When does a large collection become hoarding?

Okay so I will own up first to the fact that I have 70+ dolls. I do have hoarding tendencies but then having noticed them in my parents and uncle I feel I know what to look for. I have felt emotional attachments to things but have made myself get over it if I know it needs to go.

My father collects stuff from bins and the streets (although not as much as he gets older). When he was working he was always coming home from work with more metal from the scrap bins for projects he was going to do. Having to search through bins when we were children for cans to justify the expense of the admission to the swimming centre was humiliating enough. If I cleaned my room he would go through the bin afterward to make sure I wasn't throwing out anything valuable in his eyes. His hoarding of scrap metal ended up killing one of my dogs. He had it all piled against the fences pointing upright. The dog jumped up on the fence and managed to hang herself from her collar. It was my first Mother's Day as a step-mother - I will never forget it. He still didn't get rid of the damn stuff. My dog's don't wear collars any more.

I also have over 70 animals as well and know all their names as well - well the ones that won't end up in the pot (we have a hobby farm and they don't get named).

Do I know all of my dolls sculpts and companies they were from? Yes I do. Are the strewn all around the house. No they are on a shelf in my office, in two alcoves especially made for them in my studio, or sitting on my table waiting for face-ups.

 

I love your setup! I too am a fan of visual noise... too many blank white walls or empty surfaces make my nerves itch. My apartment is the same kind of organized chaos; everything has its place, though some of those places are on top of or behind other places (like shelving the books 2-3 deep), & empty surfaces are a rare thing. But there is never an awkward silence in my apartment, not with so many things for the eye to snag on.

It's just that there's an unfair bias against clutter.... which I think stems from some kind of twisted white-Protestant-self-denial tradition that the Pilgrims brought over to the States & has been festering ever since. The ideal is for Spartan emptiness, spotlessness/Godliness, tight control over one's environment-- proof that you don't need/want anything else. Those of us who prefer clutter & visual noise are seen as incontinent, with poor self-control, untidy, greedy-- slave to appetites. And once you see it in these terms, you'll also recognize the same way that society regards thin people vs. fat people. Depressing value judgment overall, innit?

 

I have never been called a doll hoarder by other BJD owners especially when there are some bjd owners that have more then triple of what I have. I remember first seeing Ponygrey (sp?) page I was blown away! She had a whole BJD city! Alas I knew that was not for me though.

When I was in my 20's I had a large 4 walled den that was transformed by custom built shelves for all my books( I was a book horder love love love to read) and the top spaces were reserved for my anime figures old cartoon lunch boxes dolls and weird toys.

Now that I am pushing to 40 I don't like clutter and messyness anymore so I try to keep things down to a minimum especially since I live in a smaller place now.

I find that 10/11 dolls is to much for me ( which I only wanted one ) but whenever I think selling one I feel sorta bad . I try to make time to play and sew for each one of them but a lot of the time I do not have time . Its a balance I guess that one must keep in life between everything -I have sold dolls and heads no problem

However to non bjd owners I am suspect of being a doll hoarder , but I would never compromise my health or financial health .

 

I don't considere myself and never been called a doll "hoarder" but I have to admit I'm a bit concerned on how fast I got so many in a relatively small period of time! (And I'm not counting the non-bjds that I'm trying to rehome one by one). My new years number one resolution was "No more dolls!". We are in February and already ordered 3 SDs! Well, I decided to let go the ones I never bonded and this is such a good feeling to think they will find new loving homes! I really can't accept having dolls I never photograph or play with... makes me feel really bad!

 

I used to be a "collector" more than a "hoarder" of all things I loved. In high school it was anime, then it was Lara Croft, then it was comic book figures. I never got rid of anything and anything that I couldn't find a place for wound up adhered to my bedroom walls--posters, packaging, little shelves for all my figures. It was a dust/mildew NIGHTMARE. Now that I'm approaching 30, I quickly got sick of having "toys" around. BJDs feel like art for me, but the toys/posters feel like childish junk (because this is what I collected when I was a kid--not because I'm judging the items themselves.)

I also developed worse and worse asthma as I got older and suffering pretty bad memory loss issues. Having a spartan house is much more important to me now for health reasons. If everything has a clearly designated place I remember where it is better. If everything is behind glass, it doesn't get dusty and irritate my very sensitive asthma. hardwood floors. Smooth Ikea furniture A complete reduction in surface area is the only way I can live. The doll hobby slots in okay so far since I have one glass-front cabinet for them.

