The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter Read Online Free PDF Page B

on top of the growing stack, and pretty soon he had years-old piles of paper that he saw as full of potentially useful information and entertainment.
    The logic that so much information can be stored online nowadays has little effect on information hoarders. Some hoarders do, in fact, use their computers to back up the physical items they are holding. But for many hoarders, “online” can seem nebulous. If it’s not in the house, hoarders worry that they can’t locate what they need instantly. Surprisingly, information hoarders can usually find what they’re looking for—or at least know where it is in the piles, though it may be buried three feet deep.
▶ The Shopaholic
    Marcie’s house was packed floor to ceiling with unopened plastic bags of items from discount and big-box stores. This stout, gray-haired grandmother who dressed in flowery polyester pantsuits loved to shop. Her hoarding had progressed to the point where she’d go shopping to replace things she couldn’t find in her mess, but then she would also buy extra stuff while she was at it. For years, Marcie would come home from her latest spree, put her shopping bags down on the nearest pile, and then never look at them again. Soon she forgot what she had just bought and often ended up buying replacements for something she didn’t know she already had—something still pristine in its original packaging.
    Marcie just couldn’t pass up a good bargain. She got a real “high” from the hunt-and-purchase process and couldn’t stand the thought of a good sale item going to waste. She appreciated the value of that sale item and felt smart for grabbing it.
    There’s a reason why shopping has become what’s called “retail therapy.” When Marcie bought yet another dress for her three-year-old granddaughter, who already had way too many dresses, Marcie wasn’t thinking about the dress. She was thinking about the granddaughter: how cute she was, how she would love the dress and smile lovingly at her grandmother with those big dimples. Marcie might have been thinking about how she would have loved to have had a dress like that when she was three. And she was thinking that maybe her family would love her again if she gave the beautiful dress to the granddaughter.
    In this case, the dress is really a stand-in for human interaction. And in fact, the dress probably won’t ever get to the child. It will go on top of the pile of other shopping bags filled with gifts. Once Marcie got home, the rush was over, and she didn’t follow through.
    This high is just like what a junkie feels when doing drugs. Marcie was replacing deep-seated negative memories with short-term positive feelings through consumption. But the quick hit of happiness she got from buying would never fix the sadness from the past. The shopping high was enough to get Marcie through an afternoon, or maybe even a day. But that’s the scariest part of hoarding—the deeper someone like Marcie gets into it, the more often that person needs a shopping-happiness boost.
▶ The Do-It-Yourselfer
    Lucy was a crafter whose rooms were filled with four-foot-high piles of yarn, fabric, candy-making molds, Wilton cake pans, and baking accessories—and only narrow passageways gave her access through the house. Until she retired a couple of years earlier, she was an accountant, but her real love was making fancy cakes on commission from her friends and coworkers for birthdays and holidays. She was also a master maker of crocheted blankets and handmade holiday ornaments. When we met up with Lucy, her house was clean, just packed with unlimited craft supplies.
    With her short hair styled and colored, decked out in matching pants and sweater sets, Lucy had lots of energy and was so engaged in many interests that she belied her seventy-one years. In spite of the clutter in her house, she didn’t fit neatly into the Stage 2 hoarder