You want to understand the mentality of a hoarder? Think about the movie, The Little Mermaid, and Ariel’s treasure trove of useless junk, gathered from all the shipwrecks, and how Ariel thought she had a collection of the greatest stuff, ever.
But really, all she had was a ton of garbage.
But she could not see that, because she looked at all that junk very differently than normal people would.
That’s how hoarders are. They think just like Ariel.
My daughter once told me
Remember how in All Dogs Go to Heaven, the little girl lived in a junk yard? I thought that was the coolest thing ever, as a kid. I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to live in a junk yard, or a dumpster, surrounded by all that cool, discarded, seemingly useless stuff.
And then I remembered how I felt when exploring my great aunt’s house, as a child. We are talking about generations of “treasures” collected by a family of hoarders, going back over 150 years!
I felt like Ariel in my great aunt’s house, and I felt the same way in my grandmother’s junk room, and I feel that way whenever I enter a thrift store, or go to a rummage or yard sale.
The roots of hoarding are in one’s childhood, and their early attitudes towards junk.
