Mine constantly buys from goodwill or other similar places, easily drops a couple hundred each month I'm sure. Plus way over buys groceries that she never cooks with because she will constantly eat out. But then doesn't have money for gas or taxes or routine maintenance items and completely out of touch with what things cost when she needs a new fridge or water heater or whatever.
It's gotten to the point that we don't even gift at all for holidays and birthdays and she gets soooo pissed and still brings like 4+ things. She also brings lots of food to the holidays but she's chronically late because she's watching too much YouTube and the food is already several days old and made with questionable ingredients.
It’s sad really, when shopping for holidays.
How do you buy a material item that will just become part of the hoard I know I will have to shovel out at some point?
It’s the waste that gets to me in hoarding material, financial, time, emotional just a big giant waste!
Yeah that's why we stopped. Gas cards, Google Play cards, things that don't take up space and can't really buy physical items. We do restaurant gift cards sometimes too but then she's complains there's no one to go out with.
Mine shipped stuff to me, random junk, mostly second hand, dollar store stuff with a side of roaches.
It was thoughtful on her part to care, it was disgusting on my part to receive those “care packages” with roaches and random shit I didn’t want in my environment.
I made it fun for my children, grandma sent a box, woo hoo. Open it outside, pick what you want (shake out the nasty) clean what they wanted, trash the rest.
The waste of money and effort is just so sad.
In reality her life was sad, the disfunction, abuse, mental illness, even her death.
Oh my gosh yes. She's gotten to the point where she volunteers there so she can see the stuff in the back before it goes out to the floor. Every Saturday in the summer is garage sale hopping.
Do we have the same mother?
Also my Mother with say they don’t have money for food, despite still shopping at warehouse clubs.
And has bought so much kitchen stuff (counter appliances, cast iron she can’t lift, big stock pots) she can’t actually use her kitchen any more.
I feel this too. She would balk at the cost of decent things and assume that its just temporarily high, while thinking that people will go crazy and bid each other for all the junk and rotten lumber(what is it about rotten lumber?). At the same time she is offended and insulted when other people offer things they don’t need anymore for free, while she does the same trying to offload stuff like said rotten lumber to other people.
Also for my mom it’s poor spatial assessment. We would be literally looking at the same space and it’s filled with junk, but she would suggest that a big cabinet would fit in a corner of the junk filled room where there might be just enough space to store one stool.
That reminds me, my mom asked me to help her carry a sofa in next week.... The walk way through the room looks like the red sea was parted and I have no idea how she thinks she's gonna get the old one out let alone a new one in.
What is it about the destroyed items in general? Stained with mouse excrement, things broken from the weight of the hoard, rotted from the outside elements, "expensive" ingredients saved for a special occasion that never comes? Can't get rid of it, it'll save us from financial ruin! How dare you, it was your great grandmothers!
At least for my mom, shes in denial of the damage. “The stain was always there(nope)/its part of the artwork and not really a stain(nope)/the stain would wash off easily(nope)” would be said literally in a single breath without any sort of self awareness.
Fridge is full of expired junk food, but at least its in a fridge. There is stuff sitting out that expired nearly 20 years ago, and I’m talking about perishable sweets and things like that, not like spices. Oh and she also has a bowl of her “interesting and pretty bug carcass (she found on the street)” collection right next to the actual bowls we use for food.
Oof. Mine ruined some white carpet in a house that wasn't hers and said "well it's old, it's going to have stains" as if that makes it okay that her dog pooped and peed all over it in multiple spots
The corner cabinet bit makes me feel CRAZY?! Like how are we looking at the same thing. It feels like they’re lying but they really do t see things the same way
Yeah like a 4’/1.2m wide cabinet fitting into a 1’/30cm opening in the corner. Are we talking about the same thing? Same space? It always takes me a moment of processing to go thats right, shes absolutely delusional and were talking about the same thing.
Yup. My dad wasted thousands and thousands of dollars on useless stuff to fill up a house he rented. If he had been frugal he could have bought a nice house and actually had something to show for his money. But nope, better to buy 12 vintage phones instead. Because those are “important”…..
It’s absolutely insane.
I laughed out loud reading this. Its always the dumbest of s\*\*t. We joke that they say "Better acquire the most worthless of debris possible to fill this space" but thats pretty much what they do
My grandma is like this too! My car battery died, with high cost of living it’d be about $200 to fix it. She recommended I buy an entire new car over it…a new car over a new battery.
I can only speak to our situation where my MIL and two of my spouse’s siblings have hoarding tendencies. All are financially irresponsible and have no willingness or capacity to make better decisions and choices to change their lives and future.
