Hoarding and Collecting

Hoarding: Buried Alive has become a popular TV show in more recent times that shows people and their masses of stuff that they gather over years and stash away in their home. "Hoarding according to the textbook is the unsystematic form of collecting" (Solomon, 2013, 542). Every time this behavior is portrayed on television it proves to be problematic. These people are being either removed from their homes if they don't improve the situation, their children are moving out or being taken away, or they face huge fire danger. Below is a video about a lady who hoards....

Collecting is different than hoarding because it refers to the "systematic acquisition of a particular object or set of objects" (Solomon, 2013, 542). So instead of collecting everything they only collect certain things.  I think most children at some point start collections of some sort, when I was in the second grade I collected rocks.  "Some consumer researchers feel that collectors acquire their "prizes" to gratify their materialism in a socially acceptable manner" (Solomon, 2013, 542). 

I feel like most of us either have some sort of connection to a person who hoards or collects items. My grandma could be considered an organized hoarder.  She has taken pictures of most of the items in her home where she has them organized in boxes and puts those pictures in binders for people to look through. She has random stuff boxed up in piles in her house and those boxes are everywhere!! One example of something she has in her house is these fabric swatches from probably the 1960's or 70's that are old and outdated but she saves them and intends to use them to sew things.  

It is interesting to think about how people can get so attached to products.  I think some of it a generational thing where they want to save things because of the tough times they lived through and some of the hoarding can be attributed to psychological issues.  Collectors and hoarders seem to spend huge amounts of time devoted to building up their collections and maintaining them. These activities becomes a "central component of their extended selves" (Solomon, 2013, 542).