Here's a question for ya.. is being a pack rat (keeps garbage)a mental/perso!


Question: i'm not talking about keeping things that can be used, but garbage that you CANT USE AT ALL...like..
a tire that doesnt fit any car that you have..
or a leg to a chair that you dont have anymore..
or an electric drill with the cord cut off from like 1980 and you already have a nicer/newer one..

or even a pair of shoes from when you were in ballet class in like highschool and you've since gained 400lbs

there has to be something wrong with a person who collects garbage like that.


Answers: i'm not talking about keeping things that can be used, but garbage that you CANT USE AT ALL...like..
a tire that doesnt fit any car that you have..
or a leg to a chair that you dont have anymore..
or an electric drill with the cord cut off from like 1980 and you already have a nicer/newer one..

or even a pair of shoes from when you were in ballet class in like highschool and you've since gained 400lbs

there has to be something wrong with a person who collects garbage like that.

yeah i just read on a mental health website that being a packrat is indeed a mental illness. its supposedly a form of OCD.

the bad news is that the website said that packrats are rarely cured. because think about it........lets say the packrat suddenly had the urge to completely clean up their home. even in this unlikely event........once everything is all cleaned up they are going to start saving everything once again. and before you know it the house will be a complete mess all over again.

but they say its worth getting help from a therapist who specializes in helping packrats. its a start. and definitely better than doing nothing at all.

Sounds like something related to OCD, although there are conditioned specifically related to hoarding stuff and collecting stuff. It is a kindof disorder and maybe a mental illness of sorts.

There was a guy who became famous for this on TV called Mr. Treevis who collected absolutely everything. In his case it was because he was a Jew in a Nazy death camp and since he had nothing and his wife had died, he just turned to this.

To find out what causes it, really you need to find out about thier past as it's often something related to that.

I am a pack rat and come from a whole family of them. I don't know why we seem to end up with so much junk. I guess we think somewhere along the line these things will be able to be fixed. I know we need to go through everything and just throw out all of this junk - we are out of room for it all. I wish you all the luck in the world - it's hard to throw out stuff but it's for the best. Start small like a box full of stuff and realize it's stuff you haven't used in years. I have thrown stuff out that way before and so far I haven't missed any of the stuff - it's just stuff. It'll be OK.





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