When I was growing up on a farm, hearing the term ‘Your room
looks like a pigsty’, brought to mind
the muddy slop that I knew our pigs loved to wallow in. I knew most animals
liked to keep their living areas clean, so the pig was different in its
propensity toward filth and slop. Humans are a step above animals so most take
great care to keep their surrounding clean and organized, and it is good not
only for practical reasons, but a clean environment is a reflection of a person’s
love and respect for self, family and others. Hoarders are of an entirely different
breed, some have a mysterious and compulsive need to surround themselves with
stuff, sometimes filthy, rotten stuff.
One of the most extreme cases was that of the Collyer
brothers, Homer and Langley, from the 1940’s, who hoarded up a four story
brownstone in Harlem, both sons of an opera singer and a doctor. The hoard was
developed after the death of the brother’s parents, as both discontinued normal
life as the hoarding took over. Both brothers were educated professionals when
the hoarding began, and both died buried deep within the tightly hoarded
building.
See Links New York Daily News: Collyer Brothers
Hoarding can be either ‘clean’ and organized or filthy and
disorganized, presenting extreme biohazard risks to the hoarder and those who
live with, or near them. Many hoarders
are intelligent people, and many have extensive resources, which further
confounds the mystery of why a person would hoard.
According to Mayo Clinic, there is no clear understanding of
why hoarders hoard, although there are signs and risk factors:
