Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion coping with desire to hoard

DD recently had a major meltdown out of nowhere where it came out that she was extremely upset with me for recycling her graded schoolwork. I have always done this in her full view and never thrown away things like writing assignments or long-term projects--just your basic math and spelling worksheets. It turns out that she wants to keep these, or at least have the right to keep them. She also is upset that we have in the past thrown out some of the vast quantity of artwork she produces, with or without (I admit, sometimes it is without, for little stuff) her permission. She says she wants to keep these things "because they have memories," btw.

She has always had a tendency to want to keep everything...just...everything. I know this is not uncommon for kids. Okay, I try to accommodate to some extent--her room is farrrrr more full of random stuff than I would like and her desk is stuffed full of papers--- but clutter makes me crazy and we have quite a small home. Also, beyond that, I wonder how much of this is a manifestation of anxiety, perfectionism, etc. Both DH and his mother have a lot of trouble dealing with "stuff" and paper and tend to pile, keep everything, never sort, etc. I feel like this can be a kind of paralysis that can really be quite serious.

Thoughts? The Lego thread going now makes me think this is not at all uncommon here. BTW, we have also had the Lego issue. My kids are allowed to keep one creation "out" at a time and the rest we take photos of.

I have the same problem with my daughter and husband. It drives me nuts, but I eventually give in. My husband wants to keep all of our daughter's toys and work as well as his own.

I have no advice - and am actually looking for some.

I have the same problem, and like your DH, I have a problem myself, too. Our house is packed full of crap. I will be looking for any solutions anyone has here, but I have to say I'm not hopeful.

This isn't a problem in our house. Our DD has tried to hoard in the past, but we've usually managed to clean things up without an overwhelming amount of conflict. Usually the conversation is that we need to get rid of these things to make room for new things, and after a while, she sees our point of view, and even becomes helpful. We've been through this more than once in her playroom, and after she gets rid of the toys she doesn't need, she quite appreciates how she has more room to play.

If this were to be a bigger issue, we'd employ our normal philosophy of "here are some boundaries, within those, go nuts." So in this case, we'd give her a bin that fits in her closet, and tell her that's for all her papers, she can decide which ones go, and which ones stay. And then, as papers start stacking up in random places again, we'd let her know that she needs to deal with those by a certain time/date, anything we find left out after that is going in the trash.

Some of us are clutter people, I can't thinks too straight without stuffs all around. Not a problem, except, sometimes one needs to walk and not show up on some reality TV show as a before picture. I think people with neat desks will never understand those of us with messy ones any more than extraverts will ever understand introverts.

I use reminiscing while sorting to sort must haves, like to keeps, and mostly indifferent to stacks when moving or purging. I'd suggest talking through a similar system with her. Maybe special boxes for the "best of" keepers. And keep a trashcan/recycling box handy, at least from my experience if I keep the "whatevers" I'll have to review them again before they go away.

This is your middle school dd, right? I wonder if part of the reason this is coming up now as an issue and hadn't happened in the past is that she's going through a phase of growing independence or something like that related to her age? If she is, it might be a phase she gets past. I do think it's a reasonable request on her part to want some control and choice over what is and isn't saved, so maybe you could take this as an opportunity to decide together what to save, how to decide what to save (is it all up to her, do you have some say etc), and *where* to save it (I think it's totally reasonable that it all be saved in HER room lol, and that she not be allowed to have her room grow to be a candidate for a TLC show :D).

One idea for her schoolwork (if she really wants to keep it all) is to invest in an inexpensive (I know, that's a relative term!) scanner and let her scan her work in and save it in a folder on a thumb drive or on a computer etc. And then toss the paper! I add that "and then" in because I can see my hoarding-tendency-dd scanning and still wanting to keep the paper somewhere.

polarbear

I was like this as a child, and I now have sentimental DS10 who weeps if you throw things out. I view the hoarding impulse as an anxiety behavior.

We have "throwing out" practice, actually, where we make choices together about what to keep and how to store what is kept. It has to be in his room (not mine...), and it can't be spread all over the floor. This takes a lot of 1:1 coaching and support, but has gotten better over time.

DeeDee

I really like the scanner idea!!!! We may have to try that for DD7 who wants to keep all her school work.

We have told both our girls that if you get a new toy you have to get rid of a toy and if it is a new stuffed animal they want to get then they have to get rid of 2 or more (depending on size)from the hoard they have at home. That helps some, but more often than not, they try to pick some little toy they got as a birthday party favor or from a Happy Meal to get rid of, so we have to set stricter guidelines.

I'm so glad our family is not the only family with this problem - whether it is the child or the parent (or some of both).

I admit I sometimes have a hard time throwing things away that I feel I may use or need at a later date. Some of these things are legitimate items and others are probably worthless, but you never know. DH is the one that can throw things out without batting an eye.

Cheap pictures and storage is solving this issue for us. We don't even have a scanner now; I just take pictures with my phone. (This works great for most art and big writing; I'm hoping by the time we get to smaller writing she 'll be typing important stuff or keeping random poetry in a nice journal anyway). It's still a hard choice sometimes as I'm cleaning but a great pressure valve I keep more than enough and will have to purge, but tg for iPhones and excessive GBs of storage!

Thanks for the thoughts. BTW, she is 9, not in middle school yet. One issue that came out was that she was upset about things we had gone through and sorted together (I thought!) on a recent room purge. She expressed happiness about how the room looked at the time, but apparently felt regret afterwards, missing the items we had thrown out. I have no idea how to handle that because we did do it quite collaboratively. I guess she felt pressured--she knows I like to get rid of clutter. I am a neat desk person, by the way. I prefer my desk surface empty, actually (maybe one or two small stacks).

I do think I will buy her a storage bin and allow her to manage the papers more herself. She has room for this in her room now. I suppose I just wonder how far to allow this. I truly feel it's a problem for DH and my MIL. We have done the photo thing a lot with building creations. She never asks to see the pictures, interestingly.