‘Hoard ’til you’re bored, then hoard more’: Minimalism isn’t on Peter Goers agenda

Hoarding is in the eye of the beholder and Peter Goers talks his love of collecting and stuff.

Every time I watch TV shows about chronic hoarders I think, “lucky bastards”.

I like stuff. Lots of stuff. The more the messier. Am I a hoarder or a collector? My favourite interior designer is Tutankhamun – you pack everything in and hope for the best. You never know what you night need in this world or the next. As soon as you throw something out, you need it. Less is never more.

Peter Goers talks hoarding and minimalism. Picture: File.

Extreme, obsessive hoarding can be a problem but it’s a problem exacerbated by the moral outrage of society and so-called professional organisers who write lots of self-righteous books about de-cluttering and then those books become clutter.

Society generally disparages those who accumulate things but reveres and rewards those who accumulate property and money.

The Victorians and Edwardians loved their clutter but minimalism seems the ideal to our age. Bugger minimalism – if you want to hoard, go for it.

If it’s dangerous and damaging to your health and wellbeing, and houses more vermin than usual, you may have a problem.

People who collect mountains of newspaper (unless you are Marty Smith of The Last Word Column in The Advertiser) or collect garbage have a disorder called syllogomania – look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls, and if you still have a Funk and Wagnalls you also have a problem. If you hoard pets or your own excreta or dead rotting animals, seek help.

Hoarding can be a disorder and up to 14 per cent of us suffer from it.

If you are messy, like acquiring things and collect things, you are normal. If you have to negotiate well-worn paths through mountains of crap and your house is barely inhabitable, you have a difficult compulsion.

Often OCD, social anxiety and depression are the comorbidities of hoarding disorder.

Very often hoarding is a reaction to a tragic loss of a loved one – you compensate by accumulating things which can’t be taken away from you.

Hoarding is in the eye of the beholder – one person’s junk is another’s treasure. I know someone who collects wardrobes and fills them with op shop clothes she can’t access.

The most infamous hoarders are the brothers Homer and Langley Collyer – the stuff of legend and the legend of stuff.

Their hoarding came to the attention of a shocked world in 1947 when their long-dead bodies had to be excavated under vast piles of newspaper and stuff including 14 grand pianos. It took five days to find one body among 130 tonnes of stuff.

Let this be a lesson to us all. But looking at the photos, their hoard doesn’t seem that bad.

I’m a messy person and a lifelong hoarder. I’m a bookshop, second-hand shop, auction room, op shop obsessive.

When I moved from Norwood to Glenelg I divested 15,000 books and I’ve missed 14,999 of them and have bought some of them again.

If I never bought another book I probably have enough unread books on teetering piles to see me out. I can find things in my own disorder. I’m not squalid although I do collect dust and my house is cleaned now and again – whether it needs it or not.

Collecting is hoarding with discrimination. We could all be less materialistic but it’s human nature to nest and to gather.

Marie Kondo, that elfin, erstwhile popular organiser constantly asked her victims if an object “sparks joy”. That arbiter of stuff can get stuffed.

Hoard ’til you’re bored. Then hoard more. Then share it before someone else shares it after you’ve gone.

Sadly, you can’t have everything because where would you put it?