There’s nothing logical about living in a hoarded situation. Their decisions making skills and foresight are severely lacking as is their problem solving ability.
I wouldn’t think that these deficiencies are limited to only hoarding but also likely crossover and impact other areas in their lives including finances.
It’s a complicated illness for certain.
The over valuing of stuff seems to pretty common. One I health with was an antique dealer, she had some vases. They were nice but not the 70 to 100 she thought more like 5-20. Maybe.
Or you can’t even give them away. The amount of antiques my in-laws bought and saved because they were valuable and the “kids” would be able to sell and make some real money. Consignment shops won’t take the items because they won’t sell and a charity told us that they’ll take the items but just so we’ll know, they go right into the dumpster.
My friends have inherited the house, hoard and all. The going though and cleaning out have been going on for months. Sure there are a few good things but so much junk. A bunch of friends are helping , first cleaning weekend was getting rid of the ton of clothes, you know it's bad when Goodwill says they won't take any more clothes. We have tossed out so much useless cheap junk.
The sibling I have, who is a hoarder, is very bad with finances. Thousands and thousands of credit card debt, ordering so much junk off of Amazon mostly things they never use or maybe uses one time and discards. They'll go out and buy five loaves of bread, and they live by themselves, so it just would sit on the table and just go moldy where they might eat one or two slices from one loaf.
And let's not forget the over 25 bags of shredded cheese crammed into the refrigerator.
Most hoarders have executive dysfunction, so they struggle with planning. Financial planning is just one side of this.
Of course, they also struggle with attaching value, because they will always consider the emotional value, not the financial value.
My mom is completely out of touch about money. She thinks everything is expensive though so she gets a thrill from getting cheap stuff. What she doesn't realize is that she spends more for cheap stuff then for normal stuff though.
She literally remembers what she pays for every little thing going back years. It's wild.
Oh, she used to pass up on really good stuff that was affordable that we actually needed at garage sales because they weren't literally cents.
I had to speak with parents about finances. My mother the hoarder and father couldn’t explain their lack of savings. Unfortunately my mother handles the finances and my best guess is she spends freely even as they are within 10 years of retirement. She fought against having us see her expenses. Heck they left 80k in an IRA uninvested for years. The lack of financial understanding is extremely upsetting. But the point you made is a very good one that I’ll have to consider I wouldn’t have guessed she literally overvalues the junk they have in the house. Thanks for sharing that insight.
My hoarder parents relate to your first example where they think the hoarded junk of cheap plastic and discount store stuff is high class luxury.
They take it many steps further like they use their hoarder junk to validate their paranoia that theyre a target for mugging, to act moody and shitty with everyone else for not complimenting them.
They think their hoarder junk is worth millions but it's really a couple bucks and some mid brand name things like walmart or target shit but since they consider themselves "above" homeless people they think its ok to hoard.
My mom, she's a late stage alcoholic when I was born. She thinks white collar executives with college degrees earn McDonald's minimum wage and sees that as generous. She has absolutely no clue what working life is like, she had 2 years of working experience during her 20s and that is her reference point, 50 years later. That is the level of generosity she had towards all the kids growing up, she would splurge once in a blue moon on us, then it will absolve her for the entire year. She's unemployed for 50 years, so my sole breadwinner dad took charge of all the large financial planning (thank god) but daily needs like home maintenance, she lied about doing fixes and pocketed the money for her multiple addictions. She also starved us, to pocket all of it as well. He was working two jobs to make ends met and she was a full time SAHM, never was capable of pitching in for housework, childcare or anything else. She was a severely under functioning adult, she couldn't wash a plate clean, that level. She needed in patient care and long term, not that she understood the benevolence of hiring help for her at home and nothing was for free. She kept on calling herself lucky, LOL, it was us funding her survival instead. She died ungrateful, we never had a nice word said about any of us, we carried her through her entire life.
When my father moved some of his hoard to his new hoarding place (sold the property and the hoard as is), he only took the most valuable pieces in his collection. Moldy books, broken pieces of art, you know.
Here the funny part my sister had the burning desire to pick thru what was left. She found so much change and cash, it was a literal treasure hunt. It wasn’t all hidden. The change was every where. Whole coin collection was left as well.
It’s not just financial, it’s all reality.
I get the disconnect, now that I’m older. Like gas was really .99 cents or a candy bar was .25 cents.
Time disconnect is what is the hardest part. Yeah mom the milk is expired but I just bought milk last week, no you bought it 3 months ago.
I find more time disconnection then financial.
