Do hoarders hike?

[DBCFlash]

I was just channel surfing and stopped on a show about hoarders. These people have obsessive desires to collect all sorts of things and tend to fill their homes with their collections/hoards.

Seems that the minimalist nature of hiking and the requirement to carry only the most basic of items is the exact opposite of the way these folks live their lives. I'm just curious if anyone here might have a very cluttered home, yet manage to carry only the basics for a hike.

My curiosity concerning the dramatic contrast between a hikers mindset versus a hoarders mindset has brought me to start this conversation. I do have sympathy for these OCD victims and especially their families and I'd like to keep the thread sensitive to their pain.

[Lone Wolf]

jack tarlin......

[Red Hat]

Do hikers hoard? yes, gear.... I keep trying to get rid of stuff, but it seems to have babies all over my gear closet/shed

[Sly]

Hikers hoard food. Or some do.

[max patch]

jack tarlin......

Jack hoards 2,000 miler patches.

[Jay_NJ]

Do hikers hoard? yes, gear.... I keep trying to get rid of stuff, but it seems to have babies all over my gear closet/shed

Haha, made me laugh out loud! My gear closet and amoeba's have quite a bit in common, all my gear divides in half as things get smaller and lighter but the cycle never ends!

[Silverstone]

Y'all beat me to it, but I'd say some hoarders collect outdoor gear--hiking gear, camping gear, fishing gear, hunting gear etc etc etc

[RGB]

I used to be bad but now I'm in the habit of Craigslisting anything I don't have an immediate (next 6 months or so) use for, excluding my ski gear. A lot easier to move around now!

[Panzer1]

no, hoarders don't hike. Some hikers do accumulate a lot of gear but that is not hoarding. Its just normal the normal accumulation of gear. Hoarding is a mental disorder.
"Collecting" is not hoarding either. For example stamp collectors and coin collectors are not hoarders because collecting is a fun hoby.
A ture hoarder will not leave their "hoard pile" for too long. They need to be around their "hoard pile".



Panzer

[greenmtnboy]

I hiked to get away from a landlord hoarder. Many hikers are minimalists, like Henry Thoreau.

Hoarding is against the law in a lot of states; it is a health hazard. Check out the Wiki article on the Collyer brothers some time.

Hoarders make their families and associates crazy.

[sbhikes]

Sure, we hike. I think I'm a step or two away from actual OCT hoarding, but I'm not too far behind. I've got the clutter blindness thing going on pretty strong, that's for sure. Here's what I posted in another backpacking forum:

"I go backpacking to get away from my mountain of crap.

I have a really hard time throwing things away. Maybe I need professional help. I think about how somewhere in the landfill there's the banana peel from my lunch in the 5th grade. I think some archaeologist from the future will find all the plastic crap I threw in there someday they'll have pieced together my life from my trash and DNA and I'll be in some textbook about the wasteful people of the era. So I just close the closet door or shut the junk drawer and try not to think about it."

[Trailbender]

I can't stand owning stuff, so I have the bare minimum I need for daily life. It is actually very little. I can move out in about 20 mins. Everything is so much more efficient, and faster. I hike because I love being in the woods, so I take the lightest gear I can make or find.

I guess I am psychologically the opposite of a hoarder. If I own 1 or 2 of the same things, I usually get rid of 1, other than like underwear, ect.