More Than Just Clutter

Understanding Hoarding Through a Human Lens

We’ve all heard it before—someone jokingly calls themselves a hoarder because they have too many coffee mugs, or they haven’t gotten around to cleaning out the garage. The word floats around easily in casual conversation, tagged onto cluttered desks, packed closets, or nostalgia-driven collections. It’s become one of those clinical terms, like OCD, that’s lost its weight through repetition. But when we reduce “hoarding” to simply being messy or overly sentimental, we blur the line between everyday behavior and a complex psychological condition. And in that blur, real people living with hoarding disorder often get buried—along with the empathy they deserve.

As an educator in psychology, I’m not here to diagnose. I’m here to illuminate. Because beneath the surface of what’s often mocked on reality television or shamed in conversation, there is something deeply human happening. Hoarding isn’t just about stuff. It’s about safety. It’s about memory. It’s about control in a world that may have once felt dangerously unpredictable. It’s often the residue of trauma, grief, or chronic anxiety, manifesting in the only way the brain could find to cope.

But hoarding disorder is also misunderstood—and that misunderstanding can be cruel. We tend to view it as a personal failing, a sign of laziness, or a refusal to “just let go.” This misreading not only isolates those who struggle with it, but it can also reinforce shame to such a degree that seeking help feels like another risk they’re not ready to take. When public discourse around hoarding centers on ridicule, spectacle, or disgust, we miss a vital opportunity to engage with compassion instead of condemnation.

This article is an invitation to do just that: to shift our cultural lens. To move away from judgment and toward a more psychologically informed understanding of what it means to live in a world of overwhelming attachment, distress, and disorganization. And perhaps most importantly, to recognize that the behaviors we so often label as “weird” or “gross” are sometimes the visible signals of a nervous system trying its best to survive.

Let’s pause, then, before we label. Let’s learn to look again—not at the piles, but at the person behind them.

The Psychology of Possession – Why We Hold On

Not all clutter is created equal. Most of us hold onto things we don’t strictly need—old birthday cards, childhood drawings, concert tickets, clothes that no longer fit. These objects often serve as markers of memory, identity, or belonging. A faded T-shirt becomes a stand-in for a season of life. A chipped mug reminds us of who gave it to us. The drawer full of outdated cables might signal a desire to be prepared—just in case. This kind of attachment is both common and, in many ways, deeply human.

Psychologically, the tendency to hold onto objects is connected to memory consolidation, emotional association, and even our need for control. The objects around us act as external storage for emotional and autobiographical meaning. They help us feel tethered to our past, and in some cases, to people or times we’ve lost. In this way, the act of keeping things can feel protective—a quiet, often unconscious attempt to preserve continuity in a world that constantly changes.

But there is a threshold where this behavior crosses into something more painful, more impairing. Hoarding disorder, as defined by clinical criteria, involves a persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. This difficulty is not about indecisiveness or laziness—it is tied to significant psychological distress. For those living with hoarding disorder, letting go doesn’t feel like a simple choice; it feels like a threat to their sense of self, safety, or control.

Importantly, hoarding isn’t about collecting. Nor is it about being overly sentimental. Collections are typically organized, intentional, and curated. Hoarding is disorganized, overwhelming, and often accompanied by embarrassment or secrecy. Where others might see trash, a person with hoarding disorder may feel they see potential, necessity, or an irreplaceable memory. The items are rarely neutral. They are deeply emotionally charged.

It’s easy to say, “Why don’t they just throw it away?” But that question assumes a level of emotional detachment that is often inaccessible to someone in the grip of this disorder. The attachment to objects is not merely about things; it is about internal experiences projected outward. Discarding an item may feel like discarding a piece of oneself, or opening the door to a flood of unresolved grief, fear, or chaos.

This is not a matter of preference or eccentricity. It is a matter of psychological overwhelm. And until we understand the emotional architecture beneath the visible clutter, we are likely to keep misreading the behavior as a personal flaw rather than what it actually is: a signal of internal distress that deserves compassion, not criticism.

Hoarding Disorder – A Closer Look

Hoarding disorder was officially recognized as a distinct mental health condition in the DSM-5, separate from obsessive-compulsive disorder, though there can be overlap. Its core features include persistent difficulty discarding possessions, intense emotional distress associated with letting go, and an accumulation of items that congest and clutter active living spaces to the point where their intended use is obstructed. In short, this isn’t just about having too much stuff—it’s about an ongoing struggle that interferes with daily life, relationships, safety, and well-being.

But clinical definitions only tell part of the story. The experience of living with hoarding disorder is often marked by shame, secrecy, and isolation. Many individuals are aware that their living situation is unsafe or unsanitary. They may want to change, may even try, but find themselves stuck in a cycle of avoidance, panic, and self-recrimination. The disorder is not rooted in defiance. It is rooted in distress.

In most cases, hoarding doesn’t emerge overnight. It builds slowly, often beginning with trauma, loss, or chronic stress. For some, the behavior begins after the death of a loved one or during a period of instability. For others, it may appear gradually as a coping mechanism for anxiety or a way to assert control in a life that feels otherwise unmanageable. The items themselves can begin to take on a protective quality, becoming a psychological buffer against pain or fear. It’s not uncommon to hear someone say, “I feel safer with all my things around me.”

