Published on 12, July, 2020
I was wondering today if this is an autistic thing.
I've spent several decades collecting objects and the last decade+ trying to rid myself of the majority.
However, I have given up on the idea of ever being minimalist.
I notice that I remember where everything came from, even, when purchased, which shop in which town.
I try not to be sentimental about things, but sometimes I can't help it.
My mother, who I believe was autistic, was a hoarder in quite an extreme sense.
My autistic friend finds it very hard to part with belongings.
Everything has an association.
Are others like this and are there contributors here who are genuinely minimalistic and don't have an attachment to things?
Thank you for these replies.
There's some fascinating stuff contained within them.
Iain said:a compulsion towards hoarding and is one of the compulsions that can come with autism.
I didn't know that .
I hadn't realised that (I think you are saying) autistic people are more likely to be hoarders than others.
Any idea, anyone, why we may become more attached to objects than allistics do?
what are people defining as hoarding?
according to the NHS site :
"A hoarding disorder is where someone acquires an excessive number of items and stores them in a chaotic manner, usually resulting in unmanageable amounts of clutter. The items can be of little or no monetary value."
Value isn't just monetary and how chaotic is chaotic? For example all my things are here for a reason. I don't just keep old bottle tops and weird items I have no use for, although to other people (my partner who refers to it all as "his cr*p") they might not understand the meaning of the objects, the value to me or why I'd want to have some archaic technology everyone else has moved on from.
Yes, I can see that.
When I mention hoarding, I'm thinking of my mother, not myself.
I don't see collecting as hoarding.
I see picking up a magazine from a pile and it being dated 1973, finding a mouse nesting on the sofa next to her, opening a door and everything falling out etc etc being really hoarding.
Nothing whatsoever being thrown away, including the containers food come in, is hoarding to me but I know some people see just collecting/attachment to objects for a reason as hoarding.