I've watched that show and it scares me. Its a squiggily line between collecting and hoarding.(Im not sure about which side of the line I stand on) I knew a guy who saved all his urine in jars in his basement and cleaned his combs and saved all his old hair in a big ball. Eeeeewwwww!
If your wealthy and you do weird things you are eccentric. if your not filthy rich your just nuts OldWolf
I see no relationship between collecting old cars and parts and the true hoarding seen on the A&E programing. Most of the people known on the Hamb as hoarders are those who have more parts than the next guy. You know, the guy who won't sell you something just because he's not using it right this minute. Jealousy in our case, sympathy and understanding in the other. Apples and oranges....
There are those of us also that have played the game for years and apreciate what we have now. It just gets better through time.
If it was'ent for hoarders, we would'ent have our hobby today, lady bird Jonhson would have crushed everything in the 60's, I call them care takers, and I have been buying from them for years, true they are some that wont sell , but they will trade, so the trick is to ask them what they need, and trade for what you want.
its not hoarding, its saving of semi-precious recyclables(new word), this happened to Charlie Harmon in Springbay.IL. he had 21 acres of nothing but pre 1970 cars and he would sell parts off of them. the State of Illinois came in and arrested him for 32days while they went up on the hill and crushed every single car. Isnt the new socialism program in America great?
The new idea of "helping" someone with their supposed problem of having a collection is one of the biggest problems yet. There have been so many wrecking yards "helped" out of business in my area lately it makes me sick. It really scares me to think that people out there are looking to "help" the rest of us out of the hobby by taking away our sources for old cars and parts as far as private ownership goes. Doesn't seem right that someone can come take what you have paid for just for the fact that they don't like how it looks where it is sitting. Lots of locals here have lost personal collections, large or small, due to new housing developments complaining about the eyesores they can see from the bathroom window in their brand new house. I've had neighbors turn me in for cars in the yard with bad tabs, and things like that. At the point that happens I will usually get rid of the car or just cough up the license fees to keep everyone happy. Most of the people right near my house are older and I get big grins from lots of them when I'm driving something old down the street. I just do my best to make sure my always changing collection of new or old cars looks sanitary and organized as to keep neighbors happy. Not everyone is so lucky, I know of people in the area that drive around near my house looking for supposed abandoned/junk cars to turn in. They claim to be doing their civic duty by helping keep the city clean. I hope I catch one of them checking around my house someday so I can help them back to their car.
That's the nice part about living out in BFE where I do. Nobody cruises around snooping, because there's a very good chance they'd get shot at. Even the county assessors don't come unannounced. They get shot at sometimes anyway, but it's near guaranteed if they go walking all around a man's house without getting permission first. They call that courtesy around here. I guess folks in the city don't even make the attempt anymore. The older I get, the more I hate people in general.
There's a lot of poverty where I live, halfway into the Third World. The Third World, like the poor everywhere, is real people, and one thing I can tell you about real people is that they hoard stuff. They hoard stuff because they know that they can't be sure if they can get hold of what they'll need when they need it. That is quite true, and it is the condition of life for the vast majority of the world's population, and has been so since time immemorial. It is normal and natural for people to hoard stuff. If you want to talk of pathological behaviour, conspicuous consumption in the affluent West is pathological behaviour. Now people are actually shamed and punished for failing to consume at the required rate of profligacy! We're bad citizens because we don't want to throw our entire lives away and buy new ones every three months. We're bad citizens because we don't support the machine that needs us to do that in order for it to survive. I'll grant that some hoarding becomes pathological, but surely that is when the world becomes so threateningly unpredictable that our natural mechanism for dealing with uncertainty gets out of control and people start collecting blown light bulbs. But the fault is with the world we've built. Fashionable minimalism isn't an approach to monastic simplicity, it is an extreme form of conspicuous consumption. Its basis is not making do with little. Its implication is that one can make do with nothing at all because one can get hold of virtually anything at a moment's notice, and can afford to throw it away immediately it has been used - and that one will be able to do it again the next time. Normal people don't live like that. Hot-rodding has always been about undermining the machine, taking the product apart and putting it back together the way I want it. Henry Ford has been our provider but also our most vehement adversary.
