Emotional/psychological attachment to objects/belongings

There is also probably a generational thing at work here.

I wasn't brought up in this throwaway society where objects are cheap (but not food and fuel!).

My parents lived through WW2 and were of the 'make do and mend' generation.

They were on rations during the War and my mother often spoke of it.

After the War things were kept as 'they might come in handy one day' and I've obviously imbibed some of this.

I've spent several decades collecting objects and the last decade+ trying to rid myself of the majority.

This appears to be a compulsion towards hoarding and is one of the compulsions that can come with autism.

I have it to a certain degree in that I do a lot of work with computers and motorbikes and am loathe to throw out a spare part "just in case I need it" which rapidly leads to space consumption in the house and garage.

I found the most effective approach to controlling it is to restrict how many of the things of interest you are allowed to have (a tip my therapist gave) - for example if you have a book collecting compulsion then you can only allow yourself one bookcase with the books nicely put away in it (no double layering or stacking allowed) so that to buy new books you have to give away / sell some of the existing one.

It takes discipline but does work.

Minimalism isn't for me either, but it is nice to have your collection somewhere that you can close the drawer / door and it is out of sight, allowing a more minimal living space without all your clutter to impact other peoples living space.

It's definitely a common trait. We all did the questionnaires which ask you about whether you're into collecting things.

Personally physical objects don't do anything for me. I kinda think it would be neat to own every record by my favourite band or whatever, but not to the point of actually doing it. I only really care about the practical use of things.

I got into the whole minimalism as a concept in about 2010. I say got into it. That means consuming information about it but not actually doing very much of it :) I love the idea of it. I love clear uncluttered spaces to work / live in, however, I collect things to do with radio / audio electronics and computers and find it hard to get rid of things and find when I do get rid of them I have immediate or some kind of delayed regret and want to get them back. When I was a child my room would get to total chaos stage then I'd spend a day sorting and everything out into order again for it to slowly decay again over the following months. I am interested in things. I've always been interested in things to the point where I used to get told off as a child for taking things apart to see how they work. Now I'm old and with family literally everything I have is crammed into a room where I also try to work from. It's horrible as I don't have the space needed for both storing and getting things out. Looks like a bad case of hoarding to the untrained eye but everything is here for a reason.

The other weird thing is, when I was a child, I'd get confused about objects. For example, if I went clothes shopping (something that didn't happen often as I used to wear things until they were worn out) with my parents, they'd ask me what I thought of this or that but I'd always say it was nice to avoid hurting the feelings of the object!

I have attachment to everything. I hate getting rid of anything because if it's here there's a reason for it, be it sentimental (was something of my dads) or it being of practical application I simply don't have time to use any more.

A lot of this is also driven by nostalgia. I have old tape machines, short-wave radios, CB radios, bits of 8-bit computers, an old 16 bit computer, old Mac which I use now and again to relive the past. I'm often completely consumed by nostalgia to the point where it makes me quite sad I don't have a time machine to go back. I'm one of those "everything was better" people (which is what got me onto this site originally, my first post was a reply to a really old thread about just this very thing, I found from googling autism and nostalgia). I find myself thinking back to how it all used to be all the time. Maybe this is an age thing a lot of people do but this does consume a lot of my brain space.

Ebay is a nightmare, I've got things watched that I really want to get hold of and it takes some effort to stop thinking about them. I want to get my old 12" black and white TV back, I recently bought an old VHS recorder and have plans to get hold of a HDMI to composite video converter so I can start archiving old documentaries people through the Internet have made available again, back to VHS tapes. If I had the time I'd have already done this. I have boxes of audio cassettes. As a child I used to record conversations of people in the house and listen to them again and again. I used to record loads of stuff from the radio and even have tapes full of conversations from the CB radio back in the 90s many of which I've since digitised, I don't know why. I'd like to get hold of one of the old dumb terminals I used to use at work too. Text only "green screens".