This internal logic is not irrational. It is adaptive, in the way many psychological defenses are. The human mind will always try to protect itself, even if the strategy eventually becomes self-defeating. From the outside, it may appear that the person “just won’t get rid of anything,” but from the inside, the process of letting go can feel like emotional dismemberment. It can stir overwhelming feelings of vulnerability, exposure, or even terror.

Many people with hoarding disorder do not seek help, in part because of the social stigma attached. Media portrayals often frame them as lazy, irresponsible, or delusional. These portrayals overlook the depth of pain, the desperate attempts to self-regulate, and the loneliness that often runs underneath the piles. The result is that the very individuals who need support are least likely to receive it.

It is crucial to remember that hoarding is not a quirk or a character flaw. It is a serious and often debilitating disorder that requires nuanced understanding and, ideally, treatment that includes both therapeutic and practical support. Cognitive-behavioral therapy tailored for hoarding can help—but so can a cultural shift in how we talk about and respond to this condition.

When we reduce hoarding to a spectacle, we miss the human being behind it. When we say “just clean it up,” we ignore the neurobiological and emotional grip of the disorder. And when we mock, we only deepen the shame that keeps people suffering in silence.

The Mockery Machine – Why Ridicule Hurts More Than It Helps

It’s one of the most quietly cruel things we do as a culture: we turn suffering into spectacle. Television shows pan slowly over piles of garbage, zoom in on soiled furniture, and cue suspenseful music while the narrator describes the “horrors” within a home. The person at the center of the episode is rarely humanized. They’re framed as the problem, the obstacle, the source of distress for family members and neighbors. The mess becomes the storyline. The pain becomes entertainment.

This kind of media portrayal does more than misinform—it dehumanizes. It turns a psychiatric condition into a cautionary tale, a character flaw, or a grotesque form of voyeurism. Viewers are invited to gasp, judge, and feel grateful they are not “like that.” And while it’s true that extreme cases of hoarding disorder can be shocking, what’s far more shocking is how little compassion is extended to the person underneath the overwhelm.

Even outside of media, mockery is woven into everyday language. We call someone a hoarder because they save wrapping paper. We roll our eyes at a friend who keeps too many old sweaters. We share photos online of messy spaces and comment with disgust or pity. What we rarely ask is: what’s going on in this person’s life that makes letting go so hard? What wound might this clutter be trying to soothe?

Ridicule, especially when it becomes habitual, is a form of distancing. It lets us believe that someone else’s pain is so foreign, so exaggerated, so “other,” that we don’t have to imagine ourselves in their position. But if we’re honest, many of us have had moments when we’ve used things to feel safe. We’ve delayed dealing with a pile of paperwork because the task felt emotionally loaded. We’ve kept something we didn’t need because it reminded us of someone we weren’t ready to say goodbye to. These small experiences aren’t the same as hoarding disorder—but they exist on the same emotional continuum.

Mockery doesn’t just hurt feelings. It closes the door to understanding. It increases shame. And for someone already buried in emotional overwhelm, shame is a cement weight. It freezes change. It makes people hide. It reinforces the belief that they are not just messy, but broken. Beyond the personal impact, ridicule also erodes public discourse. It contributes to the casual misuse of clinical terms, encourages diagnostic caricatures, and leaves little room for authentic empathy.

What people with hoarding disorder need is not a televised intervention or a scolding from society. They need safety. They need regulated nervous systems in the room. They need support that honors their emotional experience rather than bulldozes it. Change, when it happens, is often slow and layered. It is relational. It begins not with throwing things away, but with restoring dignity and reducing the fear that letting go equals being exposed.

Before we criticize someone for what their home looks like, we might pause and ask: what is their pain trying to say? And why are we so quick to laugh at something we don’t yet understand?

Compassion Over Judgment – A Call for Empathy

When it comes to hoarding, the urge to “fix” is strong. We want to jump in, throw things out, clear the space, and help someone start fresh. But often, that impulse—however well-meaning—skips over something essential: the person’s emotional reality. What looks like a pile of useless objects to one person might feel, to another, like a lifeline. The objects may be tied to identity, safety, grief, or meaning. Discarding them without consent or understanding is not support. It’s a violation.

Empathy doesn’t mean enabling harmful conditions. But it does mean suspending judgment long enough to understand what the behavior is protecting. When we encounter someone struggling with hoarding disorder, we are not just seeing disorganization. We are seeing symptoms of something deeper—often trauma, loss, or chronic anxiety that never had a safe place to land. Compassion asks us not to turn away from that discomfort, but to meet it with presence and patience.

Judgment, on the other hand, is easy. It comes in the form of comments like “how could anyone live like this?” or “they brought it on themselves.” But judgment is rarely about the person we’re judging—it’s more often about our own intolerance of discomfort. We project disgust as a defense mechanism. We want emotional clarity, and we’re uncomfortable with what we can’t categorize neatly. But human behavior is rarely tidy. And hoarding disorder is one of many conditions that remind us how much of human suffering lives in the gray areas.

