Hoarding in the psychological sense is a fascinating — and often tragic — intersection of emotional attachment, perceived value, and entropy.
At its core, hoarding disorder isn’t just “liking stuff” or being messy. It’s a pattern of deeply felt resistance to discarding things, even when those things have little or no functional value, because their owner perceives them as irreplaceable, useful “someday,” or connected to identity and memory.
If we frame this in high entropy terms:
Entropy in the home environment increases as more items are brought in without a proportional amount leaving. Clutter multiplies, navigable space shrinks, and order declines.
Psychological entropy — the mental disorganization and overwhelm — also rises, because each object now carries a burden of decision-making (“Should I keep this? What if I need it later?”).
Ironically, the hoarder’s actions are usually an attempt to fight entropy — to preserve value, meaning, and security by holding on to objects. But the effect is the opposite: over time, the accumulation accelerates decay and chaos, both physically and mentally.
In many cases, there’s a distorted relationship between cost and worth:
Once money or effort has been spent on an item, the sunk-cost fallacy kicks in: “I can’t throw it away, I paid for it.”
Even items obtained for free can acquire “personal value” simply because the person chose them, giving them a symbolic permanence.
Letting go can feel like admitting a mistake, acknowledging waste, or confronting mortality — each of which can trigger anxiety.
Over years, this behavior turns the home into a physical embodiment of mental clutter. Every surface becomes a time capsule of past decisions, every pathway a reminder of things undone. The person may feel safer surrounded by their possessions, but in practice they are trapped in a high-entropy system where the disorder perpetuates itself.
Alright — here’s how hoarding thrives in high-entropy mental states, step by step:
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1. The brain’s “energy economy” is already maxed out
In a high-entropy state — whether from chronic stress, trauma, depression, or simply constant life chaos — the brain has less capacity to make and execute decisions. Every choice becomes more mentally expensive.
Normal brain: “Old coffee maker? Toss it.” (Low energy cost)
High-entropy brain: “What if I need it later? Could I repair it? Could I give it to someone? I should think about this more…” (High energy cost)
This “overthinking” isn’t laziness — it’s the brain trying to conserve mental energy by avoiding decisive actions that feel risky.
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2. Possessions become mental anchors
In a chaotic inner world, physical objects can serve as tokens of stability.
Each item might represent security (“If I keep this, I’ll be prepared”).
Or identity (“This proves I was once interested in painting”).
Or continuity (“I’ve had this since before things got bad”).
Throwing them away feels like losing pieces of the self, even if the item is trivial to outsiders.
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3. The sunk-cost and “future utility” traps
The hoarder’s mind leans heavily on two cognitive biases:
Sunk-cost fallacy: “I already spent money/time on this — if I throw it out, it’s wasted.”
Possibility bias: “It might be useful someday, and then I’ll regret letting it go.”
When the mind is overloaded, these biases go unchecked, because defaulting to “keep” feels safer than risking regret.
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4. Avoidance becomes self-reinforcing
Decluttering requires effort and emotional discomfort. In a high-entropy mental state:
Avoiding the discomfort gives short-term relief.
That relief teaches the brain: “Keeping things = safety.”
Over time, the home environment becomes physically harder to navigate, which increases stress and mental disorganization — feeding back into the cycle.
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5. The paradox: fighting entropy by increasing it
The hoarder’s intention is often to reduce risk and preserve value — essentially, to fight decay. But the act of keeping everything actually accelerates physical entropy:
Items degrade from dust, pests, moisture.
Spaces become unusable.
Hazards increase (fire, mold, falls).
The brain, meanwhile, experiences psychological entropy: living in a disorderly environment increases cognitive load, making it even harder to process information or make decisions — and so, even harder to let go.
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Alright — let’s map the hoarding cycle onto the physics of entropy so you can see why the parallel is so strong.
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1. Entropy as Disorder
Physics: In thermodynamics, entropy measures the number of possible arrangements a system can have — more arrangements = more disorder.
