Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

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Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

by Randy O. Frost (Goodreads Author), Gail Steketee

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 2,606 ratings · 693 reviews

What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper that's ever come into his home? What compulsions drive a woman like Irene, whose hoarding cost her her marriage? Or Ralph, whose imagined uses for castoff items like leaky old buckets almost lost him his house?

Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago; they exp...more

Hardcover, 290 pages

Published April 20th 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (first published January 1st 2010)

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Feb 22, 2013 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: psycology, 2012

I have one dog and three cats, onec at more than my limit. Any cat above two is “crazy cat women” territory (in my own circumstances) I'm hoping the presence of the dog would offset this.

My mom thinks three cats = animal hoarder.

She didn’t have to worry, I’m neither an animal hoarder nor a stuff hoarder but I have to admit people who are fascinate me. If I am flipping the channels and I land on the show Hoarders that is where the flipping stops, then I run around the house gathering up crap to...more

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Jul 03, 2011 Courtney rated it 4 of 5 stars

made me clean my room. i shall call this book "mom"

36 likes · like · see review

Apr 24, 2010 karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfictions

oh, dear. this book was uncomfortable to read. i think i may be a hoarder, a little. not terribly badly, not yet. but the fine line between "collector" and "hoarder" is on the thin side. this is from the inside cover, and why i felt i needed to read the book:

"with vivid portraits that show us the particular traits of the hoarder - piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, homes that have to be navigated by narrow "goat trails", stacks of paper that are "churned" but never discarde...more oh, dear. this book was uncomfortable to read. i think i may be a hoarder, a little. not terribly badly, not yet. but the fine line between "collector" and "hoarder" is on the thin side. this is from the inside cover, and why i felt i needed to read the book:

"with vivid portraits that show us the particular traits of the hoarder - piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, homes that have to be navigated by narrow "goat trails", stacks of paper that are "churned" but never discarded..."

see, that sounds like home!but maybe i'm not a hoarder, maybe i just have a small new york apartment. i won't know until my ship comes in and i move somewhere bigger... will i fill that space, too? will i be like that fat tolkien dragon lolling on my hoard of books and treasures??

but reading this book puts it into perspective, a little. i do not hoard garbage. i do not have roaches and mice. i do not collect supermarket circulars and newspapers from ten years ago. i am able to throw away junk mail. while there are frequent book avalanches at the home, my door can still be opened, and i am able to escape if (heaven forfend) there is a fire. "hoarding is not defined by the number of possessions, but by how the acquisition and management of those possessions affects their owner." and i'm okay, i think. i read my books, i just buy more than i will ever live long enough to read, but i want to read them all -that's the plan, i just don't know how feasible it will be, mortality and all.

i highly recommend this book, even if you don't have the same fears i had. it is a strong cautionary tale, and while this is a psychological disorder,the hoarding, and being aware of the extent that it can actually take over a person's life isn't going to prevent it; you either have the tendency or you don't, you may see shades of yourself in some of the case studies, and it might give you a nice whiff of fear - enough to get you to go over to that mail table and sort it once and for all. and throw away that old fancy mustard you didn't even like - you are never going to suddenly develop a taste for it.(less)

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Jan 21, 2012 mstan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, american, src-winter-2011-12

The fourth star is for a few things:

- The engaging way in which the two authors present the cases they have encountered (which, frankly, would appeal to the voyeuristic in most) - young hoarders, animal hoarders, belligerent 'blind' hoarders vs. intelligent hoarders, hoarders with OCD...

- The authors' compassion for their subjects

- Their admission that it is indeed difficult to help hoarders (and there's no miracle therapy that would solve their issues)

I was highly uncomfortable reading some of...more The fourth star is for a few things:

- The engaging way in which the two authors present the cases they have encountered (which, frankly, would appeal to the voyeuristic in most) - young hoarders, animal hoarders, belligerent 'blind' hoarders vs. intelligent hoarders, hoarders with OCD...

