Scrapbooking and Hoarding

I think the hobby encourages organizing. We don’t have too much product, we just haven’t organized it well enough

It seems to me that the people with so much product are often very involved in the scrapbooking community in some way: message boards, design teams, content creators. I bet the average scrapbooker doesn’t have nearly as much product as the people who are more visible to us do. And those people are exposed to a lot more through their actions; they have friends who also partake, they watch haul videos and share photos of their rooms, etc.

I think some of it comes from the earlier days when there wasn’t much product choice and we made do with whatever we could find.
Also when we do find a product we like, we are afraid it will go away so we want one of everything.

Example: planners
I’ve always been a planner girl since before it was a thing.
At one time, there was up to 3 aisles full of planner supplies.
Now a days, we are lucky to have an end cap and even that is half empty.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) my shelves are full

Personally I think hoarding is a by-product of any hobby.

Yes, it does.

I spent some time last week in my storage unit and managed to get rid of some paper (including a sheet of Basic Grey!) and extra brads of OA's pirate collection.

'Tis but a drop in the bucket.

I will say, I've slowed my buying down a ton, but I can be swayed by a few new releases. Thankfully, I prefer to do most of my shopping in person, as there were times I fell in love with a line in online, but then didn't like it in person for whatever reason.

As a non USA pea my issue is always availability and postage costs. If I like something I have to pay a lot for postage, so often I will add anything I remotely like to my order from that company to justify the costs to just get said items to my house. Thus my ever growing stash. I also have full set syndrome, still trying to find those last six or so Ali edwards story kits 😅

I do not have a hoard, I just have my own personal store in my home, where I am the only shopper.

Some characteristics I have heard associated with clutter and hoarding tendencies are creativity, a deep love of Christmas/holiday decorations, and people who feel a responsibility to look out for other people/carers (many people who struggle with clutter are saving things to help out other people or feel that something is too good to waste so they save it hoping they’ll find the person who really needs it). I think people who do paper crafts and specifically memory keeping tend to score high on these characteristics.

And then there’s the factors that others have mentioned - collections getting retired, constant FOMO, full set syndrome… I think that the culture of scrapbooking and paper crafting enables and validates excessive buying. The industry relies on it. And there aren’t a lot of minimal-stash scrapbooking role models out there.

The irony of the creativity part is that the same person who can look at a tampon applicator tube and see a use for it (my miniaturist building MIL had a bag full of them) will also remember with deep regret every time they went to make something and had just used up or thrown out the perfect element, even though their creativity will allow them to find something else that will work just as well, maybe even better.

To me.........
Hoarding means keeping things and not wanting to ever get rid of them. Then getting more things, and not getting rid of them. Repeat, repeat, repeat, etc...
Until there is a huge pile, an overwhelming amount of stuff, etc.... and it becomes a safety issue, hazard, and-or sanitary issue.

The word I prefer to use is >> "coveted".
I have a lot of scrapbook products that I covet and haven't used yet, because I am waiting for the right photographs or idea to go with the product.
Some products I've had since I began scrapbooking 25+ years ago. I also have purchased quite a bit of now discontinued products.
I have a lot of scrapbook product, that was bought, because "seasonal" products come and go. Either I purchase when it comes out, otherwise I miss out (unless I can find it aftermarket >> ebay, thrift store, etsy, marketplace, etc...).

My scrapbook product stash is well organized and contained.
When I am actively scrapbooking, I do have small or medium piles of "work in progress" layouts and the products I am using on them......on cafeteria style trays on a rolling carts.
Nothing about my home or scrapbook area and scrapbook closet, would ever be considered within the realm of "hoarder".
Passionate about scrapbooking, absolutely YES! Hoarder, NO!

Hoarding is simply the practice of accumulating certain things. Hoarding disorder is when it is considered a clinical mental issue. 

Hoarding is actually part of the human DNA. As a species, we are naturally predisposed to collecting and keeping for rainy days, like many other animal species. Many industries rely on this tendency to keep the customer hooked and flip them into a recurring buyer (the best and most reliable way to make money). Scrapbooking is no exception.

The turnover for new collections is extremely high in this industry particularly. Every single season and holiday is another reason to put out new products, year after year. What sets scrapbooking apart from, say, fashion or sports or make-up, is it super low entry price. You can buy a sheet of PP for approx. 1 dollar (although, granted, inflation has made it climb a little higher recently). A pack of embellishments is around 5 dollars. All in all, you can "treat yourself" with a half a new SB line for under $20. That means you can trick yourself into a long string of lower-priced items all through the year. It's harder to justify this amount of small purchases for, say, kayaking. On top of that, scrapbooking items are in a way perishable. The vast majority of us don't use and re-use papers, die-cuts, stickers over and over again. Once it's down on the page, it's gone and you've "made room" for a new purchase. 