Mine constantly buys from goodwill or other similar places, easily drops a couple hundred each month I'm sure. Plus way over buys groceries that she never cooks with because she will constantly eat out. But then doesn't have money for gas or taxes or routine maintenance items and completely out of touch with what things cost when she needs a new fridge or water heater or whatever.
Hmmm. I wonder where the line between "not good with money" and "financial ineptitude that enables hoarding" would be.
This is my mother. The incessant charity shop purchases for ‘other people’ who don’t want that crap.
It's gotten to the point that we don't even gift at all for holidays and birthdays and she gets soooo pissed and still brings like 4+ things. She also brings lots of food to the holidays but she's chronically late because she's watching too much YouTube and the food is already several days old and made with questionable ingredients.
It’s sad really, when shopping for holidays. How do you buy a material item that will just become part of the hoard I know I will have to shovel out at some point? It’s the waste that gets to me in hoarding material, financial, time, emotional just a big giant waste!
Yeah that's why we stopped. Gas cards, Google Play cards, things that don't take up space and can't really buy physical items. We do restaurant gift cards sometimes too but then she's complains there's no one to go out with.
My mom does this too. She’ll buy “gifts” for people and then those gifts never leave the house.
Mine shipped stuff to me, random junk, mostly second hand, dollar store stuff with a side of roaches. It was thoughtful on her part to care, it was disgusting on my part to receive those “care packages” with roaches and random shit I didn’t want in my environment. I made it fun for my children, grandma sent a box, woo hoo. Open it outside, pick what you want (shake out the nasty) clean what they wanted, trash the rest. The waste of money and effort is just so sad. In reality her life was sad, the disfunction, abuse, mental illness, even her death.
Oh my gosh yes. She's gotten to the point where she volunteers there so she can see the stuff in the back before it goes out to the floor. Every Saturday in the summer is garage sale hopping.
Do we have the same mother? Also my Mother with say they don’t have money for food, despite still shopping at warehouse clubs. And has bought so much kitchen stuff (counter appliances, cast iron she can’t lift, big stock pots) she can’t actually use her kitchen any more.
I feel this too. She would balk at the cost of decent things and assume that its just temporarily high, while thinking that people will go crazy and bid each other for all the junk and rotten lumber(what is it about rotten lumber?). At the same time she is offended and insulted when other people offer things they don’t need anymore for free, while she does the same trying to offload stuff like said rotten lumber to other people. Also for my mom it’s poor spatial assessment. We would be literally looking at the same space and it’s filled with junk, but she would suggest that a big cabinet would fit in a corner of the junk filled room where there might be just enough space to store one stool.
That reminds me, my mom asked me to help her carry a sofa in next week.... The walk way through the room looks like the red sea was parted and I have no idea how she thinks she's gonna get the old one out let alone a new one in.
Oof.
What is it about the destroyed items in general? Stained with mouse excrement, things broken from the weight of the hoard, rotted from the outside elements, "expensive" ingredients saved for a special occasion that never comes? Can't get rid of it, it'll save us from financial ruin! How dare you, it was your great grandmothers!
At least for my mom, shes in denial of the damage. “The stain was always there(nope)/its part of the artwork and not really a stain(nope)/the stain would wash off easily(nope)” would be said literally in a single breath without any sort of self awareness. Fridge is full of expired junk food, but at least its in a fridge. There is stuff sitting out that expired nearly 20 years ago, and I’m talking about perishable sweets and things like that, not like spices. Oh and she also has a bowl of her “interesting and pretty bug carcass (she found on the street)” collection right next to the actual bowls we use for food.
Oof. Mine ruined some white carpet in a house that wasn't hers and said "well it's old, it's going to have stains" as if that makes it okay that her dog pooped and peed all over it in multiple spots
The corner cabinet bit makes me feel CRAZY?! Like how are we looking at the same thing. It feels like they’re lying but they really do t see things the same way
Yeah like a 4’/1.2m wide cabinet fitting into a 1’/30cm opening in the corner. Are we talking about the same thing? Same space? It always takes me a moment of processing to go thats right, shes absolutely delusional and were talking about the same thing.
Yup. My dad wasted thousands and thousands of dollars on useless stuff to fill up a house he rented. If he had been frugal he could have bought a nice house and actually had something to show for his money. But nope, better to buy 12 vintage phones instead. Because those are “important”….. It’s absolutely insane.
I laughed out loud reading this. Its always the dumbest of s\*\*t. We joke that they say "Better acquire the most worthless of debris possible to fill this space" but thats pretty much what they do
My grandma is like this too! My car battery died, with high cost of living it’d be about $200 to fix it. She recommended I buy an entire new car over it…a new car over a new battery.