- The authors' compassion for their subjects

- Their admission that it is indeed difficult to help hoarders (and there's no miracle therapy that would solve their issues)

I was highly uncomfortable reading some of the book, because I do still have some school papers and my teaching school material (I have already been in teaching for nearly a decade... and have almost never looked at those materials)... not to mention a ton of old manga from when I was a teenager, which are surely silverfish-ridden by now, and which I have not opened in more than a decade. I think my problem is procrastination/laziness when it comes to cleaning, though, not so much hoarding (though I feel really awful about the idea of throwing out school papers... perhaps this just goes to show how my identity has been constructed around this concept of academic success???). Some of the people mentioned in this book are truly pitiful because they realise they have a problem - a problem that has damaged many of their relationships with their loved ones - but cannot bear to take apart the cocoon of stuff they've constructed to protect themselves from loss. Many of them have become public health hazards because of the number of cockroaches and mice their stuff has generated, and because their stuff may actually increase the likelihood of fire, or even trigger the collapse of the building.

One quibble: I wish the authors had organised (irony?) some of the information a little better. Sometimes the focus of each chapter wasn't particularly clear, as previous observations are reiterated a few times, and different case studies are juxtaposed against each other across various chapters. Other than that, I thought this was an illuminating look into what is becoming a pervasive but much-misunderstood problem. Reading it has certainly made me much more uncomfortable about how hoarders' distress at having their houses cleaned out is so widely publicised (making the hoarders almost into targets of ridicule) in the show 'Hoarders'.(less)

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Nov 04, 2011 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

On grabbing this at the library, I thought it was generally about people's relationships with their possessions, but it's actually about compulsive hoarders. The authors developed the work over the course of decades of research into hoarding, which had somehow gone understudied in psychology, even though we all know stories from our childhoods of "cat ladies" with dozens of unfixed felines, and old coots whose attics overflow with decades of accumulated crap. Generally, as they visit the homes o...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: july-aug-2010

The individual accounts of hoarders in Stuff are a parade of stifled lives, failed marriages, estranged , personal agony, notes the familiesWall Street Journal. It's almost the stuff of fiction: indeed, E. L. Doctorow recently fictionalized the lives of mid 20th-century hoarders in his novel Homer and Langley (*** Nov/Dec 2009). If Frost and Steketee don't completely answer the question of why hoarders hoard, they identify some psychological commonalities, such as clinical depression (though the...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Eva rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's not a must-read, but it's pretty good. Kindle notes:

In the first two days, workers removed nineteen tons of debris. All possessions deemed to have value were stored in a former schoolhouse nearby. Each day of cleaning brought new and strange discoveries: an early x-ray machine, an automobile, the remains of a two-headed fetus. For the police who were involved in the search, the whole affair was a nightmare. Roaches and rats thrived in the mess, alongside more than thirty feral cats that liv...more

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Aug 25, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-psychology

An enjoyable and well-read nine-hour audiobook available as a download from Audible.

Listening to (or reading) this book is to watching a TV show about hoarders is as volunteering at a hospital is to attending a circus freak show.

Listening to this book after reading various books about memory (specifically, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research ...more An enjoyable and well-read nine-hour audiobook available as a download from Audible.

Listening to (or reading) this book is to watching a TV show about hoarders is as volunteering at a hospital is to attending a circus freak show.

Listening to this book after reading various books about memory (specifically, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research), I had the following thought:

Exceptional minds are capable of great feats of memory through the use of a “memory palace”, an imaginary building, constructed solely in the mind. By stuffing this mental building with bizarre mental images, the exceptional mind can recall long texts or the order of a pack of playing cards they have seen only once, skills that are useful, if only to win a contest.

A certain category of hoarders, described in this book, construct their memory palace in the real world. Their only problem is loving life too much. They want to remember everything, every conversation, every person they met, every contact they had, no matter how fleeting, because they wish to relive the happiness the original gave them. They hoard ticket stubs, old newspapers, matchbooks, etc. etc., because every one is connected with a happy, or at least interesting, memory.

Exceptional minds can make a well-ordered and useful mental house. The chaotic physical house of the hoarder actually resembles the chaotic interior life of the average person. (When I write “average person”, of course I can only be certain of what my own interior life is like, but I make the leap of faith that I am not actually a deluded brain in a jar, or in any other way exceptional.) We pile our memories everywhere, willy-nilly, valuables stuffed in with the meaningless, like the lady in this book who discovered an envelope full of money squirrelled away in the folds of the years-old newspaper that she just had made the agonizing decision to throw away.

