A SHOCK statistic made me spit my Honey Nut Loops across the room and onto the parrot when I read it in my trusty Herald this morning (as I write) .
It was to the extent that an estimated 200,000 people in Scotland could be suffering from hoarding disorder. Somebody else said it might even be double that, which a quick headcount out the window tells me means “nearly everybody”.
Though hoarding is undoubtedly a problem, I’m taking that figure with a vat of salt, the same as I do with local government finances and weekly alcohol limits.
All the same, hoarding is now taken so seriously that it’ll be the subject of an international conference later this year at a venue in Edinburgh that will be cluttered up by experts.
Of course, hoarding can be a serious matter. Some individuals have collected so much junk that they can’t get to the toilet or kitchen (why not be like me and combine them into one?) in their own homes. No one has been clear on the outcome of that. One pictures a sufferer sitting there and thinking: “Hello, I feel a need to micturate. Oh, hang on, I forget I cannot get through to the cludgie. I shall just have to sit here till I burst, I guess.
I say “sufferer” as getting an international conference in your name confers on hoarders the exalted status of having a “condition”, which then becomes the basis for a sick note: “I am sorry but I cannot come into work today as my hoose is covered in stuff.”
Stuff and nonsense, of course, but the condition is discussed in socio-psychotic language about impaired social and economic functioning, for which I guess a case might be made if the research grant is large enough. It’s also theorised that sufferers might be prone to emotional over-sensitivity. If that is true, then surely some form of corporal punishment is called for.
Of course, most of us hoard to some degree. I’m right emotionally sensitive – ken? – and consequently am probably more prone to hoarding than most. I’ve bought hundreds of books on decluttering – that’s them over there, blocking the door to the toilet – but still cannot summon the courage to throw out the extraneous junk (mainly books indeed) that I’ve accumulated.
In the course of under-researching this treatise, I learned that book-hoarding is called bibliomania. This includes having multiple copies of the same book, which makes my three editions of The Lord of the Rings, and indeed three of The Hobbit, enough to have me diagnosed by the men in white coats.
I cannot help it. A working-class lad, I dreamed of becoming ordinarily middle-class, which status was exemplified in nothing better than book-lined walls. All the reasonable, avuncular figures in fiction had such a backdrop.
Even now, when my social status is lower than when I started out and I must acknowledge that I’ve failed to better myself, I fear to demolish that aspect of my home, though it be largely made up of cheap paperbacks in Ikea “Billy” bookcases.
To be fair, I have started to psyche myself up for a chucking oot, and have selected an estimated two books that will go when I sell the house. To that same end, five weeks ago I brought five crates of videos down from the attic.
They’re still blocking the way into the kitchen. It’s partly because they’re so difficult to get rid off. You can dump crates of books on sleeping vagrants, but nobody wants videos these days. You can’t even recycle them as there’s something environmentally toxic in the tape. Nobody knows what you’re supposed to do with them.
Serious hoarders tend not to collect materials as worthy as books and videos, right enough. They hang on to junk mail, catalogues, old culinary equipment, and actual detritus such as take-away cartons.
Old clothes are also listed, though I guess many of us are guilty of that to some degree (suits I never get a chance to wear now; old club t-shirts). Again, we all hang on to things that “might come in handy one day” and that, after many years of being constantly seen, can never be found when you need them.
However, I’m sure we’d all draw the line at broken potato peelers and odiferous curry cartons. Perhaps the fact that putting things in the bin is so complicated nowadays has some bearing on the matter.
Perhaps it’s to do with our acquisitive society and maybe even not wanting to throw away a part of oneself. Enough excuses already. October’s conference in Edinburgh will, I trust, call on the state to crack down hard on such disgraceful behaviour – except where it involves books and videos.
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