Hoarding or collecting — a subtle difference

• By Ted Buss
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• Hoarding has been going on forever, but only recently through television and articles about the illness, many like me have become interested in the word and what it means.

  Until recently, I just figured a hoarder was nothing more than a messy collector. Through a few years of practical experience and recent educational study, I've learned there is a big difference between a hoarder and a collector.

  I probably have 30 or more ball caps, but I keep them organized in a garage closet. As a collector, neatness counts. If those hats were scattered randomly through my house, I might be headed more toward that line of demarcation between hoarding and collecting. I've had similar episodes with watches, pocket knives and old coins.

  Plus, I have more than 20 white golf shirts hanging in my closet. Who needs 20 white golf shirts? Probably nobody. However, this is not hoarding because they are neat and orderly, and I wear them.

  True collectors feel a sense of pride in their collection whether it is golf shirts, books or coins. The key is that whatever the collector's passion, it has a purpose and doesn't swallow up his living space.

  Psychologists recognize hoarding as a subcategory of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Sadly, it is a mental illness. The condition is characterized by accumulating and hoarding abnormal quantities of objects that have no value, and become impossible to let go..." More