What I'm saying is: Hoards are just extroverted memory palaces. At the time I thought it, it seemed profound.

If your default setting, like mine, is to have insufficient sympathy for the suffering of others, to believe that what ails most people can be solved by a good slap upside the head, then it's useful to listen to this book. You can hear an expert tell you that the situation is more complex than you think, and that sympathy and empathy is not only ethically correct, but often more effective practical approach to dealing with behaviors which, upon first examination, may appear inexplicable or inexcusable. (less)

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Jul 11, 2012 Kerfe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

We all have too much stuff. Frost and Steketee cover extreme examples of hoarding, but it's hard not to identify with the problem of over-accumulation.

The thought processes of the hoarders are not all that different from some of my own reasonings about my aquisitions and why I need to have and keep particular items. Especially the stuff I use (might use/plan to use/occasionally use/have used in the past) for the work I do. Do I still need it? Did I ever need it? Could I substitute something else...more

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May 06, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: consumer-culture, nonfiction

As someone who grew up with a hoarder parent, this book was particularly interesting to read. The authors, a psychiatrist and a social worker, interviewed many hoarders, their long-suffering family and friends. They discuss some historical cases of hoarding, examine various styles and reasonings behind hoarding, such as collecting, foraging, and rescuing. Some of the interviewees are aware that they have a problem with their collections covering all the surfaces in their homes, while others prou...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars

About a year and a half ago, my sister (who hasn't lived at home since 2004) was going through some stuff in her room because my mother told her to "clean out her closet". What my sister realized was that pretty much nothing in her (old) closet or her dresser was hers anymore. It was overflowing with clothing my mom had bought and put there and then promptly forgot about. Most of it still had the tags on and a lot of it was the same thing over and over again. While most of the house looks fine,...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Ashland Mystery Oregon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ok. I admit it. I have 100,000 postcards. About 30,000 of these are sorted, indexed and filed in acid free boxes. I mentioned this at work the other day, and my boss called me a hoarder. Was I?

Yes, I have 100,000 postcards. Yes, I have quite a few books (these are a problem, I know). Yes, my closets are a bit cluttered. But a hoarder?

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Frost and Steketee was a revelation. Not only because I learned that I was not a hoarder, but because the pr...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychology

I highly recommend this book - the line between collector and hoarder is so vague and the things which blur this line (both genetically predisposed and those things which happen around and to us as we go through life) are so complex and nuanced that reading this book made me step back and examine my own understanding of possessions.
If you know a hoarder (and you do, you just may not know that you know one) this is an excellent resource especially if you are one of us in the helping professions...more

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Oct 22, 2011 Bonnie Lynn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Fascinating. You may think this could be your problem as you read this book, yet convince yourself it isn't. Odds are, in an effort to prove it isn't so, you'll immediately dive into a clean-up project. Chances are you may quickly become confused, anxious and exhausted. If so, you're suspicions have been confirmed - you're a hoarder - but you aren't alone.

I loved this book that details cases of hoarders, but also tells a story of a condition that goes much deeper than just breaking a bad habit....more

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Jul 21, 2011 Elliot Ratzman rated it 4 of 5 stars

This rocked my world. I saw some of myself—or one of my friends or ex-housemates—in each one of these chapters. I have accumulated thousands of books, but also hundreds of magazines, papers, articles and mementos. By reading about the pathological collectors—most famously the NYC hermits, the Collyer brothers, who died under piles of accumulated junk in their mansion—I now think about my own habits on a continuum. There are a range of chronic hoarders and shopping addicts who collect animals, ne...more

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Jun 17, 2011 Melanie Baker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hoarding has become, weirdly, kinda fashionable, largely thanks to those TV shows. This book sheds a lot of light on the psychology of hoarders and some of the issues and histories that can bring it about.

It wasn't a big happy ending book -- it made clear that not all of the people in their case studies were "cured", and how common it is for a cleared out house to be completely filled back up again surprisingly quickly.

