Archive for the 'hoarding' Category

Your Guide to Hoarding – A basic Hoarding 101 and how to combat it

Published on July 14, 2011 in hoarding and junk removal. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Throw it away! If you’ve heard that statement more than half a dozen times from loved ones and roommates, you might just be a hoarder. Keeping those baseball cards from your childhood is a good idea – they could be worth some serious cash in a few years. Keeping your junior high school semi-formal outfit could be justified as nostalgic, but do you seriously think you’ll ever wear it again? Give it to someone or throw it away. It’s just more junk clogging up your closets, basement, attic, or garage. Think of what you could do with all that space if you cleared all that stuff out of there.

Hoarding is a behavior. In some cases it may even be evidence of a more serious psychological condition that prevents you from letting things go. Those are the extreme cases. If you feel you’re having a nervous breakdown every time you go to throw something in the trash, see a doctor. If you’re putting stuff away in the closet because you can’t decide what to do with it, that’s something else entirely. Stop telling yourself that it will be useful someday. It won’t be. Call a junk removal company like Junk-King and have all of it hauled away. Then you can fill up all that space again if you want to.

To prevent hoarding, ask yourself each time you go to put an item in the attic or basement if there really is a need for you to keep it. If the answer is no, you have two choices – give it away or junk it. Try charity first if you can. Old clothes and toys make great gifts to churches and non-profit organizations. Getting rid of excess junk that way will help you feel better about it and will benefit someone else. As a bonus, in certain situations you can get a receipt for your gift and write it off on your taxes. That should give you some incentive to clean out your storage bins.

The second option, junk removal, requires a little more work. Any electronics need to be separated and a junk removal company that specializes in their removal needs to be called. E-waste is a serious problem that has been addressed by many cities and towns, but individuals are the ones who need to take the initiative for recycling efforts to be successful. If you’ve hoarded all your old televisions, stereos, computers, and game systems over the years, make sure you dispose of them properly. Even old cell phones thrown into a landfill can have severe long term consequences.

If reading this article is making you cringe and shake, you may have a hoarding problem. If you can’t throw things away yourself, give someone else the responsibility for doing it. Start with one closet. Go into it and take out anything you think is still useful, then turn your back on what’s left inside. Have a trusted member of the family, a roommate, or the junk removal company, clean out the rest and get rid of it. Your home will have more space that way and you’ll be on your way towards curing your hoarding problem.

For the best in junk removal services, simply call Junk King at 1-800-995 JUNK or book a free on site estimate online.

Are you a collector or compulsive hoarder?

Published on March 9, 2010 in hoarding and junk removal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Are you a collector or hoarder?  Everybody has a friend or family member who loves to keep old things around.  Whether it be a pile of old newspapers, outdated magazines, wine bottles or a box of receipts, we all sometimes have the inclination to save ’stuff.’

While many of us see this as a harmless activity, there is a serious clinical disorder called ‘compulsive hoarding’ that makes it an obsession for people to hold on to a large amount of junk, despite the effect it may have on their lifestyle.

Although Compulsive Hoarding often is said to be a more specific classification of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), it has been recognized by mental health professionals as a seriously detrimental way of life that can result in  unsanitary living conditions, safety hazards, accident prone conditions and a variety of other harmful side effects on an individual.

Depending on how extreme the hoarder, the items an individual keeps around can run the gambit, from common items like books to physically dangerous things like hazardous waste and garbage.  Although keeping too many books around the house may not seem like a harmful thing, the actual practice of hoarding the books is what can potentially harm an individual’s lifestyle, including preventing them from forming meaningful social relationships or even forgoing basic needs like eating and bathing.

This doesn’t mean everyone needs to start throwing out those old stamp, coin, and baseball card collections that they spent so long acquiring.  Humans are naturally possessive creatures, and it is perfectly normal to place value on a collection that has monetary or sentimental value.

However, there are things that many of us ‘collect’ simply because we don’t have the time or energy to get rid of them.  Whether this be an outdated magazine collection or a closet of old clothes, some of this stuff simply takes up room in our homes that could be used much more effectively. Getting rid of this unuseful material not only frees up room in your home, but also clears the mind in a variety of ways.

Just as people with serious cases of compulsive hoarding need professional help, people with the more common case of an inability to get rid of old junk could use some external help as well.  Junk-King is your affordable, professional and efficient junk removal service that can get rid of that clutter you’ve been eying for years, but just never got around to throwing out.  We’re here to help you reclaim your kingdom from Junk.