I'm obsessed with hoarders. Not
exactly sure why but I guess I do have a strange fascination with how people
"arrange themselves" in their everyday lives, their Alltag.
In German hoarders are called
"messies" and are said to be suffering from the "messie-syndrome".
As far as I can tell there
seem to be two subtypes of hoarders: the actual hoarders, junk collectors, (and
obsessive shoppers) whose collections get out of hand, and then the true
messies-people (more often women than men?) whose inner turmoil has led them to
turn their living spaces into literal trash heaps. (E.g. the lady who feeds her
pets from the can and throws the can on the ever-growing heap in her bedroom).
The extent of their messiness is truly mind-boggling, not to say dangerous.
The German wiki describes the
messie-syndrome as a “Wertbeimessstörung”—which
is a fantastic way to describe it imo—a disorder connected to in inability to accurately
or realistically assign value to objects/things.
I can relate to this in the sense
I sometimes tend to make mountains out of mole hills (not literally like some of
the hoarders) which is probably one reason why they fascinate me. My own compulsions lean more towards an obsessive desire for symmetry and neatness,or to do things in a specific order.
Perhaps I’m more obsessed
with obsessive behavior than with hoarders specifically. More on that another
time. In the mean time here is a link to my ”People and Things I’m obsessed with Pinterest board.
