Does your Polish partner suffer from disposophobia

She is fantastic I would not wish to change her for the world, there are just one or two issues that I have a beef with. I am just trying to establish if there are many other victims of Polish hoarding, out there in the real world.


I think transient hoarder is for another thread, I have seen a few of those pushing their trolleys with all their worldly goods in.

Although Boletus, who mentioned hoarding is only physical goods.

I'm sure she is mate. I was just being a little light hearted and i've enjoyed reading your post.

You forgot to mention the "Communist mentality"!


They do?How many did you ask and what exactly do they mean by "traditional" ?


This psyche thing,what is it?


What's "modern day Polishness"?

Grubas1, I am prepared to answer your question factually and honestly,but it would be more real it you signed yourself up as a PF member so you will be treated seriously.

Grubas1, you are not hiding behind your Usa are you?

Signed or not I am still the same good old Grubas.


What do you mean "hiding behind your USA"?

Why are Americans so aggressive? Perhaps I should have put, "In my opinion". I've also discussed this with a lot of Poles (I mean Polish people who live in Poland) and they all recognized the tendency not to throw away stuff as a national trait, especially among older people.

If the Poles you discussed it with lived few years outside of Poland they would know that it's a worlwide common trait among older people.See,the only difference between Poles in Poland and Poles abroad is that the latter have seen more and therefore have better judgement.

I think this is true, but it has a lot to do with financial status, rather than where people are from - you won't change your TV every year if you can't afford to, you change it only when it breaks down.

As Poland becomes more like the richer nations, this is likely to decrease. British people could definitely learn from this, though; there really is no need to change decent electronic goods for something "cooler", just for the sake of being able to show off. As the recession bites, I suspect we will see more so-called "Polish" behaviour over here.

This was posted from my crumbling yet fully-functional six year-old supermarket computer, by the way ;) haha

You ask the question then refuse to lisen to any answer but the one you want to hear.

Hoarding is not a national trait, I've only lived here for three years but I've seen dozens of peoples homes. Its a trait your wife suffers and you are trying to cover up for its oddness by claiming its normal for Poland. Its not normal in Poland or elsewhere.

Your wife is simply a bit nutty and abnormal. Accept it.

That's my better half right there. The receipts she keeps in a couple of different "depots" in the house, and a bunch in her purse to boot. I often bit my tongue about keeping so many of them, but it has paid off at times when something needs to be returned. Once or twice a year, she will sift through them and "separate the wheat from the chaff" so to speak, and then starts all over again.

I am not innocent in that I just can't seem to dispose of National Geographic magazines I have collected over the years, thinking the kids will use them in time for this or that project, but it has yet to pay off...

I am sure there is some senior's home somewhere that would be willing to take them off my hands.....

Hiding behind your green card and only arriving at being Polish behind closed doors. lol

I am responding out of courtesy, I am leaving my office in 10, so I will try to respond later. Nice to see you in the light.


I am guessing by your response you are a teacher, I have my opinion and therefore I voice it, I am not speaking over anyone or trying to change their opinion.


So you are still in the pink goggle stage, it is 100% a Polish national trait without question, in fact it is up their on the shelf with victimhood.


I am not covering up for my wife's behaviour, I am broadcasting it over a public forum, hardly claiming its normal am I, come on- Peterweg

You think your brighter for leaving to cower in your new sewers you create while you idotically disperse of ghetto thinking
All you learn is that you are generations of batty lickers wherever you go, home or abroad.
Get back to your cabbage patch, immigrant. We have our own grubs without importing them.

Look, you read me wrong, I am just trying to be as precise as possible. Why should I be aggressive against you? But in my world, hearsay does not count. Yes, perhaps you should have used a conditional guard "In my opinion", rather than jumping to the unconditional statement, as it were. Now let me explain, what I had in mind asking you about some statistical data.

Let start with this UK site, mentalhealthy.co.uk/news/775-hoarding---an-often-undiagnosed-mental-illness.html, where they show some USA pertinent estimates:


This is actually a lot.

Another UK site talks about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which can be categorized as:

Checking, Contamination, Hoarding, Rumination/Intrusive Thoughts.

They give here a total estimation for all four cases in UK:


This is confirmed by another site:


So there are some scientific statistics available, and perhaps if I spent much more time on the subject I could come with something even more valuable.

I tried to find similar estimates for Poland, but I failed - perhaps because lack of any serious research in this area? But if you want to give it a try yourself, then here are the Polish keywords you may wish to use for searching:

- Chomikowanie (hamstering). This word is the oldest one used to describe hoarding. Unfortunately it is mostly used nowadays for internet related activities - such as file sharing.

- Syllogomania
- Patologiczne zbieractwo (pathological gathering)

The bottom line however is that hoarding is an international trait. Statements like this


are simply ridiculous, as they go against statistics I quoted.

On one extreme there are hoarders, on another is a completely disposable society.

I do not save papers or magazines, but I do have a place for old strings and pieces of ropes! If your kids make a lot of collages, saving old magazines may make sense for a while. I don't think I'm on my way to becoming a hoarder, but who knows...

On the other hand I also have friends that will not save anything, including leftover food. They never have a pen when needed, or matches, or a screw. They don't mind going to the store every other day.

Either extreme is bad.

Being a horder is not such a bad thing...

I live on a farm in the middle of a forest , and many a time i have been able to repair my cars and bikes with bits of stuff that most people in the towns would have thrown away...

Just last week i lost all the water from my Jeep when a hose burst.... A bit of Ursus tractor hose i found in my barn got cut to size and did the job just fine....Other wise i would have been driving miles to the nearest dealer for one....

Much of Poland is farm land , farmers do not throw anything away...so yes , Poles do hoard stuff..but as i say , its not such a bad thing...

You have provided no facts on Poland, only facts about the UK and USA. Your stand is, no qualified researched facts on hoarding exist regarding Poles, therefore it does not exist on that basis in the Polish psyche.I consider this a weak argument at best.

Boletus,there are no qualified researched facts on ' victimhood mentality' in Poland would you then go on to defend, it does not exist in Polish psyche?

We can conclusively state without argument ' victimhood mentality' is rooted in Polish psyche although no research papers exist supporting this argument, this is not disputing ' victimhood mentality' can also be found in many other countries in the world.It is therefore my opinion disposophobia is rooted in the Polish psyche, unless someone can provide me with three independent qualified research papers qualifying it does not exist in the Polish psyche.


Everything has an opposite, I also have a friend that I ski with most years in Poland, the first stop they want to make once they get off the plane is decathlan to but snow boot and all. Once they get back to the UK it is all disposed off, the argument they use to support this is, it is cheap in Poland. I am a firm believer in quality over quantity, you get what you pay for.