The fact that the entry point is so cheap also means that manufacturers have to come up with other ways to increase their profit margin. Hence the never-ending cycle of new stuff. Some brands even put out multiple Christmas/Spring collections at the same time to up sales. With an ever-decreasing market since the craft peaked two decades ago, it's going to be more and more difficult for these manufacturers to keep their numbers up. While scrapbooking and documenting is pretty good overall with creating FOMO, they're doing a lousy job at creating new converts. They can't keep putting pressure on the existing market to buy ever more. We're all bound to run out of space - if not spending money - at some point. 

So, yes, definitely a great hobby for hoarding! It's only paper, after all. 

Thank you, joblackford and sleepingbooty for noting the positive (or at least normal) aspects of hoarding/collecting.

I have a lot of stuff from different areas of my life. I am trying to go through it now that I'm retired because I don't want my children or my husband to have to deal with it when I'm gone. I have hung on to old letters, so lately I am re-reading them, blessing them, and then letting them go. I have a lot of books that I need to give away...but I keep thinking I will re-read some of them. When I was teaching, I spent A LOT of my own money on supplies, so I have clung to them. I ended up using some of my old teaching books and supplies this summer because I volunteered to teach ESL to a refugee family for a couple of months. I was grateful that I hadn't given everything away.

Strangely, I have no issue in some other areas of my life. I love clothes, but I regularly go through them and cull what I no longer want or need. I don't like clutter, so I don't accumulate knick knacks. I enjoy putting things in order (must be the teacher in me), so I don't have piles anywhere.

When it comes to scrapbook and stationery supplies, I am afraid of letting go of some things because it's like I am eliminating a creative opportunity. Since everything is stored neatly, it doesn't bother me visually. There are some papers I just like to pull out and look at--they still bring me joy. I need to get better at culling items I will never use, though. I just need to find a place that will take them.

Mostly, though, I need to stop buying supplies that I will never use.

of course it is - but it's also possible to BE a hoarder ... I know of people who buy, buy, buy, but don't even unpack the shopping bags/shipping box never mind put away and use what they've bought. And others who may have just as much stuff but it's all put away and they use it - maybe not all of it but they are creating with their stuff.

I think it's pretty easy to substitute shopping when time/health/lack of creativity/family stuff interferes with scrapping as a hobby and sometimes that shopping turns into the hobby but then sometimes there's too much stuff in too much of a mess and creating becomes impossible...and then it can become of a vicious cycle.

Same. So many good points.

I don't really equate it to hoarding, and even though I have a stash that's been collected for about 20 years, I don't think of it as a problem. It's my hobby, it's what I like to do. I'm also good at resisting fomo & using the things I love versus hoarding them. I try not to overthink it and remind myself it's just paper after all.

I also can see the idea of the "messy artists." I have a few actual artists in my family and see the correlation. There's something about creativity that stems out of a bit of chaos.

I think it helps to distinguish between different things that are colloquially described as hoarding. There’s the collecting aspect, the shopping aspect, the saving things and never using them aspect, and clutter and messiness. And like Booty said, collecting, shopping, clutter, are absolutely normal parts of life. All these things are on a continuum and what is manageable at one time can become unmanageable and spin out of control after a loss or change of life circumstance.

One kind of hoarding is the people who can’t throw away anything and end up living surrounded by trash. That’s a full-on, very complex mental disorder, and not necessarily what hoarding looks like. Often there was a reason that made sense at the beginning though - wanting to recycle the trash correctly or saving things that could be useful in an emergency. They are not lazy or dirty people and living like that is not a choice.

Another I think of as the dragon kind of hoarding - keeping things for the sake of having them without needing them or wanting to use them. I think of this as the person who has a sewing machine they know they will never use again but they won’t give or sell it to someone who wants and needs it. (Although sometimes that’s because of a sentimental type of attachment, maybe wanting their child to take up sewing even if said child has had no interest in 40 years). Sometimes that’s just being in denial that we will never do this craft again.

One definition of hoarding/being over-cluttered talks about it being a problem when it starts impacting your quality of life. In crafting I would think of the person who can’t craft in their craft room because it’s too full to walk into, or who can’t ever find the supplies they need because they have too much.

There also shopping addiction, which can go hand in hand with hoarding behaviors and can lead to a very cluttered space very quickly.

But I think for most people who are crafty there’s a bit of a lot of mess at times, there’s some buying the wrong things/for the wrong reasons and not wanting to “waste money” by admitting our mistakes, there’s plenty of saving things to use on the perfect page, and there’s a lot of us who don’t want to let go of the great ideas we haven’t managed to execute (yet).

My DH used to refer to my scrapbook area as Archivers!

My DD calls me a hoarder, but only in a loving manner - ha ha.

I have a large stash, but I love having all the things to play with. It makes me happy and I don't spend more than I can afford, so I'm ok with it. But, don't tell my DD I have an order out for delivery from ACOT.