Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome ~ an OCD

I was going through my e-mail a little bit ago and opened up a page from Vocalpoint.....one of the articles they had was "Do you hoard more than you should?".....so I, being a hoarder, decided to see if I do. What I found was truly eye-opening. This is the short little quiz in the article:

Here’s a short quiz adapted from ocfoundation.org/hoarding.

Do you have stacks of old magazines, newspapers, and mail? YES, I save magazines
Do you still have clothes that you haven’t worn in years? YES, although I recently gave some stuff to the Salvation Army (but I had saved these things for over 20 years!)
Are there chairs, beds, sofas, or entire rooms in your house that are so full of stuff you can’t use them? YES, our storage room is overflowing with stuff. Also, a room upstairs is full of stuff
Do you hesitate to invite people over because of the clutter? Yes and No, Not so much because of clutter, I'm just not very social
Do you get upset when someone throws away your stuff? YES
Do you personally have trouble throwing things out? YES, very much so! I always think "what if I need it someday?"
Do you believe this stuff will be useful to you some day? YES
Do you have a continuing urge to buy or acquire more things? YES, I buy things in the hopes that it will help me be more organized
Does hoarding run in your family? YES (not just you, dad, mom is bad at it too) :o)

This is a bona-fide disorder. Obsessive Compulsive Hoarding....I never realized how bad I was either until I went to this website and read the article on Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome. http://www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding/about-hoarding/compulsive-hoarding-syndrome-introduction.php

I keep everything! I save the box to things (telephones, video games, gaming systems, etc.)thinking I might need it in the future to return the item or for better resale if I would ever sell the item.....I save bags...not like Wal-Mart bags, but "special" bags....the bigger, heavier kind...like from high-end stores...whether it was from a purchase I made or if someone gave me something in it, I still save it! I save old calendars because I might need to look back to see if I wrote something on a certain day and I might need that information. I save magazines.....this is probably my biggest weakness....I have stacks and stacks and stacks of old magazines on a shelf in our storage room....I think to myself "there might be an article that I want to refer back to", so I save the whole magazine.....I have Reader's Digests from 1995! Probably the next biggest weakness I have is saving boxes....different from what I mentioned above, I save any and all sizes of boxes.....because I might need it to pack something in or mail something in.....if you ever need a box, I probably have one that will fit your need...LOL. But seriously, I even have a hard time using some of the boxes that I have because I know once I use it, I most likely won't get it back.....how whacked is that?!

I always knew my "hoarding" was weird. I always referred to it as being a Pack-rat. That's what my dad always called it, but I never realized it could possibly be a disorder. Not that I have the money to be spending on doctor visits to figure out what to do about it....I guess I'll have to get over it on my own...and start throwing things away (yeah right....I don't know if it'll be that easy...LOL).

P.S. Another thing that bothers me, and we always joke around at work about it being an OCD, is that to cross off a day on the calendar, the lines should go from corner to corner and corner to corner (in an X)...if the lines aren't touching the corners, it drives me batty and I have to correct it! I've tried seeing if I can just leave it, but I always end up fixing it.....guess there may be some validity to the OCD connotation.