A to Z about Paper Hoarding

Paper Hoarding is one among many types of hoarding disorders. This kind of hoarding situation involves accumulation of every single paper – be it newspaper, magazine, invoices, bills, letters and much more.

Paper Hoarders generally do not categories the papers they hoard. Most of them find categorizing, a boring activity. They just dump it in a drawer or some box hoping that it would prove helpful in the near future. They feel that if they discard those papers, they will lose out on something really important. 

Hoarding one kind of thing and then another, ultimately leads them to end up piling everything. A situation arises where you cannot move around in the houses due to these hoardings. The piles of newspapers, magazines etc. take up so much place, that movement as well as a room’s usability is affected.

Paper Hoarders have answers to all questions that you shoot at them. For example: 

If suppose the hoarder is hoarding newspapers and you ask the reason behind it, he might say that the newspaper contains a delicious recipe. You might wonder why s/he is keeping the entire newspaper and suggest him to cut it out the required article. S/He will find some other reason to keep the newspaper like there is a funny comic strip or an informative article etc., citing ‘n’ number of reasons to keep the newspaper. S/He will not give up on it easily. It is found that paper hoarders sometimes indulge in thievery. Books borrowed from the libraries or friends, are usually not returned. The only thought in their mind is the doubt whether s/he will be able to borrow it again, sometime in future.

Any house hoarded with paper is an eye sore, giving a shabby look. There is a risk that the hoarder might end up in hurting himself. His place will serve as a home to many rodents and insects. Mould too can also grow up in such places. Fire breakout is also one among the concerns. It’s not just the house, but relationships too suffer.

De-cluttering becomes really difficult for these hoarders. The hoarder will be much attached to the magazines, newspapers, letters, bank statements, gift-wraps etc. Giving up on it may be hard, but worth it.

OHIO Rule for Compulsive Hoarding

Of recent, hoarding behavior has come into public purview and is almost being reconsidered as a psychological condition on its own, rather than being grouped with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Hoarding is a condition when the patient is unable to discard items such as belongings, newspapers, journals and even trash leading to clutter. This leads to acquiring of seemingly useless items which are difficult to sort and organise. There are probabilities that a hoarder has undergone some trauma in his/her life or is suffering from social isolation. 

A lot of psychological and organisational programs are being targeted at hoarders relinquishing by their unusual behaviour. One approach which is usually considered is the OHIO approach: an abbreviation for “Only Handle It Once.” It goes by the philosophy that if one picks something; one must make the decision then and there, to either retain it or discard it, thus avoid piling it. This can rather be an influential approach as it influences the decision making process of a hoarder and eggs him/her to avoid piling up. 

However, the OHIO rule might not be feasible in all cases. In some cases, it might even have a backfiring effect: the hoarder might come to a halt in their decluttering efforts, deciding whether to really discard an item or not. Some items just cannot be discarded by a hoarder due to a psychological connection with it, such as an heirloom or gift.

In the above scenario, there are some alternatives which can be considered, rather than going OHIO. Compartmentalise the items which one is unsure of discarding in order to think of it at a later point of time. Create another section where one will be chucking the items but will be reconsidering them one last time before chucking. The third compartment should be stuff that you are sure of chucking (discard them, there and there). If you keep mobilising these items by compartmentalising them, one is likely to move along the discarding process rather than remain stagnant and cluttering all over again. Hence, mobilisation is the key.

- Bio Cleanse Pty Ltd.