Having that much stuff is taxing on your mind. You want to get rid of it, but you "can't." My grandfather wasn't a hoarder, but he had a LOT of crap with a big house and a barn. When he died we had to sift through everything, and while there was some treasures and antiques, most of it was just worthless old junk. We ended up getting a big blue BFI roll-back-style dumpster and filled it to the top. I used to save stuff as a kid thinking it would be worth something someday, but the truth is unless it's worth something today, it's junk unless so much time goes by that the object is obscure. Most of us won't live that long. There is a neat saying: "Clean out here" (point around the room), "Clean up here." (point to your mind.)
Being an old farm boy I have allways had a junk pile for repairing stuff around the place. If you have a bunch of old cars that are parked in a row and junk and weeds picked up around them so the rats and skunks don't make a home it's fine. We have all visited junk yards that were well maintained and they are a joy to tour, but I have also visited shit yards with vermin and crap all over that you were in fear of your life. Most stuff can be orginazed to look just fine to all who visit. Folks like that old guy on TV is just lazy and don't want to organize his stuff. It should not have come to this. I'm glad he didn't collect cats!
Did you see the episode with the cat lady? Whacked! How about the woman with the food? That'll make you think twice about eating food that someone brings to work... or when the neighbor whose home you've never been in brings cookies or cake over... I feel bad for these folks... and I feel even worse for the folks that live around them and with them. I think sometimes the people that live with them are even more affected and don't reach out until it's unbearable... if they do at all. On another episode recently there was a man from the Northeast that hoarded woodworking tools and magazines... he had them all over the house... on the stairs... all over... the thing with that was why didn't his family just make him keep it in the basement or out in the garage or a shed/workshop... mine would?
I only have quite "Hoarding" or collecting cars because I have no money at this time to do so. But you can bet your sweet ass I be Buying more if I could, even knowing that theres a slim chance that I will be able to complete them. But no one said just because it isn't finished its not worth collecting. I have several cars that I would let go of. But only with the understanding that you will help me work towards finishing some of the others. With that said usally everyone walks away. Tellin me they will get back to me. Theres alot of time and or money spent keeping these cars inside out of the weather. Not going to just give a car away to someone who thinks it would be fun to have a old car. Then relizes its more than they can handle and pisses it away. I got kids that can do that. Hey its a Hobby. And you know what they say "the guy with the most toys in the sand box WINS"
"Anyways car stuff and tools and stuff don't count towards hoarding do they? " Of COURSE not. Go down to the damn library and look it up. "Hoarding" applies only to old washing machines, banana peels, and newspapers. Collecting old cars, dogs, and women is what the Good Lord MADE space for. Sheeesh.
Guilty !!! Kool Stuff Hoarder...30 projects and all the parts to put them together. offering to take stuff for free isn't helping -- friggin vultures !!!!
Just remember guys, seriously, hoarding is a disease. You cant stop it unless you do before it consumes you. Plus, its hereditary!! My dad was a hoarder, or what "they" still call a product of the depression. He died in 1999. To date Ive filled over 6, 30 yard dumpsters, given away tons of stuff, and burned old mags and papers. The barn is almost clean, but there is another full barn that needs a cleaning...for me its overwhelming. I can really only hope I dont end up filling the empty space with useless crap and perpetuate the sickness.
I considered myself somewhat of a hoarder for quite some time. When a tornado came and destroyed my home and shop over six years ago, I was really devastated, as a normal person would be. I lost a huge collection of old car magazines going back from 2003 all the way back to 1969. I had read most of them once, then boxed them up. They got scattered and soaked, and all were ruined. Lost tools, furniture, cars, trucks...all stuff that can be replaced. Fortunately, I still had the majority of the photos I had, plus paintings and drawings my grandma had done over the course of 60 years. As I was salvaging stuff, I realized I was hoarding all kinds of things, and a lot of crap, too. It was time to change my behavior towards stuff, and especially about hoarding stuff. Now, magazines get read, then either donated to a local homeless shelter or tossed out. My old car assortment had 14 cars and three tractors when the tornado hit. Now, I'm down to three daily drivers and four hobby cars, plus a much smaller Diesel tractor. Clothes that don't fit? They get donated to charity. And on and on...I decided right after that tornado; which me and my family walked away from the only room in the house that remained untouched!...that I did not want to die one day and have my family have to sort through barns full of shit to figure out if anything was worth saving or selling. The parts I have these days relate directly to the cars and trucks I presently have, with very few exceptions. Buying parts just to buy them, and not have a specific application that they are being used on, seems pretty silly to me these days. I'll buy spares for my cars all day long! But, say, to buy a '56 Cadillac front bumper without having the car it goes to, or a plan to make a few bucks flipping it, makes little sense. Hoarding really IS a form of compulsive illness, REGARDLESS of what is being hoarded - cars, parts, toys, stamps, coins, lint, whatever!