Hoarding: Every new item added increases the number of ways the environment could be organized. Eventually, the complexity exceeds the brain’s capacity to keep track, and order collapses into apparent randomness.
Low-entropy home: Items are arranged so their location is predictable.
High-entropy hoard: Items are buried in stacks, piles, and containers, where retrieval depends on luck more than system.
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2. Energy Cost of Reversal
Physics: Lowering entropy (creating order) requires an input of energy — and the higher the entropy, the more energy you need to reverse it.
Hoarding: Cleaning and organizing in a hoarded home isn’t a weekend project — it’s a massive, exhausting undertaking. The required “mental energy” to restore order becomes so great that it feels impossible, leading to inaction.
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3. Information vs. Noise
Physics: In information theory, entropy can describe uncertainty in data. If a signal is buried in noise, it becomes harder to extract the original message.
Hoarding: In a hoard, meaningful items (important documents, sentimental keepsakes) are buried under irrelevant items (junk mail, broken tools, empty packaging). The “signal” — things that actually matter — is obscured by the “noise” of accumulated clutter.
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4. Self-Amplifying Disorder
Physics: In closed systems, entropy naturally increases unless energy is constantly put in to maintain order.
Hoarding: If discarding is rare and acquisition continues, disorder grows on its own. Even if nothing new comes in, items degrade, get misplaced, or become damaged — increasing both physical and mental chaos without any extra input.
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5. Psychological Entropy Feedback Loop
More clutter → more decisions to make (What is this? Do I keep it?)
More decisions → more mental fatigue
More fatigue → fewer decisions get made
Fewer decisions → more clutter
This is almost identical to a thermodynamic system that, once left to itself, trends toward maximum disorder unless you keep pumping in energy to reverse it.
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Alright — let’s take the heat death analogy and lay it over the psychology of hoarding.
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1. The Closed System
In thermodynamics, a closed system is one where no matter or energy enters or leaves. Over time, energy spreads out evenly, no useful work can be done, and the system reaches maximum entropy — “heat death.”
In a hoarder’s world:
The home becomes a closed psychological system.
No significant “energy” (decisive action) flows in to remove items.
Items come in (shopping, freebies, found objects) but almost nothing leaves.
Over time, the living space becomes unusable — the functional equivalent of a system where no work can be done.
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2. The Attempt to Avoid Decay
Here’s the tragic irony:
In physics, preventing heat death requires constant input of energy to maintain order.
Hoarders try to prevent the emotional heat death of their personal world — the loss of meaning, security, identity — by keeping everything.
Each kept item feels like a stored bit of usable energy: “I might need this,” “This holds a memory,” “This proves my life has value.”
The act of saving is intended as entropy resistance — preserving potential usefulness.
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3. The Backfire
Unfortunately, just like in physics, if energy (effort) is not applied to organize and manage those resources, they diffuse into chaos:
Items degrade: food rots, electronics corrode, paper yellows.
Memory links fade: “Why did I keep this again?”
Space is consumed: less room to move, cook, sleep, or clean.
So instead of a library of resources, the home becomes a junkyard of unusable fragments — maximum entropy in both the physical and informational sense.
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4. The Emotional Heat Death
Eventually, the system (the home) reaches a point where:
No usable space remains (no “work” can be done).
Every action is blocked by piles, obstacles, or overwhelming choice.
The occupant’s mental energy collapses — the psychological equivalent of temperature reaching uniformity.
This is when hopelessness sets in. The person feels they’ve “lost the battle,” and sometimes the only way to restore order is massive outside intervention — akin to injecting huge amounts of external energy into a dying star.
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5. Why It Feels “Safe” Until It’s Too Late
In physics, entropy increases so gradually you don’t notice it until a tipping point is crossed. Hoarding works the same way:
One more bag, one more box, one more shelf — each feels harmless.
The small disorder increases in tiny increments until the environment shifts from “cluttered but manageable” to “functionally collapsed” almost overnight.
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