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Not in my house...

I've been "editing" for years.

There are so many exceptions that I doubt it's a useful rule. 'Tis the case in my home, but not in others I know.

I don't think it correlates to gender.

gender is a social construction.

Sorry. reflex.

I've been a minimalist my entire life, and I know far more male packrats than female. I don't think gender really figures into this, though.

I'm so surprised by the hypothesis stated! Only because in my rather limited study group of 1 household, it's the man who keeps EVERYTHING and the woman who is always trying to purge, purge, purge.

My Dad was always the packrat... My Mom was always tossing stuff out (often without looking at what it was... Resulting in many lost things that shouldn't have been). I try to find the middle ground, I tend to collect, but due to my tiny space and forced to edit constantly...

Have you ever seen "Clean House" on the Style Network?
There are just as many male packrats out there (my neighbor included...)

Men just keep different things. Maybe they are less sentimental about favorite material things, but then are more inclined to save things if they might be useful someday... like gray underpants... might be good for.... waxing a car?

In my observation, and also according to Don Aslett's publications on clutter, anyone with a pet clutter problem will attribute it to something on the order of sex/gender or nationality, or their parents or their age relative to the Great Depression, or their parents' age relative to the Great Depression, how many children in their family growing up, how often they moved around as a child, some significant life upheaval, or anything.

Anyone with strong to severe purge/minimalism mentality will also tend to attribute it to some of these factors, etc. It also depends who is accusing whom of having the "problem," as it is a case of degrees. People with some stuff will be perceived as having too much by strong to severe minimalists, as if there is a problem with it. There is such a thing as too much stuff in a hazardous or dysfunctional way, but minimalists will have a low threshold for it, thereby putting gatherers on the defense to explain why they "need" it. Conversely, people who feel comfortable with more stuff around will say minimalism looks cold and impersonable, where the minimalist preference will say it's simplicity and clarity they get there, which is more comfortable than things.

I think this will be a controversial topic, nonetheless. It's kind of an argument without a lot of proof to back it up or just as many exceptions.

My BF Must Keep Everything he ever had. (He has a bullet cleaner, in case he finds dirty bullets . . . none so far!?!)

My BFF Must Keep Everything plus her parents' stuff FOREVER. Her husband is same. They keep getting larger and larger living spaces for The Stuff.

Me? I'm happiest when all my junk will fit into one bag.

I don't think this issue is divided by gender.

Considering the ratio of women to men voting, who would doubt results that say women aren't pack rats.
Who me? No way! :)

I'll paraphrase evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould. The late Harvard professor, when asked about genetic differences between racial groups, stated that there was as much genetic diversity within a racial group as there was between them.

In my experience on pack-rat-ism, (I'm a guy, btw) there is as much diversity within each gender as there is between them.

My boyfriend won't get rid of anything. He has 92 tee-shirts! I've counted.

Luckily I have the dressing room and all the built-ins for my clothes, and he can have the dresser for all his t-shirts.

I on the other hand own very little. So I guess it balances out.

Have to agree with KTG's first sentence. Guys just keep different stuff. I'm a guy and consider myself a packrat struggling to reform.

Uh, totally, because on Mars there's more room for stuff than on Venus.

Seriously, how anachronistic is it to float any statement along the lines of "Men are x and women are y"? I join the chorus of social constructionists here in the comments.

lightspeed said it well

I agree that gender doesn't necessarily play a role, and that there are far too many factors determining whether someone holds onto things. I tend toward editing (I'm a woman) and letting go; my fiance is very much a pack rat and finds it difficult to let go of things. Hanging on is such a subconscious thing, and there are many, many reasons we establish the habit (security, pride, the need to fill a void, etc.). Letting go is liberating!

And, I'll have to second lightspeed; he said it perfectly.

You haven't met my boyfriend. Or my four older brothers. Or my dad. Maybe I'm a packrat magnet? I'm the one with a 500-sq-ft condo!

Exactly. Different stuff. Just think of Tim "The Toolman" Taylor and Imelda Marcos.

As an RA in a co-ed dorm at Oberlin for 2 years (Holla, Maxwell!), the trend during fire inspections was:
- Women's rooms were usually generally messy or generally neat
- Men's rooms were bi-polar - they were either REALLY messy or OCD-crazy neat. One room was so neat that they had the tissue sticking out of the tissue box perfectly poofed.

Just depends on the person and their attachment to things. My wasband verges on being a hoarder. I am constantly editing. My new companion is a minimalist, and while I am neither a collector nor a minimalist, our personal styles meld very well.