My collection recently spilled over and I had to sell a girl to make space, knowing it had just tipped the scales a bit too far in the wrong direction for me. When I looked at my collection I just saw a mess. One girl less and it came back together again. Maybe that's a bit OCD but I'm setting boundaries on myself so that it doesn't get out of control again.

 

I have many dolls, of all types. I'm new to BJD.
I feel the diffrence is that a hoarder has dolls in disarray,
not organized piling up and not cared for. You can have a house full of dolls
if they are organized for display or play. I feel you are a collector, not a hoarder.
Michelle

 

That set up in the photo is mine, actually. ^^;; Thank you.

Here's what it looks like currently (which I already showed earlier in this same thread)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/natsukigirl/5851328057/

 

Well, it's awesome! Tidy but still fun to look at. High-rise shelving units are your friends. I too deliberately picked extra-deep all-purpose shelves (thank you IKEA), so that the books could be shelved in multi rows, leaving more room so the dolls & their clothing-bins can look organized too.

My father got a kick out of my setup (the whole house tour is in my sig-link) last time he visited... he's another expert practitioner of Organized Clutter, with his own collections of automotive parts and woodworking odds-and-ends and antique tools he'll never get around to refurbishing. And my mom teases us both about hoarding, but acknowledges that we've both got systems that work. Probably the Hoarders reality-show, or the untrained eye, would freak out over his workshop-- but that place is a perfect paragon of "everything meticulously in its own place, even if there's only 1 person alive who knows where all those places are". ^^

 

WOW...I'm jealous! That's an amazing setup! Right now I live in an efficiency apartment, with probably close to 50-60 dolls on display. Yeah, it can get a little messy. Everything here has a specific place, and as soon as one thing is out of order, the whole apartment falls into disarray. I definitely don't consider myself a hoarder, though I have been accused of it by a friend or two. It actually kinda hurt my feelings because I agree that a hoarder is compulsive and doesn't take care of their things. All of my dolls/toys/games/books/movies are taken care of and appreciated...I just have LOTS of them. I can't wait til we can move somewhere that I can spread out a little bit!

 

^
THAT, my friend, is pure beauty to me. I could stare at a set up like yours for a long time. What I see is determination and joy (takes a long time to collect that many things). Also a great sense of what looks good. Interior design for geeks. XD

 

Wow Nayru ​that's really AWESOME!

 

LOVE THIS LAST LINE! ha

 

I don't mean any offense to people when I say this, so I apologize if you find this hurtful. I don't mean it to be that way, it's just my opinion.

I believe a collection gets to be hoarding when you have no more space to put anything, when your dolls have outrun your lives and are forcing you into another room to sleep. For example, you have so many dolls and their accessories that you can't even slip into your bedroom because they're stacked upon the walls. If you have to step over them in order to get from place to place, then that's hoarding as well. If you open a box and think to yourself, "When did I get her/him?", you're probably a hoarder. I've met a slight hoarder who just couldn't get rid of all her stuff. She couldn't let go of stuffed animals and her room was filled to the brim with them. She would take them home from anywhere she found one and it would act as a pet, almost, but she would ultimately forget it was there. Of course, this being said, sometimes hoarders know when its getting bad while others don't. The woman I met knew she was a hoarder, but couldn't get rid of her stuff. There is a huge difference between collecting and hoarding, though, and it should be taken into consideration that if you have more dolls than you can count, you may want to take a step back and say to yourself, "Where am I going with this? Can I let these go or have I become dependent on my dolls?" If you can answer with a "yes, I can sell some of my resin babies," then by all means, keep on collecting. If you can't, well, call TLC and sign up for Hoarding: Buried Alive.

 

I think you may be the exception, you know all animals and have room for them and you sound like you love them very much. The accident with the dog, well that was not your fault. But I know how horrible it feels to lose an animal mistake or not.
You take care your dolls and animals and even though you have alot I would not have classified you as a hoarder but a collector.

