In our homes, there are many things which we hardly need and still some in the family want to store it forever claiming that we may need it someday. Some want to waste so many things which we may even need. There are two categories at this point, the Hoarders and the Wasters, who spend eternity rolling enormous boulders at each other on a desolate sun-baked plain. Why do we hoard? Why do we waste?

The answer is somewhere deep in our genes, perhaps, or in the social programming of millennia that is colliding with an era of unprecedented access to consumer goods. Once acquired, such subjects tend to become permanent additions to the collection, despite age, disrepair, or manifest uselessness. After all, maybe the children will need them someday. For older people the challenges of keeping clutter at bay take on a specific dimension.

Household demands have grown in complexity as an array of vendors now deliver cable TV, Internet access, and cell phone service  and their accompanying monthly bills to a home already lashed with a steady stream of junk mail. Add the inevitable health concerns, complicated medication schedules, and related memory issues that advancing age can bring on, and a once functional household can descend into chaos practically overnight. The dangers are both physical-a cluttered house is an obstacle course for people with limited mobility and psychological. Particularly when the day comes that all that stuff has to go.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a clinical term for the most severe form of cluttering behavior. Hoarding cases emerge via newspaper headlines periodically whenever authorities uncover homes filled to the rafters with newspapers, garbage, or simply piles of possessions that cover every available surface and often render the homes uninhabitable because of animal infestations or structural damage.

Understanding the mind of a clutterer is a difficult process. Such behavior categorize into its three major manifestations-compulsive acquisition of useless possessions, living spaces so cluttered they can’t be used, and distress or an inability to function because of the hoarding. The syndrome can appear in patients as young as 13 and tends to worsen with age. While the phenomenon is often associated with obsessive compulsive disorder, it happens outside of OCD as well. There is also a link with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. There may be some genetic influence.

Try an experiment
Make a hypothesis about how sad you’d feel if you got rid of these artifacts. Then throw them away and compare your resulting distress with that hypothesis.  Typically your reaction will be far less severe than you’d feared. Once you know that, it might be a little easier to let the next treasured object go.

1. Create a record:  Photograph or videotape belongings before you give them away. It’s the memories that are important, not the objects.

2. Give and take: Giving your belongings to charities whose work you support is more satisfying than selling them to strangers.

3. Start small: Tackle one room or one part of one room at a time. Don’t leave the area until it’s finished, because you’ll get distracted trying to find a home for all the stuff you’ve just picked up and will end up churning, shuffling the same clutter from one part of the house to another.