Hoarding data

I hoard mostly physical papers (old art, old school notes), but also some data. Every few months/years as my computer gets too cluttered, I sort through some of the things and "aggressively" delete stuff, holding on to the belief that if I'll ever actually need the stuff I deleted, I'll be able to find them again on the net. And then I do my best to forget about them (not too hard). As for sorting the rest of the files, I try to group them into folders of similar subjects.

 

I think my husband has this problem. With games, used to do it with porn. I wish I understood it, because it doesn't make any sense to me. I just have no instinct for hoarding at all. I'm a minimalist and I like to let things go and in general, I don't like to keep things for "just in case" when I know I can easily rent or borrow or find a new one really easily if I ever need it.

 

People keep games if they want to play them again or if they meant a lot to them, doesn't necessarily mean they're a hoarder though.

 

Of course. I didn't claim that everyone who has a lot of games is a hoarder.

 

Form me this was definitley the case in regards of P. Might also be due to the fact that I was in puberty when the internet came up; so streaming was not a thing. So I am used to download P. And I actually had so much P on my hard drives; I need to get 200 years old if I would like to watch all of it.

For me it was always the thought like " Okay I download this so I have it on my hard drive; so I don't regret it afterwards (if I can't download it anymore)". For me it was also about not missing any good P-pic or P-movie. So if you don't wanna miss out some great P, you download it.

And on the other hand I really like collecting things. Not that I'm a hoarder, but I collect (normal) movies and books. So P kind of satisfied two tings I enjoyed. First the P itself, but also the "collector" in me.

Some while ago I deleted all P content from my hard drives. That was so hard. It was like deleting 15 years of work, 15 years of my life. And also one intrusive thought that really is hard to endure is the fact, that I maybe can't get back the P (in case I can't stay P-free )

 

I don't know him personally but I was meaning more towards your husband, I assumed that maybe he likes them enough to keep them. You mentioned that you think he has a problem, does he just buy a game and keep them just because he can with no specific reason?

 

I also said he had this issue with porn as well, and other things too. I'm not just saying he has a problem because he owns a lot of games. I don't really want to analyze his behavior here, because I don't know his reasonings and I don't want to speculate.

 

When it comes to porn, part of the appeal might just be the "backup" nature of it. The strongest internet filter can't do anything about files that are already on your computer. Maybe these porn users are keeping a stash that will always be available to them. Hell, I could take a thumb drive, password protect it, and put hundreds of my favorite videos on it. Obviously that would destroy my recovery/reboot--I'm just saying addicts can go to great lengths to protect their drug.

When it comes to other stuff, I totally get it. I personally have a problem with clutter, and most of it has to do with the fact that I accumulate stuff that's "in the middle" ... it might be useful, so I don't want to get rid of it ... but it doesn't really have a place. So I end up with these little piles of loose papers in parts of my apartment. I do the same thing with browser tabs. Right now I've got 7 tabs open to articles that looked interesting enough, but for later. It's kind of ridiculous how often I do that.

 

Hey, I can relate. I also collected ebooks, songs, a few movies, memes, even programs. It was only this year that I deleted most of my unused an useless files.

I don't know why I started hoarding files. I think I was scared to miss some piece of information and in order to prevent it, I just saved everything.

At some point I realized that only a few of the things I had on my computer will ever be of any use to me. So now all unimportant stuff is gone and I don't miss it.

Don't be afraid to delete stuff: should you ever need any deleted file you can either restore or download it again.