Hoarding
intentional accumulation of items for later use
Hoarding is the act of engaging in excessive acquisition of items that are not needed or for which no space is available. Hoarding can also be defined as collecting and holding otherwise scarce items. Some items commonly hoarded include coins considered to have an intrinsic value, such as those minted in silver, or gold, as well as collectibles, jewelry, precious metals and other luxuries.
History
The first documented case of hoarding was in the Collyer Mansion by the brothers Homer and Langley in 1947, New York. Their mansion became an attraction in 1938 because of the extreme level of accumulation and fortune found in their residence after their deaths.
Anxiety
Individuals who meet the diagnostic criteria for hoarding disorder experience feelings of anxiety or discomfort about discarding possessions they do not need. This discomfort arises from an emotional attachment to possessions and a strong belief that their possessions will be needed in the future. Possessions will take on a sentimental value that outweighs their functional value. This is no different from someone without hoarding disorder; the difference lies in the strength of this sentimental value and in how many items take on sentimental value. For this reason, when discarding items, hoarders may feel as though they were throwing away a part of themselves.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hoarding” is intentional accumulation of items for later use. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hoarding, intentional and accumulation, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1343347. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hoarding” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.