 

my mom is a real hoarder..so i am afraid of all kinds of collections. my dad collects airplanes and stuff so my entire life ive collected all kinds of stuff (junk) but when i moved to my own place and realized you could live in a clean home i changed. i sold all my pokemons ponies and stuff..it wasnt until i got my first doll that i actually allowed myselöf to have a collecting hobby again. cuz i know i cant get so many of these dolls, and that not somethin i want either cuz i value the dolls more if i have time for them all. so 3 is my maximum, maybe some more if theres a new releaze i fall for some day. When i come home to bjdfriends who has 10+ dolls, i get terrified. i totally understand they love them all, but i cant imagine myself having so much dolls, id be so stressed. but at the same time i like it, since i can see that th dolls are taken care of - all of them. and my friends homes are clean and fixed, so collecting and hoarding is really different. hoarding i think is the day that you just get dolls just for the sake of getting them...and not being able to take care of them nor have the economy for it really

 

I feel that if you don't have the room for them, and if you don't use/enjoy them anymore, then it gets to the point of hoarding.

 

I hate the assumption that just because dolls stay in boxes means they're not loved or you're hoarding. My dolls have to stay in boxes when I don't take them out (which I do, often, especially when I'm doing schoolwork.) I cannot leave them unattended, even on high shelves, because my cats are quite big- long legged, that is, and can jump extreme heights. They have climbed up my bookshelves before where I used to store some of my off-topic dolls (which I no longer own) and knocked things over.

Also... they seem to really dislike my bjds. Whenever I have one out to change an outfit and take photos, they try to distract me and get me to pet them. They've also crawled into a box once or twice that I've accidentally left out and tore into it. Luckily, it's a doll I have no intentions of selling, so the box is mine... but any doll I'm not sure of selling or not, I have to keep it out of their reach- usually in my closet.

I plan to get a real display case for them at some point, hopefully it cabinets to store things like clothes because I have to use a doll box just for that stuff at this point. If I could have my dolls on display, I would totally do it.

But the point is, I don't keep my dolls in boxes because I buy them just to have them. I do take them out when I can. But they have to stay in boxes or risk damage. >.< I have been good about selling dolls I know I won't use, no matter how much I like them. I would rather them go to a place that they would be really loved in. That said, I don't plan to let my collection grow past 20... even though I'm hoping to keep it below 15.

To me? Hoarding is when you have so many dolls you don't know what to do with them. You buy a doll just to have it not because you want it. You feel a compulsion to buy a doll just because you're afraid you might want it later... that's hoarding. But buying a doll and having to store them for a protective reason, I can understand.

 

I could be classified as both a hoarder and not a hoarder. I remember all my dolls and have lots on display. However, I have been collecting so many kinds for so long that I can't possibly display them all. However, I have slowed down on purchasing new dolls.

 

I'm sure some people consider me a hoarder, but in my eyes I am nothing of the sort. True, my collection has reached critical mass (40+ and growing--and that is just the bjds) but they are mostly an active collection. I sew for them, I photograph them, and I write a weekly blog post featuring the outfit I have most recently sewn or the doll most recently acquired.

I don't see the acquisition of new dolls as hoarding, but rather as a sign of my growth and development in the hobby. There are some dolls I acquired early on that I would never buy today, because my tastes have changed. If I find that a doll has been staying in its box too long, I generally list it on the marketplace. (As an exception to this rule, my house has been on the market for some time. I boxed part of my collection on my realtor's recommendation, so as not to put off potential buyers who might be creeped out by dolls.)

Have my dolls taken over my space? To a large extent, yes. But it only really gets messy when I am in the midst of a sewing project. When the outfit is finished, I clean up. Clothes, shoes, wigs, props, patterns, fabric and notions are boxed neatly and I know where everything is. I am far from being "buried alive" amidst the clutter.

 

EDIT: I posted a thread about this and it got moved here so now I need to redo my entire post lol! (Thanks for the move, I tried to see if there was a thread on this, but I didn't come across this one.)

I once knew someone who owned over 100 resin dolls. To me, that would be way too many dolls. I can't imagine where to even put them! I had never been to her house, but someone I knew had and they said the dolls were absolutely EVERYWHERE!!! They recently got rid of the majority of those dolls, so I think she realized she had way too many. I plan on owning 12 dolls at some point. I only have 6 1/2 at the moment. The other 5 1/2 are already planned out. I'm just waiting for the funding. XD