What I would have liked to have read more about would be how such people are...more

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May 02, 2011 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A friend who read last week’s review of Homer and Langley suggested this week’s book, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost as a follow-up. Stuff cover the story of the Collyer brothers in great detail. In fact, that’s one of the things about the book that appealed to me — they focus on case studies, real people with fascinating stories. Some have more insight into their problems than others, but from each I learned very interesting things about hoarding and the peo...more A friend who read last week’s review of Homer and Langley suggested this week’s book, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost as a follow-up. Stuff cover the story of the Collyer brothers in great detail. In fact, that’s one of the things about the book that appealed to me — they focus on case studies, real people with fascinating stories. Some have more insight into their problems than others, but from each I learned very interesting things about hoarding and the people who struggle with it.

Why do people hoard things? We’ve all seen the shows — people living in house so crammed with debris and detritus that a normal person would be horrified. People hoard newspapers, animals, clothes, garbage and rotting food, even body by-products. They live in conditions that are unsanitary, inconvenient, and almost impossible to understand. What makes them do it?

It’s a complicated question and Frost and co-author Gail Steketee use a combination of research, case studies, anecdotes and theory to explain it. Basically, people who hoard don’t see things the same way normal people do. Their relationship with the items they hoard is very different. A person who hoards newspapers may do it because they see the newspaper and think of all the information it contains — information that will be lost if they throw the newspaper away. Nostalgic items like childhood toys can’t be discarded because the hoarder fears they will lose all the memories attached to those items, as if the toy embodies all those memories. A bag of old bottlecaps that most people would consider trash can instead be appreciated for their colors, their reflective properties, the patterns they make or crafts that might be constructed from them. It’s an entirely different way of viewing items.

For example, Jerry, one of the hoarders that Frost works with in the book, describes his feelings about throwing away the shards of a broken vase:

“I just want to save these…I’m remembering how it looked before it fell. If I throw them away, it’s like I’m giving up on it, and I hate to do that. It’s like I think somehow maybe it will get back together. I know it’s crazy, ’cause it can’t, but that’s what it feels like.”

I’ve always wondered, seeing shows like “Hoarders,” why people who have asked for help still fight so hard to keep their stuff. I mean, you asked these people to come and help you clean up your mess! The book helped to explain some of the reasons that people have so much difficulty letting go. One reason is avoidance. Making decisions is stressful — should I discard it and risk losing some cherished possession? But if I keep it, where will I put it? To avoid the anxiety, hoarders simply decide to do nothing. Leave it where it is. Don’t think about it. Much easier to go shopping.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m quite a packrat myself and I occasionally see some of my patterns in the case studies: assigning human feelings to a stuffed animal and being unable to discard it. Finding it much easier to let go of things if they’re being donated to a good cause, than if they are just being thrown in the trash. Promising myself I really am going to read all those cooking magazines someday. Reading these books — even if they aren’t intended as self-help books — has made me see those reactions in a new light.

The language in the book is easy to understand. The case studies are fascinating and tragic in a train-wreck sort of way. The ones that really moved me were the stories about kids, kids as young as 3rd grade who have hoarding problems. I would never have guessed that it could start so young! It’s not a how-to book, there are no step-by-step instructions on how to de-clutter your home. There is information on how to get help, if you or a loved one has a problem.

Originally posted on my website, AliveontheShelves.com.(less)

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Feb 06, 2011 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not the sensationalized view that the TV show Hoarders gives, this book is great! It breaks down the many different reasons why people hoard stuff, and the various reasons why people become so attached to stuff. This explains a lot about the psychology of Hoarding and the mental state of people who compulsively pile stuff up around them. What I really liked about the way this is written is that it is clinical, yet accessible, and it doesn't feel like it is all "crazy". There is one chapter about...more

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Jan 24, 2011 Lesli rated it 4 of 5 stars

I thought this book was amazing, I gobbled it up, I read it in one weekend. I found every case study so fascinating. I love case studies, but not really scientific explanations, so this book was good for me. Only one textbooky chapter and the rest was story after story. It made me question everything, could I hoard, could my husband, is my child destine? It was scary because I share many personality traits with some of the hoarders explained in the book, I am very wordy, I remember everything ab...more

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Jan 24, 2011 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

I worked for awhile in a non-profit guardianship agency in Washington state and we had many cases of hoarding. One fellow filled up his entire house, then one car, then the other but was sleeping on the back seat of the second. (He lost his false teeth in that mess!!!)

