Hoarded dogs

Having too many animals is not the same as having too many shoes, too many stacks of old newspapers, too many duplicate tools, too many clothes in your closet, too many cars, too many old letters, too much food saved up, or too much money in the bank.

It's work. Not just clutter, work.

Animals can be called "livestock", but having a 100 cats doesn't make you richer.

Collecting is NOT abnormal. Cleaning is NOT abnormal. Being extreme IS abnormal.

Sanity is often a balance between extremes. Most of us handle this teeter- toter reasonably well, most of the time.

But a person can get obsessive-compulsive about cleaning too much, or obsessive- compulsive about hoarding too much.

You can be out of balance because you are a Neat Freak (like Monk on TV) or because you are a slob or a hoarder.

I believe you can be both at the same time too. You can hoard oodles of things, but build shelves, and additional rooms so that all your collections are neatly put away.

You compulsively collect them, and obsessively put them away, or
obsessively collect them, and compulsively put them away?

I knew someone, who was up in construction, and he had a 6 car garage built, but he couldn't get his car in it because there were only paths through the boxes. Most of it was neatly put away in boxes, but he had a huge volume of junk.

I knew some else, whose house usually looked like a pig sty. She had piles of fast food containers on the end tables, clothes and toys scattered everywhere - the place was horrible. But I went over her place one day, and it was clean.

I asked about it. Because she didn't save items, she simply failed to put the garbage in the garbage, when she wanted to clean the place up, she could do it in one day.

The place looked good. But after the expected guest left, the hamburger wrappers and uneaten French Fries, the dirty socks, the papers all started to fill the living room, the kitchen, the floors.

These are two different kinds of problems.

I know someone with several different collections, all put on shelves, or displayed well, kept meticulously clean, he has loads of useless stuff, but he would be horrified if anyone compared him to the person who didn't bother to throw out the garbage.