Paul Hopkins: Our journey through life accumulating clutter

A hoarding disorder is where a person gathers a huge amount of items and stores them. This is usually in a chaotic manner and results in amounts of clutter that are difficult to manage. Hoarding can be a significant problem if the amount of clutter interferes with everyday living or is causing distress or affecting the quality of life of the person or their family

I suspect men are greater hoarders than women. My father was somewhat of a hoarder. Would seldom throw anything out that he no longer had use for. Kept it for the proverbial rainy day. When he and my mother died in the millennium year and we were clearing out the home of my upbringing, I found new shirts, still in their wrapping, that were a size too small but my father, as he told me, hoped to lose weight – it was my mother's apple tarts – and one day they would fit him.

I, perhaps, inherited this trait from my father. While I am not an excessive hoarder to the extent of crazy clutter, I do hang on to things that have sentimental meaning. The mother of my three children will, the day after her birthday or Christmas, throw out the cards sent to her. I don't. I have every birthday card my children have sent me down the past 30 years. I'm sentimental. My wife is not.

Birthday cards aside, I still have old mobile phones and charging cables that really need to go to the electronic dump. Clothes I no longer wear. And old newspapers and magazines, some with my byline in them.

Many people collect items such as books or stamps. This is not considered a problem. The difference between a 'hoard' and a 'collection' is how they are kept. A collection is usually well ordered and the items are accessible, whereas hoarding is a different matter.

The reasons why someone begins hoarding are not fully understood. Some reasons might be that it can be a symptom of another condition. Someone with mobility problems may be unable to clear large amounts of clutter. Someone with learning disabilities may be unable to categorise or dispose of items. None of these reasons apply to me, I hasten to add.

In his novella ‘Franny And Zooey’, JD Salinger recalls a visit to a sibling’s home: “The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla.”

In our journey through life we tend to accumulate so much clutter — and I don’t mean the emotional baggage of life’s ups and downs — concrete stuff, objects, countless bric-a-brac, bought, borrowed or come-upon and stored for some other day when we might just find a use for it. We never do, of course, and the stuff just piles up. The stuff of furnishings, of pastimes and hobbies, the family memorabilia.

When was the last time you saw your dining room table? Or at least the top of your dining room table? If you’re like most busy people, you know it’s there somewhere — buried under piles of old bills, stacks of unread newspapers and copies of your children's school reports.

Maybe it’s your car (like me), hall closet or garage that’s stuffed to the gills. Clutter can easily materialise in all the corners of our living and working spaces. And the affliction gets worse as life grows busier, more crowded and faster-paced.

Ironically, says my psychologist friend from Magherafelt, the very things we buy in order to make our lives ‘simpler’ and more convenient often end up exacerbating the problem. We get bigger closets, and bigger storage bins, bigger houses and garages to put it all in. But, somehow, the stuff always keeps pace.

Clutter sneaks up on us so insidiously that by the time we see all the stacks and piles and layers for what they really are, the mere thought of waging battle against them can be terrifying.

That said, those old videos contain footage of my children’s first steps; those newspaper clippings copies of my early days in journalism; and it would pain me to part with old vinyl and cassettes. As for my books, well even though I may never read Franny And Zooey a third time, it would be equally painful to part with my books for, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, no place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a [man’s] library.