So I had to read this book. The author writes very well and uses people he has worked with to control or eliminate their hoarding. (Obviously, he disguises their real names.) It was fascinating to me to see how many hoarders can gi...more

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Jan 17, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Stuff" is organized with case studies serving as the basis for the broader categorization and analysis of various types of and motives for hoarding. It talks about hoarding based on personification of items, a strong sense of personal connection to items, a fear of loss of self if items are discarded, an aversion to waste, an inability to rate the importance of items, the mentality saving "just in case," and combination manifestations of hoarding. The subjects of the authors' research are exten...more "Stuff" is organized with case studies serving as the basis for the broader categorization and analysis of various types of and motives for hoarding. It talks about hoarding based on personification of items, a strong sense of personal connection to items, a fear of loss of self if items are discarded, an aversion to waste, an inability to rate the importance of items, the mentality saving "just in case," and combination manifestations of hoarding. The subjects of the authors' research are extensively quoted, particularly in their descriptions of how they see their possessions, how they perceive the world, how they feel about their possessions and about discarding them. The authors discuss the various pathologies that are often comorbid with hoarding (OCD, ADHD, anxiety disorders, PTSD, depression) and how these interact with and feed hoarding behavior. They also outline the process they have developed in helping people who hoard to declutter as well as their observation that, although their approach seems to result in more progress toward decluttering than many other approaches (particularly ineffective is forcing cleanouts), they address their observation that the long-term maintenance of even modest improvement is uncommon and that even those who retain a state of relative lack of clutter, the struggle with the urge to hoard seems to continue indefinitely.

As a hoarder whose mother, grandmothers, grandfather, grandmother-in-law, and spouse are also hoarders (despite that none of them are genetically related to me), I saw myself particularly in the "just in case" hoarding and carrying of excessive items and in the aversion to waste. One of my recent successes in getting rid of stuff has been the result of finding a group that accepts donations of any kind and then gives them away to those who need them, allowing me to feel that the things I've hoarded will not be wasted. My spouse and I tend to chorus, "But it's still good!" as we save and collect things, and delight in helping people furnish new apartments by "shopping" in our basement or garage. Unfortunately, this means that both of those are too full for us to USE as living or functional space. I see my spouse's inability to sort through things easily and tendency to have very important items mixed in with trash, as well as the tendency to "sort" in a way that moves things around but doesn't reduce overall clutter as the actual organization is stymieing. I hope to use the insights into questions to ask about the documents and things and studies of why things carry such value as a way of helping to reduce more of my clutter and to work with my spouse on further clutter

Even so, the outlook is fairly grim, it seems; the lifelong nature of the struggle against hoarding still seems quite oppressive and exhausting, as does any attempt to address the hoarded items. So while the book is insightful and informative, I find I have little more hope than before I read it.(less)

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Dec 31, 2010 David Peters rated it 4 of 5 stars

Why I Read It:

I love the shows Clean Sweep, Hoarders, Life Laundry, etc.

Review:

The authors come from an academic background so there is a slight text book feel to the work, but it is all punctuated with example after example. And the truth they find at the bottom of the piles is it’s not about the stuff. I think the common misconception people have when they see examples of hoarding on TV is just to throw it away. Getting rid of the stuff will not be a miracle cure. In fact on example from the...more

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Nov 09, 2010 ICPL Staff Picks added it

Shelves: maeve, nonfiction, staff-picks-blog

Are you looking for a more comprehensive and scientific approach to hoarding than the one given by the cable television shows Hoarding: Buried Alive or Hoarders ? If so, “Stuff : compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things” is the book for you. Frost and Steketee, psychology professors, begin the book with the story of the Collyer brothers. After the reclusive pair died in 1947 their New York brownstone, sanitation workers found more than 130 tons of garbage in their home. The two became the c...more

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Nov 03, 2010 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

I've known a few hoarders in my life, among them some very dear friends. The book is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between people and objects, and the traits that lead some people to be obsessively attached to things. Some of the cases described are horrifying. The most disturbing story for me involved a mother who took over her daughter's bedroom with stuff, thus robbing her daughter of her only sanctuary. Many of the characters are also endearing and remind me of the book-hoard...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked up this book almost at random at the library, but it's a truly fascinating (dare I say, compulsive) read. Frost and Steketee are psychiatrists who specialize in compulsive hoarding, and Stuff is a multifaceted view of hoarders and the lives they lead.