Empathy isn’t passive. It requires effort. It involves listening without correcting, witnessing without rushing to change. It also means confronting our own biases and assumptions—about cleanliness, control, success, and emotional health. In Western culture especially, there is a moral undertone to tidiness. Cleanliness becomes conflated with virtue, and clutter with failure. This moral framing is not only inaccurate—it’s harmful. It says that people who struggle with organization are somehow less worthy of respect.

True compassion challenges that narrative. It makes space for complexity. It understands that healing doesn’t come from coercion, but from connection. And it recognizes that most people who struggle with hoarding already carry immense shame. They don’t need more lectures or ultimatums. They need someone to see them as more than their environment.

If we want to support—not shame—those with hoarding disorder, we have to begin by dropping the story that they are simply choosing to live this way. We must stop treating suffering as spectacle, and start treating it as signal. The question isn’t “Why don’t they just clean up?” It’s “What pain has gone unheard for so long that this became the only way to feel safe?”

Empathy doesn’t mean accepting unsafe conditions. It means walking alongside someone in their healing—at their pace, with their consent, and in a way that affirms their dignity. That’s how change begins.

Why Language Matters – From Diagnosis to Description

Language shapes perception. The words we choose are not neutral—they carry weight, history, and assumptions. When we casually refer to someone as a “hoarder,” we’re not just describing a behavior. We’re placing them into a category that has been culturally loaded with judgment, mockery, and misunderstanding. And much like how “OCD” has been flattened into shorthand for neatness or control, “hoarding” has become a punchline that hides the very real emotional and neurological complexity behind the condition.

We tend to forget that diagnostic terms are not meant for casual commentary. They’re clinical tools, created to help professionals understand and support individuals experiencing psychological distress. But once these terms enter the public sphere—especially through media—they often lose that nuance. “Hoarder” becomes a fixed identity rather than a symptom of suffering. It becomes a label that eclipses the person behind it.

This matters, because words can reinforce stigma or open the door to empathy. When someone hears themselves referred to as a “hoarder,” they may internalize that label as shameful, broken, or beyond help. It becomes harder to ask for support when the language available to describe your experience is soaked in judgment. And for people who don’t meet the criteria for hoarding disorder but still struggle with clutter, anxiety, or grief-related attachment to objects, there is often no language at all—just embarrassment, confusion, and silence.

Part of psychological literacy involves learning to speak more responsibly about mental health. That doesn’t mean we need to walk on eggshells, but it does mean we should think before we label. Instead of saying, “She’s a hoarder,” we might say, “She’s really having a hard time letting go of things, and it seems to be causing her distress.” That small shift in language moves us from judgment to observation, from conclusion to curiosity. It reminds us that behaviors are not identities, and that people are always more than the challenges they face.

Language can also be a bridge. When we speak with nuance, when we describe rather than diagnose, we create space for conversation rather than dismissal. And when we model compassionate speech, others follow. In families, workplaces, and communities, the way we talk about someone’s behavior becomes part of the environment in which they either heal or hide.

There is no perfect vocabulary. But there is intentionality. And when it comes to hoarding—or any misunderstood behavior—intentional language is one of the first ways we signal that someone is safe to be seen without being reduced.

Final Thoughts – Teaching Ourselves to Understand

There is a moment—if we’re paying close enough attention—when judgment softens into understanding. When we stop asking why someone can’t let go and start wondering what has hurt them so deeply that they need to hold on. That moment is where true education begins. Not the kind found in textbooks or diagnostic manuals, but the kind rooted in human connection, in psychological insight that expands our capacity to see each other fully.

As educators, family members, neighbors, and fellow humans, we are all tasked with the responsibility of reading beyond the surface. Hoarding disorder is not simply about things—it is about fear, trauma, attachment, loss, and the way the human nervous system tries to survive in the aftermath of disorientation. For some, that survival strategy becomes visible in piles of belongings. For others, it looks like withdrawal, control, overachievement, or avoidance. We all cope. Just not always in ways that the world understands.

If we wish to be a more compassionate society, we must retire the instinct to mock what we don’t understand. We must replace spectacle with inquiry, impatience with patience, and pity with partnership. This doesn’t mean ignoring the real dangers or dysfunction that hoarding disorder can create. It means recognizing that healing is relational. That beneath the behaviors that frustrate or confuse us are stories and systems of meaning that need to be witnessed, not erased.

So the next time you’re tempted to use the word “hoarder” to describe someone’s messy drawer or sentimental attachment, pause. Ask what story you might be telling. Ask whether that story makes space for humanity or turns struggle into stereotype. Then ask how you’d want to be spoken about if your pain ever became visible.

We are all carrying more than what others can see. Some people’s burdens take the form of objects, layered in dust and history. Others carry theirs internally, in ways that seem more acceptable but are no less heavy. If we can learn to approach all of it with empathy, then perhaps we’re not just understanding hoarding—we’re learning to understand each other.

Previous
Previous

The Archetypal Foundations of Ontological Experience

Next
Next

Still Wanting More: On Aging, Place, and Visibility