In Defense of Hoarders
By Amity Shlaes
This essay first appeared in National Review’s October 2026 issue.
Pawing through a random pile of papers on a neglected shelf recently, I came across a 1955 article by William F. Buckley’s friend Morrie Ryskind. Ryskind’s topic was the craze of his era, psychoanalysis. In the Hollywood circles Ryskind frequented, psychoanalysis was so much the rage that the only question people asked was whether your analyst was Jungian or Adlerian.
Ryskind, however, issued a declaration: “You’ll never get me on that couch.”
The reason I even found the article was that we were moving. We were “side-sizing,” not up-sizing, and aiming for less clutter. Some seventy-five books sat in the hall, awaiting their deportation to Goodwill.
But the books were already crying at me from their boxes. To strengthen my resolve, I downloaded a sixteen-season reality show from the 2010s about the people we hoped not to be: hoarders.
To my surprise, however, the show shed light on a mystery deeper than hoarding that has plagued some of us since COVID: how Americans, of all people, were so willing to wear masks for so long, even after masking’s utility proved dubious. Apparently, even before COVID, we were already docile hostages to public health authorities. Maybe this domestic Stockholm syndrome dates back all the way to Ryskind’s time. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gone along with newer crazes, such as policing hoarders.
The plot of the shows — there are actually several series — is almost always the same. A homeowner, usually an older person, likes to shop, or shoplift. The clutter then accumulates.
Soon mountains of book boxes, rocking horses, vacuums, rotary phones, wedding albums, infant onesies, dehumidifiers, or Christmas ornaments — anything — block halls and exits. Mice and roaches own the kitchen.
Next, adult offspring show up uttering dire warnings: Mice can give the hoarder the dread hantavirus, mortality rate 35 percent. The hoarder could perish in a grease fire. The ultimatum comes: no visits from grandchildren until the house is “safe.”
The adult children team up with city or county authorities. Code enforcers, Section 8 inspectors, and social workers descend, threatening to evict or condemn. Finally, the crew hires a dumpster and performatively clears the home, taking, in the rush, prize items, such as Grandfather’s shop tools.
Stripped of dignity, the hoarder stands by.
After the second episode, I read around on the hoarding-control industry. Most experts pathologize hoarding with a certainty reminiscent of the National Institutes of Health’s COVID declarations, or the old psychoanalysts. There is scant tolerance for eccentricity.
These experts claim that hoarding disorder afflicts up to 5 percent of the population. A Sacramento hospital defines five levels of hoarding, from “light clutter,” Level I, to “risk of losing home,” Level V. Hoarders of all levels get the same message: You are stuck in the past.
Alas, after the big clean-out, many stay stuck. Recidivism runs high, as Randy Frost, one of the more thoughtful of the experts, points out. A few commit suicide. Many more are deported like books into the boxes of assisted living.
The most excruciating scene I watched follows a kindly hoarding-intervention coordinator — yes, there is such a post — as he tries to help Peter, age eighty-four. Among Peter’s documents is a study on home-based companies penned by Peter himself. The coordinator wants to scan it. Peter wants his paper. We don’t learn the fate of the report. Peter’s apartment fails the next inspection.
After Peter, I found myself siding with the hoarders. Or at least those Level I’s and II’s.
You might ask what took me so long. Some hoarders indeed generate neighborhood emergencies that require dumpsters. In other cases, the interventions reflect merely bureaucratic arrogance, or younger people’s lust for a neat solution to their parents’ impossibly imperfect lives. After all, many people, young or old, don’t mind spending time in the past. Some derive energy for future endeavors from playing with their tarnished trophies.
“When business is slow, polish your silver,” my father counseled. Hard to do when that silver has already gone with the dumpster.
After unpacking at our new address, I deleted the hoarder shows — and congratulated myself on not downsizing. I’m still heading to Goodwill, but not for drop-off: the shop has a $60 bookcase. Indeed, I’m dreaming of a substantial up-size, perhaps a gift to myself when I turn eighty-five.
And like Ryskind, I’ve already got my own resolution: They’ll never get me out of that house.
Amity Shlaes chairs the Coolidge Foundation, is the author of Great Society, and is a fellow of National Review Institute. She is at work on a history of the Gilded Age.
The Coolidge Review has republished this article courtesy of National Review. The original version of the article appeared in National Review’s October 2026 issue.