Much of the book documents some Frost and Steketee's various clients, the reasons they hoard, and the consequences on their lives. It's really fascinating, and much more deep and complex than I otherwise might have thought. While the reason...more

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Aug 25, 2010 Margot rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, recovery

I'd like to think that we all can recognize a little bit of ourselves in these case studies of hoarding, but maybe it's just me. Fortunately for my boyfriend, my "collecting" hasn't made our living space unlivable, and reading this book actually made me think a few times, "Hey, I'm not so bad." Watching hoarding intervention shows puts me into a flurry of cleaning and discarding activity, while this book made me recognize certain similarities in behavior, bringing some self-awareness. The insigh...more I'd like to think that we all can recognize a little bit of ourselves in these case studies of hoarding, but maybe it's just me. Fortunately for my boyfriend, my "collecting" hasn't made our living space unlivable, and reading this book actually made me think a few times, "Hey, I'm not so bad." Watching hoarding intervention shows puts me into a flurry of cleaning and discarding activity, while this book made me recognize certain similarities in behavior, bringing some self-awareness. The insights of the authors, who have been at the forefront of compulsive hoarding research for about fifteen years, are just the beginning for this still largely unknown affliction. A PBS show and related book called Affluenza are mentioned, and I plan to read/watch those next.

I will say this as a caution: a couple of the case studies would have been hard for me to read while eating.

Some excerpts:
"The chronic savers we studied were highly perfectionistic and indecisive, having trouble processing information quickly enough to feel comfortable making decisions. They acquired things wherever they went, and every day they carried lots of things with them--"just in case" items they couldn't be without." (10)
"In the past decade, we've learned that hoarding seems to be such a marginal affliction in part because it's carried on largely in secret: we think of it as an "underground" psychopathology, occurring most often behind closed doors. Hoarders tend to be ashamed of their disorder and unwelcoming to those who would interfere with their activities." (11)
"One thing she avoided by not cleaning her apartment was a peculiar intrusive though. Sheepishly, she told me about it one day. 'I have a very childlike view of God. I believe he is all-benevolent and would never let me die in this kind of mess.' Whenever she began to clean, the thought occurred to her that now God would allow her to die, and the idea terrified her." (164)
"People who hoard often speak in overly elaborate ways, including far too many details and losing the main themes. It seems as though they are unable to filter out irrelevant details. Each detail seems as important as the next." (203)
"More tragic for this woman was the fact that after the animal control officers raided her home and removed most of her cats, her New Hampshire town held a town meeting (a tradition in New England) to discuss the threat she posed to public health. This socially anxious woman sat in the front row while her fellow citizens admonished her for her behavior. This public humiliation drove her deeper into isolation." (233)
"As one of our clients put it, 'Without these things, I am nothing.' This quote is similar to Fromm's comment on 'having': 'If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I?'"(266)(less)

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Jul 28, 2010 Ethan Gilsdorf added it

BOOK REVIEW

Gripping case studies of compulsive hoarders

By Ethan Gilsdorf | Boston Globe, May 5, 2010

Collecting Beanie Babies is one thing. Amassing piles of, say, old newspapers, yogurt containers, and rusty buckets is another. If you’re unable to discard mountains of what most people would consider random clutter, your collecting bug has crossed into the realm of obsession. You can literally drown in stuff.

Take the case of the Collyer brothers, which kicks off “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and th...more

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Jul 14, 2010 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, psychology

Frost's look at hoarding is a valuable one that gets away from the sort of gawking and pointing that goes on normally regarding the subject and those afflicted by it. Yes, there are horror stories in it, but Frost is a psychologist and a researcher and discusses hoarding from an educated mental health perspective while still remaining accessible to the lay reader.
Frost discusses the suspected root causes of individual hoarding, as well as what perpetuates this behavior. He looks at several dif...more

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Jun 22, 2010 Girls Gone Reading rated it 3 of 5 stars

Stuff is first and foremost about hoarders-people who keep so much stuff in their homes that it negatively affects their lives- but it is also about all of us. Stuff forces its readers to look at themselves and wonder: why do I have all this stuff?

