Treasure is in the mind of the beholder. I be holding onto my STUFF!

Learned Behavior

Like during hard times. Take durning the Great Depression for an example. Them people reused, repaired, and kept almost everything because resources were scarce and waste was dangerous. That time in history shape beliefs and habits that contribute to hoarding today.

Like we save every button, zipper, usable fabric from old clothes and from old cars. Nothing goes to the junk yard without someone going though and pulling out all the bulbs, switches, hose clamps, fuses, and reusable item that old car has left.

One its about saving money, two it saves trips to city when you something, but you don't have to go, because you have the stuff already.

I actually DID research this, a very long time ago, because I have a friend who is a hoarder. I'll tell you what I can remember. Hoarding usually starts after the person who BECOMES a hoarder suffers a terrible, terrible loss of some kind. It can be a death of someone very close, or a painful divorce...but the person feels very, very alone, completely unloved, and totally devalued afterward.

BECAUSE they feel SO alone and uncared for, they start to collect "things". The "things" have NO value, for the most part, but in the mind of the hoarder they are ALL valuable "things". The hoarder doesn't understand that JUNK has no value. What the hoarder SEES and understands is that JUNK is free, so he can have a LOT of it...all he wants!

IF the hoarder collects plastic bags, he KNOWS he will never have to buy trash bags. He is saving money, AND caring for himself. Often, his home will start to fall apart all around him, and he HAS the stuff he needs to fix it up again...but it all just sits there...in a swelter of dirt and depression, and it becomes part of the "hoard".

One man's tat is another man's treasure.

adhd

Greed. Just like billionaires.

Some sort of "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?"

An intense dislike of wasting anything?

A fear that having disposed of an item, it might be needed next Tuesday / October / ten years hence?

Who is to say what is "useless" anyway? It may not be to the "useless" to the owner - surplus or rarely-used perhaps.

We could invert the question too: what causes people to become extreme minimalists, their spick-and-span homes so devoid of anything but absolutely essential furniture that they resemble property-developers' brochures? (One wonders if such people have any hobbies!)

Great question

mental illness

Well the reality we've created makes hoarding an easy hole to fall into. We are teeming over with glut. And so much trash. It's insane

Mental issues

Loneliness, OCD, Depression, Anxiety, Feels unloved, Loner, Bipolar.

Mental illness. Pathological nostalgia, fear of regrets, fear of the loss, pathological emotional attachment to inanimate things.

I'd actually love to see some in-depth documentary about hoarding with the input from psychiatrists and specific case studies. Or even better, listen to a podcast about it.

Holding on to the past, mental health issues.

Associating physical items with memories.. Fear of losing memories if you let go of the objects associated with that memory..

Usually, it's not about the items themselves, it's about the memories, emotions, or "just in case" thoughts attached to them.

cause they might use it someday lol idk

If u watch that TV show hoarders I learned most of the time it is from some kind of trauma

Mental disorder. Emptiness inside perhaps

A lot of times it seems to be traumatic events in their lives that trigger it. Such as a death, a divorce and so on.