Hoarding Brits are Sitting on £81.6 Billion’s Worth of Junk
With Brexit around the corner – whatever that may be – Britain may have dig into its reserves to meet the challenge. We were delighted to learn MYJAR has discovered a pot of gold after it surveyed 2,000 local residents. Antiques Roadshow may need to prepare for a sudden uptick in business, because hoarders homes can be full of treasure
What’s All This About a Pot of Gold?
Over a third of the 2,000 people surveyed admitted ‘they never get rid of old items’ according to The Sun. The Mirror added one in ten had never got rid of old possessions. MYJAR thinks the problem is we are overspending and under pressure to purchase things we don’t even need.
Their survey discovered half our hoarding nation hangs on to what it doesn’t need ‘because it might come in handy one day’. This reminds us of more than a few refrigerators we looked into when we are after a beer someone was keeping ‘just in case’.
However when The Sun dug deeper it found a fifth of hoarders hang on to things because they might be worth something someday. Well at least this is keeping generations of vinyl records, mobile phones and gaming systems out of landfills.
MYJAR which offers quick loans recommends ‘It’s important that we carefully consider what we are buying and why we need it rather than spending on impulse, and also that we might be able to sell unwanted goods rather than hoard them.
‘’But at the same time, we all like to keep those items that are sentimental to us, so we shouldn’t feel the need to throw it all away. Statisticians extended the sample and figured out there must be £81.6 billon’s worth of junk cluttering Britain’s 25 million homes.
Are We Faced with an Epidemic of Hoarding Disorder?
We decided to drill down and find out why this happening, in what was once ‘a green and pleasant land’, but is now littered with junk. The National Health Service explained that hoarding is an acknowledged medical condition.
‘A hoarding disorder,’ they continued ‘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.
This is not the same as collecting items where the collection is ‘well-ordered and the items are usually accessible’. A hoard, by comparison is ‘usually very disorganized, takes up a lot of room, and the items are largely inaccessible’,
The Reasons Why People May Start Hoarding
Doctor’s don’t know why yet, although hoarders may have severe depression, medical disorders like schizophrenia, or suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. They may live alone or be unmarried, or have had a deprived childhood where they lacked possessions.
It’s also possible they have a family history of hoarding, or grew up in a cluttered house where there was never a place for anything. If a third of Britain ‘never gets rid of items’ we may have to add an extra floor to a third of all our terraced houses.
