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Comment by tonyarkles | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious how old your friend is.

My own experience with several people has all involved older folks and this line from the article caught my attention:

> Childhood poverty, interestingly enough, does not seem to be connected with hoarding.

The folks I know who have been affected by this did not experience childhood poverty but rather their parents all survived the Great Depression. Generally they’ve been born in the late ‘30s, ‘40s and early ‘50s and from the stories they tell about growing up, a lot of their behaviours seem to be based on their parents’ behaviours that seem to have sprung out of young adult extreme poverty in the 1930s.

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Yes this is a factor with the particular person I know.

Although I don't think the depression era or poverty as the only answer.

I see the grandchild exhibit similar behaviors. There is an awareness of the problem but a disconnect in the brain to organise physical space. It is easier to cram objects (squirrel) than tidy up. And a resistance to tidy or organise physical space.

Definitely agree it's not the only answer. As far as the grandchild goes, that's where epigenetics and generational trauma can play a very interesting part/confounding factor. There could be a straight up heritable trait that causes this, or a genetic+environment mix, or even just a straight environmental influence.

I'm fortunate that most of the people I know who have trouble with this are capable of somewhat keeping it in check, although there are certainly some garages/basements in my extended and in-law families that are going to be an absolute nightmare to deal with down the road. At least for the folks who live on farms, it has occasionally come in handy; while a ton of it is just straight up junk, they do seem to have a pretty good mental model of where things are even though it isn't really organized and can often dig up very old obscure parts for equipment (farming or electronics) relatively quickly.

> young adult extreme poverty of the 1930’s.

Sounds about right. All my grandparents were young adults during that time frame, and my family keeps a lot of stuff around. Not clinical hoarding disorder level amounts of stuff, but quite a bit more than anyone else I know. I honestly think that it makes sense to keep a fair amount of “supplies” around so that you can do what you need to with what you have, rather than having to buy new stuff.

But I also struggle to adapt to (what I consider to be disgusting) present day consumerism, where most things are disposable in economic terms. I prefer to spend my money and time fixing nice things than replacing mediocre things.

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