Many of us have seen the television shows about people who have hoarded so much stuff in their house, they cannot do anything because of the clutter, even prepare food, or eat at the table. Hoarding is defined as the acquirement of, and inability to discard worthless items even though they appear to have no value (Hall, 68). Hoarding behaviors can occur in a variety of psychiatric disorders and in the normal population, but are most commonly found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Hoarding creates a lot of problems; both for the hoarder and those around them. One is just navigating through a congested obstacle course of stuff in a house becomes difficult. To get something requires searching through stacks of stuff. To put something away requires a nuisance of movement of all the stuff in the cramped area, as well as thinking and decisions on how to do it. Another problem is that there are no areas to do any real work such as counters, tables or workbenches. All this consumes a huge amount of time and energy of the people who live in such conditions.

According to demographics, psychiatrists estimate between 2% and 5% of the adult population in the United States and Canada are compulsive hoarders. In North America alone, there are about 4000 cases of animal hoarding involving up to 250,000 reported animals. (Frey, 760) Researchers only began to study hoarding in the 1980s so it is possible that the actual rate of hoarding is higher than reported. This disorder is more common among older adults though it can typically begin in late childhood or adolescence and will become worse as the person grows older. There is no evidence that ethnicity or race is a factor in compulsive hoarding. Men are more likely than women to become hoarders but women typically begin hoarding at an earlier age.

Hoarding disorder, included in the Diagnostic and Statical