My Dad was one. The only thing that held him back was the size of his yard. He passed away last year and now it up to us to clear it out. Old wood, 12 lawnmowers, bald tires, metal, and countless more.....just junk. It does run in the family, my sister can't have anyone over because of her house.....sad really......now my stuff.......it's worth something........Haha
Having isles or pathways in the basement and garage..............is that a sign of anything? Howabout the ability to remember everything you have ever had and or sold?
Personally I'd give up the junk and fight other battles but I can't look down on a man for defending his rights but... It's too late...(heavy sigh) They've gone too far... There's no fixing it... Start over somewhere else? there is no-where else... this was it (grimmace of lament) Time to give up, roll into a ball and just take the boot.
LOL, that's about it. Now when signing mortgage papers, and they push a sheet of paper in front of ya stating that you must obey all requests that your neighbor demands, then I'd say it's over.
Well, I am certainly in agreement that a persons property should be there's to do with as they please. That said it is also quite possible that depending on the situation that they could be creating a public health liability. Thats the only case I can truely see justified govt. intervention. That said it does bug me when you see someone hold onto valuable items, particularly automobiles, and let them rot away. Of course I still believe that it is there property to do with as they please, however much it gets under my skin. I can also relate to the hoarders in the sense that there are certain things I somewhat irrationally hold onto. I've probably kept every auto magazine I got since the early 90's. Not that I would probably ever read them again. I've finally been purging them as trash space permits with the goal of not keeping anything past a few months. Might a lose a few gems in there, possibly, but they serve me no purpose what so ever save to take up valuable space.
But it MIGHT be possible if you had EVERY issue of every scientific and science fiction pulp mags and a yard full of old appliances to recreate the ancient communication device and contact the mother base on mars...wouldn't it? Everytime I get over hoarding and clean the place out I hear "I need a #####, got one out there?"
I sincerely believe that our nation's founding fathers would have no qualms with those who keep a moderate inventory of hot rods and hot rod parts on their property, whether it be in a garage, yard, or basement, as long as it doesn't reach the point of seriously depreciating the surrounding neighbors property values... If you want to have a reasonable amount of cars and/or car parts on your property, that should be your God given right as an American taxpayer... However, when your "hoarding" gets to the degree where it is putting you, your family, or your neighbors in some sort of potential danger, I believe then and only then is it acceptable for law enforcement to step in and make things right... I have seen examples on the A&E "HOARDERS" program where it's been absolutely necessary for either the respective municipality and/or law enforcement to intervene and force a resident to clean up their mess... I saw one episode of the TV show where a woman had the horrible habit of saving food far beyond the expiration date of same food-- There was food in her fridge and house that was rancid with mold and bacteria!!-- Her reasoning for keeping the rotting food made no sense whatsoever-- She was posing a serious health hazard-- In cases like that, I have no problem with Uncle Sam taking liberties and requiring that something be done to address the unhealthy hoarding issue... I also saw an episode of the show where a woman actually had deceased animals accumulating in her house (cats)-- Yikes!!-- Once again, in a case like that, something MUST be done to prevent an unhealthy environment from posing a threat to the person suffering from the "hoarding disease" and their surrounding neighbors... Let's face it, some of these "hoarders" are in desperate need of professional help and services... Unfortunately they're mentally and emotionally challenged... "The Doc" (Celebrity Drag Racing Authority & Visionary)...
RatFink wrote: .damn hoarders...Get Off My Lawn! Jimi: Damn, RatFink, you are hard-core, man!!! LOL Seriously, though 37Kid has a good point on post #22. People (old and NOT so old) often have an emotional attachment to things -- I think, cars in particular. Because they are/were directly associated with a loved one, or with god times of the past. <!-- / message -->
Speaking of some REALLY sick hoarders, read the Wiki piece on the Collyer brothers!!! YOU WILL BE AMAZED!
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