{"id":1241,"date":"2011-08-31T16:07:21","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T20:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hnetalk.com\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2011-08-31T16:07:21","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T20:07:21","slug":"pack-rat-or-hoarder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/2011\/08\/31\/pack-rat-or-hoarder\/","title":{"rendered":"Pack rat or hoarder?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My friend proudly exclaimed \u201cI have every pay stub I ever received\u201d (as though this was some sort of accomplishment). I guess it wouldn\u2019t have been so bad if he was in his teens, but this guy was ready to retire! \u00a0He had quite a large home office but year after year he added shelving units so he could \u201corganize\u201d his things until eventually, he had boxed his desk (and himself) into a small corner of the room.<\/p>\n<p>While I wouldn\u2019t classify him as a hoarder, he was definitely a pack rat.\u00a0 But what\u2019s the difference?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>During my years of helping others get organized, I organized one hoarder.\u00a0 The difference between my friend, the pack rat, and the hoarder was significant.\u00a0 The pack rat\u2019s home office was still a functional room.\u00a0 The hoarder\u2019s entire home was no longer functional.\u00a0 The dining room couldn\u2019t be used for dining anymore.\u00a0 (They ate on TV trays in the living room.) We spent two full days de-cluttering just the dining area to reveal a table they hadn&#8217;t seen in years.<\/p>\n<p>You may be a hoarder if you:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>have a room in your house that you can\u2019t use because it\u2019s filled with things<\/li>\n<li>have stacks and stacks of old newspapers, empty containers, or anything<\/li>\n<li>compulsively buy or save excessive quantities of items of any kind<\/li>\n<li>save items seen by most people as unneeded or worthless<\/li>\n<li>treat all saved items as equally valuable&#8211;whether or not the object has sentimental, financial or functional value<\/li>\n<li>experience intense anxiety or distress when attempting to discard-or even think about discarding-what most others view as useless objects<\/li>\n<li>engage in saving activity to combat anxiety-provoking thoughts such as <em>&#8220;What if I run out?&#8221; <\/em><\/li>\n<li>are unable to clean your house due to excessive clutter<\/li>\n<li>any room in your house has a path<\/li>\n<li>the &#8220;things&#8221; in a room are piled from floor to ceiling<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend proudly exclaimed \u201cI have every pay stub I ever received\u201d (as though this was some sort of accomplishment). I guess it wouldn\u2019t have been so bad if he was in his teens, but this guy was ready to retire! \u00a0He had quite a large home office but year after year he added shelving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals-and-motivation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZZxW-k1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}