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Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things
Houghton Mifflin
May 2010
On Sale: April 20, 2010
304 pages
ISBN: 015101423X
EAN: 9780151014231
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper thatβs ever come into his home? What compulsions drive a woman like Irene, whose hoarding cost her her marriage? Or Ralph, whose imagined uses for castoff items like leaky old buckets almost lost him his house? Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago; they expected to find a few sufferers but ended up treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls from the families of others. Now they explore the compulsion through a series of compelling case studies in the vein of Oliver Sacks. With vivid portraits that show us the traits by which you can identify a hoarderβpiles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails, vast piles of paper that the hoarders βchurnβ but never discard, even collections of animals and garbageβFrost and Steketee illuminate the pull that possessions exert on all of us. Whether weβre savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, very few of us are in fact free of the impulses that drive hoarders to the extremes in which they live. For all of us with complicated relationships to our things, Stuffanswers the question of what happens when our stuff starts to own us.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - July 13, 2011
Today - May 19, 2011
Fresh Air - NPR - May 5, 2010
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