How To Tell If You Are A Hoarder

Hoarding is an anxiety disorder in which an individual fails to throw away a large number of possessions with no value. Hoarding is believed to be a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Approximately two to five percent of the United States population is thought to have a full-blown hoarding disorder. Hoarders usually retain plenty of possessions in their homes and cars and may claim that they have a personal attachment to each item that prevents them from parting with it.

Parts Of The Home Become Unusable

Hoarders tend to have so many possessions in their home they become unable to move through it easily. In all likelihood, there are objects preventing or blocking a person from physically moving about the home with ease. Furniture may be entirely covered with clutter reaching much higher up the wall. Eventually, there will only be a single pathway to maneuver throughout the home or a person may have to walk over or duck under clutter to get through a room, which is certainly not a pleasant experience.

Though all homes have some amount of clutter, there is another key trait that can strongly indicate the potentiality of hoarding.

The Clutter Is Unorganized

Clutter that does not seem to have a place or is stacked in boxes exposed in the open may be a sign of hoarding, in the same way as loose possessions stacked up on top of each other and without a clear place do. For example, scores of pots, pans, and kitchenware sitting on top of other possessions in a room other than the kitchen may be a characteristic of hoarding, since the kitchen is the trademark place for these items. These items sitting somewhere like a chair in the living room or on the floor in a bedroom puts them incredibly out of place. All in all, the home of a hoarder will probably look like objects were thrown just about anywhere.

Continue reading to learn about how the value of these possessions may or may not indicate hoarding.