I agreed to read Stuff because hoarding fascinates me, and my family has had some experience with it. My husband’s grandfather kept a very cluttered house, eventually filling an entire pole barn full of items from yard sales and the trash. Going throug...more Stuff is first and foremost about hoarders-people who keep so much stuff in their homes that it negatively affects their lives- but it is also about all of us. Stuff forces its readers to look at themselves and wonder: why do I have all this stuff?

I agreed to read Stuff because hoarding fascinates me, and my family has had some experience with it. My husband’s grandfather kept a very cluttered house, eventually filling an entire pole barn full of items from yard sales and the trash. Going through his items after his death was excruciating, and it was difficult to understand why he kept a broken rake, toy cars with only two wheels, and Tiffany lamps all together.

According to the book, my husband’s family is not alone. In fact, SIX MILLION Americans suffer from hoarding, and only recently are doctors beginning to understand its complications. It is a bizarre combination of nature and nuture-both genes and family conditions have been identified as factors. I had the misconception that most hoarders were elderly, and that the Great Depression had led to their condition. Frost and Steketee quickly addressed this false logic by explaining that in their research most hoarders have never experienced a period of extreme need or want.

Instead, they argue, most of them had a childhood of extreme disconnect/isolation from their parents. Their “recent research indicates that an absence of warmth, acceptance, and support characterizes the early family life of many hoarders, perhaps leading them to form strong emotional attachments to possessions.” Therefore, as children they learned to become attached to objects rather than people.

Still, I was amazed to learn that there are a variety of reasons why hoarders keep these items.

* utility: Everything has a use, and the hoarder believes that they will use the broken rake later to fix another one.
* opportunity: That piece of newspaper is an opportunity to be smarter, go on a trip, understand something greater, etc.
* fear of error: The hoarder can’t decide if this item is important or not, so he/she just keeps it.
* perfection: In an attempt to perfect a collection, he/she keeps all of the magazines published in 1999 together.

Millions more are affected by hoarding when you factor in their families, their caregivers, and their neighbors. At one point Dr. Frost participates in a house-wide cleanout in NYC. After speaking with a representative from the cleaning company he learns that a house-wide cleaning can cost upwards of $50,000 and that this particular company averages four such cleanings a day!

Ironically most of these cleanings are paid for by the city as a result of legal issues/social work, and they don’t end the hoarding because they don’t address the reason behind the issue. In fact, these house-wide cleanouts usually make the issue worse. The authors are concerned that hoarding is on the rise-with 11 million Americans owning storage space around the country-something that did not exist forty years ago.

Consistently in the book I was puzzled by the question: what is the difference between clutter and a hoard? What distigushes a collector from a hoarder? Apparently I am not the only one with these questions, and the authors argued that “(p)erhaps the best way to make the distinction between hoarding and normal collecting is to determine whether the behavior creates a problem for the family.” Still vague huh? Well Dr. Frost developed a Clutter Image Rating to help diagnose potential hoarders. Patients look at the pictures and determine which one looks like their house. Doctors are then in the difficult position of deciding if children in the home are endangered. If so, they legally have to report the hoarding issue which usually results in legal action and the patient not returning to therapy.

I really enjoyed this book because it was a combination of stories and scientific data. It also made me constantly aware of the items that we choose to keep in our home, our cars, and our lives. I still have not come to an answer about all of my stuff, but I do know that my fridge is cleaner after the chapter about food hoarding!(less)

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May 30, 2010 Judith rated it 3 of 5 stars

Okay, I am officially crazy. I can't get enough of stories about hoarders. Am I becoming a hoarder myself? Hoarding stories about hoarders? I watch the A&E show, and this is the 2nd book I have read in the past 6 months about hoarding.

But I did learn a lot from this particular book. Like a lot of people, when I see those houses of hoarders, I think, just go in and take all the trash out with a dump truck and stop trying to persuade the hoarder to part with his possessions. What I learned fr...more

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About Randy O. Frost

Dr. Randy O. Frost is the Harold and Elsa Siipola Israel Professor of Psychology at Smith College and author of "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things" (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2010), a book about hoarding for the general public. He is an expert on obsessive-compulsive disorder and compulsive hoarding and has published more than 100 scientific articles on these topics. He other...more

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Books by Randy O. Frost

Cognitive Approaches to Obsessions and Compulsions: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment

Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding

Compulsive Hoarding and Acquiring: Therapist's Guide

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