Saying all the above, at the height of my "I can get rid of stuff in the name of minimalism and letting go of it all / living in the moment" I did get rid of all my Vinyl records (ok, almost all of them) and the players and a mixer. It didn't bring me happiness of relief though. I think if I'd have realised I was autistic at the time and what these things meant (most of them were from my childhood through to mid twenties) I'd have maybe tried to hang on to these things.

I have the same thing now with digital stuff too. Since people have been archiving things to the Internet I've managed to replace a lot of things that got lost with digital versions including right back to those "Storyteller" tapes that came out, weekly in the 1980s. Someone has converted them and dumped them online so naturally I've had to get hold of them for digital storage here :)

I don't know what the fix is other to now just accept that this is the way it is and perhaps the whole minimalism thing is someone else's solution for their own specific problems. There's certainly (from all the books, blogs, podcasts etc I'd taken in) never been a discussion about clutter / minimalism from an autistic point of view and a deep analysis of why things might be how they are for some people. I mean at the end of the day if it's not causing you problems, what's really wrong with being thing focussed anyway?

Sorry for the lengthy reply.

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?

Snowman said:

There's certainly (from all the books, blogs, podcasts etc I'd taken in) never been a discussion about clutter / minimalism from an autistic point of view and a deep analysis of why things might be how they are for some people.

Interesting ... perhaps we can throw some light on it here ..

Snowman said:

at the height of my "I can get rid of stuff in the name of minimalism and letting go of it all / living in the moment" I did get rid of all my Vinyl records (ok, almost all of them) and the players and a mixer. It didn't bring me happiness of relief though. I think if I'd have realised I was autistic at the time and what these things meant (most of them were from my childhood through to mid twenties) I'd have maybe tried to hang on to these things.

I did that, and so did my autistic friend, and we had similar responses to yours.

I'm the same. I have spent several decades building up 'stuff' and now have far too much but can't seem to part with any of it. 

I too will remember exactly where each item was purchased and usually how much I paid for it. I hate wasting anything and if I part with it that is a waste of money. Of course leaving the items stashed away unused/unworn is still a waste.

It is a mindset I struggle with and do have a tendency towards hoarding. Even worthless things like cardboard packaging I keep because I might need them if I move!

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.

Autonomistic said:

Even worthless things like cardboard packaging I keep because I might need them if I move!

Yep, and I've got rid of things and needed them a year or so later, and wished I hadn't!

Sorry to hear this.

I'm buried in stuff.  I have weird old random stuff.  Know everything about all of it, or am keeping it TO find out about it.  Everything has multiple potential uses in my world.

I'm like a Womble - not eBay / Amazon type.  I assimilate stuff, rather than purposefully purchase it.

Number said:

Womble

For the uninitiated

https://youtu.be/XWQMMPFtoG4

yeah, sorry the eBay bit ties into the nostalgia and recovery of things I wished I'd actually kept hold of. they're generally things I've had at some point and let go of. it's very heavily tied into nostalgia.

I absolutely agree.  Growing up, our family kept the same stuff, only rarely buying "new" things.

When I remember the "bin collection" in the 1970's (quantity wise  = 1 bin bag per week) compared to now (I suppose x2 or x3 bags)....it is horrific!  How the hell did we let it become like this Chuck-away-Charlie free-for-all.  

Thank you, Madame Cholet.

Number said:

Thank you, Madame Cholet.

A cheesey 1970s song just came into my head ....

(I realise you won't take random links ..) ...so this is for others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8XCHgqR7Kk

It includes original vinyl crackles!

Number said:

How the hell did we let it become like this Chuck-away-Charlie free-for-all.  

There is a massive change between how life was as we were growing up - me in the 1960s/70s, my husband in the 1950s/60s.

It is quite extraordinary this business with clothes.

My mum made ours as we were poor and we wouldn't dream of just getting rid of them because they weren't fashionable.

Actually, they never were fashionable.

Goods were expensive and valued and nowadays they are cheap and not valued.

Agreed.  It can't go on this way?  I try not to "join in" with the "if-you-fancy-it-just-buy-it" attitude.  I think I do better than most!