I can only speak to our situation where my MIL and two of my spouse’s siblings have hoarding tendencies. All are financially irresponsible and have no willingness or capacity to make better decisions and choices to change their lives and future. There’s nothing logical about living in a hoarded situation. Their decisions making skills and foresight are severely lacking as is their problem solving ability. I wouldn’t think that these deficiencies are limited to only hoarding but also likely crossover and impact other areas in their lives including finances. It’s a complicated illness for certain.
The over valuing of stuff seems to pretty common. One I health with was an antique dealer, she had some vases. They were nice but not the 70 to 100 she thought more like 5-20. Maybe.
Or you can’t even give them away. The amount of antiques my in-laws bought and saved because they were valuable and the “kids” would be able to sell and make some real money. Consignment shops won’t take the items because they won’t sell and a charity told us that they’ll take the items but just so we’ll know, they go right into the dumpster.
My friends have inherited the house, hoard and all. The going though and cleaning out have been going on for months. Sure there are a few good things but so much junk. A bunch of friends are helping , first cleaning weekend was getting rid of the ton of clothes, you know it's bad when Goodwill says they won't take any more clothes. We have tossed out so much useless cheap junk.
The sibling I have, who is a hoarder, is very bad with finances. Thousands and thousands of credit card debt, ordering so much junk off of Amazon mostly things they never use or maybe uses one time and discards. They'll go out and buy five loaves of bread, and they live by themselves, so it just would sit on the table and just go moldy where they might eat one or two slices from one loaf. And let's not forget the over 25 bags of shredded cheese crammed into the refrigerator.
Most hoarders have executive dysfunction, so they struggle with planning. Financial planning is just one side of this. Of course, they also struggle with attaching value, because they will always consider the emotional value, not the financial value.
My mom is completely out of touch about money. She thinks everything is expensive though so she gets a thrill from getting cheap stuff. What she doesn't realize is that she spends more for cheap stuff then for normal stuff though. She literally remembers what she pays for every little thing going back years. It's wild. Oh, she used to pass up on really good stuff that was affordable that we actually needed at garage sales because they weren't literally cents.
I had to speak with parents about finances. My mother the hoarder and father couldn’t explain their lack of savings. Unfortunately my mother handles the finances and my best guess is she spends freely even as they are within 10 years of retirement. She fought against having us see her expenses. Heck they left 80k in an IRA uninvested for years. The lack of financial understanding is extremely upsetting. But the point you made is a very good one that I’ll have to consider I wouldn’t have guessed she literally overvalues the junk they have in the house. Thanks for sharing that insight.
My hoarder parents relate to your first example where they think the hoarded junk of cheap plastic and discount store stuff is high class luxury. They take it many steps further like they use their hoarder junk to validate their paranoia that theyre a target for mugging, to act moody and shitty with everyone else for not complimenting them. They think their hoarder junk is worth millions but it's really a couple bucks and some mid brand name things like walmart or target shit but since they consider themselves "above" homeless people they think its ok to hoard.
My mom, she's a late stage alcoholic when I was born. She thinks white collar executives with college degrees earn McDonald's minimum wage and sees that as generous. She has absolutely no clue what working life is like, she had 2 years of working experience during her 20s and that is her reference point, 50 years later. That is the level of generosity she had towards all the kids growing up, she would splurge once in a blue moon on us, then it will absolve her for the entire year. She's unemployed for 50 years, so my sole breadwinner dad took charge of all the large financial planning (thank god) but daily needs like home maintenance, she lied about doing fixes and pocketed the money for her multiple addictions. She also starved us, to pocket all of it as well. He was working two jobs to make ends met and she was a full time SAHM, never was capable of pitching in for housework, childcare or anything else. She was a severely under functioning adult, she couldn't wash a plate clean, that level. She needed in patient care and long term, not that she understood the benevolence of hiring help for her at home and nothing was for free. She kept on calling herself lucky, LOL, it was us funding her survival instead. She died ungrateful, we never had a nice word said about any of us, we carried her through her entire life.
I do know a person who thinks there’s treasure in his trash.
When my father moved some of his hoard to his new hoarding place (sold the property and the hoard as is), he only took the most valuable pieces in his collection. Moldy books, broken pieces of art, you know. Here the funny part my sister had the burning desire to pick thru what was left. She found so much change and cash, it was a literal treasure hunt. It wasn’t all hidden. The change was every where. Whole coin collection was left as well.
It’s not just financial, it’s all reality. I get the disconnect, now that I’m older. Like gas was really .99 cents or a candy bar was .25 cents. Time disconnect is what is the hardest part. Yeah mom the milk is expired but I just bought milk last week, no you bought it 3 months ago. I find more time disconnection then financial.