A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.
– George Carlin
Dante’s Inferno
The 14th-century epic poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is 14,000 lines of allegory describing the author’s philosophical journey through hell, Purgatory and beyond. In the story Dante one night dreams of a beautiful hillside and at the top is a paradise in waiting. All he has to do is climb to the peak to reach it.
As he embarks on the journey, it’s interrupted by a monster who tells him that before he climbs to the top of the hill, he first has to descend through nine circles of hell, down to the pit, and back again. Only then can he ascend to the top.
The ancient poet Virgil is his guide and, when the two enter the 4th circle of hell, they encounter dueling armies at war with each other; each rolling huge stones with their chests and crashing about.
One army shouts “Why do you hoard ?” and the other army shouts back “Why do you Waste?”
Virgil describes them as the hoarders and the wasters in life. They’ve spent so much time worrying about their wealth and possessions “that they lost light of God and were forever doomed to this joint punishment”.
These heavy stones represent the material objects they clung to so tightly in life and the metaphor for “hell” is the opportunity cost of possession obsession.
Hoarding and Clutter
Recently a colleague at work called me about an elderly gentleman who he was helping. The older fellow had a number of issues threatening his ability to remain home independently.
My friend asked me if I had any resources that may be able to assist the man in maintaining his aging in place status. After listening to the scenario, I wanted to assess the situation and see how I could help.
As it turns out, the elderly man is a compulsive hoarder . Living alone as a bachelor in one of Portland’s most desirable neighborhoods, he was literally a prisoner buried in his own treasures.
Definition of Compulsive Hoarding
Hoarding is defined as the acquisition of and inability to discard items, even though they appear to others to have no value. People with Compulsive Hoarding syndrome (CHS) have immense difficultly throwing things away, even items of little or no value such as old newspapers, bits of string, worn-out clothes, and junk mail.
Most people with compulsive hoarding disorder are thought to have obsessive-compulsive disorder ( OCD ). In fact, a third of people diagnosed with OCD have hoarding behaviors. So the challenge with people who hoard is they are usually oblivious to the problem and resist any kind of intervention.
Randy Frost, PhD, one of the country’s leading authorities on compulsive hoarding, describes the definition of Compulsive Hoarding as a three-fold process:
- The acquisition and failure to discard, possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value.
- Living spaces so clutte...
