reading »

There’s A Cow In My Freezer: Think I Need A Shrink?

The StirJanuary 20, 2011 //

Hi, my name is Amy, and I’m a freezer hoarder. It all started about eight years ago, when we bought a house and a nice big fridge to go with it. At first it was innocent: Some extra bagels, homemade granola, some nuts I didn’t want to go bad.

Then I started saving little bits of things: bags of vegetables with not quite a full serving in them, canned chipotle peppers that I used just one of for a certain recipe, Parmesan rinds for soup, vegetable scraps, and chicken bones for stock. How many times have I made stock? Once.
Keep reading »

“Extreme Couponing” Thinks It’s Genius To Hoard Toilet Paper

Amelia McDonell-ParryJanuary 5, 2011 //


Remember the woman who eats toilet paper from our new favorite show “My Strange Addiction”? Well, guess what? I have totally found her new best friend! Above, meet Amanda, who appeared on a recent episode of TLC’s “Extreme Couponing.” She has an entire room in her house filled with rolls of toiler paper. But instead of shaming Amanda for what is essentially hoarding the stuff we wipe our asses with, this show seems to be, well, celebrating her obsessive frugality. So cool, uh, indeed. [The Hairpin] Keep reading »

Girl Talk: My Mother Is A Hoarder

Cassandra DaltonOctober 26, 2010 //

The smell of ammonia—a holdover from when the cat was sick—is the first thing I notice, before the dust seeps into my nostrils, making my eyes itch. The door doesn’t fully open, blocked by boxes in the entryway. The piles of craft projects, winter coats, and litter are pushing out from the walls, trying to escape outside. I have to turn sideways to get into the hallway, to the foot-and-a-half kept clear of debris so people can pass to the kitchen or living room. The dining room, with a hanging lamp and large oak table, was long ago lost entirely to the clutter.

There’s too much stuff. It’s disgusting. I hate it here.

But it’s home. Keep reading »

Are We Letting Our Closets Weigh Us Down?

Wendy AtterberryOctober 7, 2010 //

I have two big plastic bins of clothing I keep under my bed. One is full of off-season clothing, and the other is, I hate to say it, full of clothes that don’t fit. Most of those items are too small — clothes I’ve outgrown but hang on to in case I ever reach my goal weight again. Some of them are clothes I actually bought too small for me, hoping they’d fit “one day.” And there are even a few items that are too big for me now, but I hang on to them, thinking they might make great “maternity wear” eventually. According to a new study, this holding-on-to-clothes-that-don’t-fit behavior is totally normal. Researchers discovered that the average woman has 12 items of clothing in her wardrobe that don’t fit (my own figure is probably double that). Keep reading »

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