Meredith nicely pasted this on IRC yesterday, and I got to thinking that it should be a thread on the boards, seeing the reaction of the few people who were around to check it out.

http://www.randomthink.net/misc/ebay/

Now, I'm a packrat of sorts, but I also have organizational tendencies, and that webpage just makes me want to go and organize the whole house--NOW. I could never live in that mess for long.

Oh. My. God.


Wendy

You know, just looking at all that dust makes me want to sneeze. Poor woman! And poor woman's daughter, who has to live in that mess!

Kaethel

Eeeep!! I thought I was a bad packrat, but now I don't feel bad at all!! Besides, I *do* go through my stuff at least once a year an throw a good chunk of it out. :p

Good grief, that woman needs help!

Sara

Geesh. Both Stuart and I can turn a blind eye to something sitting where it shouldn't be for months at a time, but this is beyond the pale! My first thought was to wonder how much time a week the woman spends cleaning all that stuff. But then of course...she doesn't. Yowsa!

Case in point - the other week, Stuart was in Southport for a week at a conference and I finally got fed up waiting for him to move three boxes stowed under the stairs. Last summer, he spent ages getting the hall looking great, and from the moment he finished these boxes were stowed there spoiling the entire look for months. One of them contained Christmas decorations shoved there when the tree came down, so I had to laugh when I saw that part of this poor girl's website!

I basked in my pristine hall for four days, finally looking just as it was meant to - neat, clean, tidy and stylish - then Stuart came home and dumped his luggage in the new space under the stairs I'd created for him...Yup, they're still there... :rolleyes:

I'm going to show him this link. Maybe that will put the fear of hell in him.

LabRat

Ew. It just can't be!! People living in *there*??? How???

And I sometimes feel I have too many books lying around... I guess I'll reconsider :p

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Holy Christ. It makes me want to finish emptying out that spare bedroom that I'm suspiciously eyeing from my computer. It's so ridiculous looking right now because I'm making piles to donate a bunch of old things to Goodwill and not be the pack rat I normally am...and suddenly I realize I'm not such a pack rat after all!

Eek!
JD

I'm with Kae - I felt the urge to sneeze just looking at that! I really do think she needs some behavior counseling on the compulsive purchasing. That has gone past normal and around it a few times.
Yikes!

I spent two hours looking over that stuff last night.

That lady's son (you can tell from the comments page) needs a box of matches and a can of petrol.

Save the birds, burn the rest. :p

What intrigues me is not so much the incredible pack-ratting -- I've seen pictures of houses that were (sadly) considerably worse (stuff actually rotting).

It's the difficulty the son seems to have between distinguishing between behavior that seems harmless and normal (at least, IMO), and the seriously insane (and I mean that in a clinical sense) hoarding. For instance, if the phone works and so does the answering machine, so what if they are old? Corded phone and answering machines that use tapes are still used in many a household, and why not? (If they don't work, that's a different story.) And dry goods such as crackers and cereal are good for months after their sell-by dates; it's the sheer NUMBER of them that is problematic, not the fact that they could be fresher.

*shrug* But then again, I have some pack-rattish tendencies of my own, so I may be the wrong one to talk.

I so badly want to clean it...My God!!! Wow..all I can say is

Yeah, my fingers are itching to organize. And sell a few of those boxes.

http://www.squalorsurvivors.com/

Found that link on the thread about the crazy mom. The most scary part of that site, to me, isn't the photos of before and after, or their stories, it's the section on "overcoming" . . . because the perfectionism page is SO me. I have strong tendencies in that direction--and I could very easily end up in 2nd degree squalor. *shudders* Those pics of the house were certainly a wake-up call. Heavily 2nd degree squalor.

Anyone else recognize themselves on this page?

http://www.squalorsurvivors.com/overcoming/perfectionism.shtml

Oh. My. Freakin. God!!!

What I found most amusing was the fact she lived in a prison state and that she would never throw anything out with her details on it in fear a prisoner would steal her identity or know what medicine they took. Just the fact that you get prisoners to sort your garbage cracked me up (I've never heard of this happening before).

Believe me, that's nowhere near as bad as it can get. At least it's relatively clean. We have a TV program over here called A Life Of Grime - all about the work of rat catchers, bin men, sanitary inspectors etc - which regularly shows homes which are in a much worse state than that. You see people who hoard absolutely everything, never clean anything, and leave rotting food around (and much, much worse) until the rats, maggots and flies move in. The worst are the ones where the owner has pets, because they often can't stop at just one cat or one dog, but keep ten or twenty of them - and don't house-train a single one. The stench must be foul.

Really, it's very sad. These are people who are vulnerable and confused. They've lost their way and are trying to make up for it by keeping things.

But my hat goes off to those who have to clean up after these people. I really don't know how they do it!

Yvonne

Sounds like she may be obsessive compulsive and needs professional help. And here I thought I was bad about buying books! But at least, I actually read them. And I am in the process of regrowing my collection. I lost a whole bunch in the fire the other year.

I tend to apply my perfectionism to my writing and the work that I get paid for, not to anything else. While my apartment may not be the neatest, I did recently vaccuum and you *can* walk through it without worrying about stepping on stuff.