The habit crept up on Kim. She would arrive at garage sales as they were ending to pick up what remained. “I’d load my car full of the free stuff on the side of the road: clothes, things that needed ...

Hoarding behavior, often depicted in media as extreme clutter and an inability to discard items, is more than just a habit of collecting. It’s a complex psychological condition that affects millions ...

A lot of people think of hoarding as something extreme — a home crammed to the ceiling with possessions. However, it tends to start gradually, and research has found that it can begin in adolescence ...

You might have noticed an elderly relative or neighbor whose home has gradually filled with newspapers, boxes, and items that seem to serve no purpose. What looks like simple messiness could actually ...

Individuals who experience hoarding related to OCD may have distressing feelings about discarding items. It can drive compulsive saving behaviors that they recognize as excessive. Obsessive-compulsive ...

Amanda Uhle’s recent book Destroy This House (Summit Books, 2025) opens with an unsettling image of her parents’ home: “The garage in their Pontiac home was filled with food, much of it perishable.

A while back, I wrote a post about food hoarding for Psychology Today. In a conversation with the person who inspired me to write that post, she talked about her brother, who, she says, is a money ...