I won't deny I have a packrat problem myself, but I maintain that my (male) roommate is worse.

I'm the first to admit being a bit of a pack rat and not the neatest person. (I am female.) But my boyfriend is way worse! We moved recently and he really had a hard time purging. Whereas I had purge-fever! Not only is he messy, but he discourages me from cleaning! We've been neat and organized since we moved (one month) so hopefully we will continue our new clean way of living.

I really don't think that gender has anything to do with it. BUT having said that the worst pack rats I know are men.

My first instinct was no. But then I thought of the extremes I'd experienced and the keep ever issue of the newspaper for 50 years types of people that I know have been almost exclusively women. While the throw everything away, OCD, ritualistic cleaning types have been mostly (but not as exclusively) men.

I'm not sure that this gender correlation at the extremes has any application to normal people with a bit of a clutter habit or a tendency to let go of things more easily.

I will say that classifying people of my acquaintance is difficult because a some of the college/early twenties guys I know appear to simultaneously have almost no possessions (aside from electronic equipment) and live in cluttered messes. But then, they aren't the sort of people who'd ever read this blog, either.

Looks like the rule has been thrown out. I have known people who fall under this rule, but many who don't.

If I had married a man who was more like my dad I would have married a minimalist. I married a man just the opposite, so by extreme I seem to be the minimalist, but it's not exactly true. I just happen to be married to an avid collector.

archivist says- not true.

Interesting survey. I think the pack-rat tendency runs in families (and maybe skips a generation). The best examples of hoarding that I've seen were a brother and sister, living in two different states.

I used to be a pack rat until I had to move it a couple of times. When we moved 1000 miles across country I decided it wasn't worth it and I've been purging ever since. My husband on the other hand can't give it up. I have to plead with him to throw stuff out. I'ts his crap and nobody can have it. It's like it's a part of him. He even sneaks stuff out the trash and hides it in the basement. My Dad and my grandfather were also the pack rats in the family. So I would have to say I think men tend to packrat more than women. Women buy more stuff than men but I think we get rid of more stuff regularly than men. It's a good excuse for us to get something new. ;.)

I think it has more to do with psychology (and life circumstances influencing one's thinking) than biology. My sister and mother are packrats. I'm a constant editor because I live in a much, much smaller space and have moved a few times. My husband isn't a collector or hoarder, but he does allow inertia to guide him and his inclination is to keep something until there's no choice but to get rid of it because maximum capacity has been reached or something is a problem.

I disagree with citygirlincountry though about getting rid of things as an excuse to get something new (as a female trait). I don't like to shop and I prefer just to have less stuff around to deal with.

Funny you should mention siblings, raven ... because I was just about to do the same thing.

My beloved, a man, was a packrat and a piler to boot. When we started dating, nearly every surface in his home was covered in teetering piles of papers. When we moved in together, he brought numerous boxes that had not been opened since the last time he moved (but whose contents were too important to get rid of). While housesitting for his sister, I realized that he comes by his habits honestly: His sister's place looked exactly like his old studio, complete with the about-to-collapse pile of mail on the kitchen counter and the multiple bottles of almost-empty shampoo in the bathroom.

The easiest way to get a pack rat to purge? Move to Alaska. With only the belongings that will fit in the back of a compact pickup truck. Works wonders.

Vice versa in my experience.

COME THE FU*K ON! That's the biggest lie in the world.


The reason why women's clutter shows more is because they've no room in the house to keep it. Would you put it in the kids rooms? The living room? The kitchen? Guys have the garage and most likely take over the living room. The garage is HUGE storage, compared to a closet, even if it's filled with clothes she'll never wear.

OH and all those nasty old t-shirts that you can't throw away because "they're special"... whatever.

Both my parents trained us children to discard unused items. My father, a telivsion camerman, covered fires and wanted nothing hazardous in the house. My mother was devout and believed that we should live simply and give to others. People with live with disorder may be displaying contempt for those who share their space, or may have other problems.

It's complicated.

Growing up my Mom tossed everything, an my Dad was a collecter. I find that I am a little bit of both, but these days I try to toss more then I collect.

I'd guess this has more to do with how you're raised, but when it comes to mentality vs. quantity, I have to agree -- more women I know hold onto things ("Ooh, this might come in handy") then men ("Hm, I could really use an ____...") That said, the not always thinking things ahead part of the Y chromosome on my partner means he accumulates more stuff, since he often forgets what he has and ends up with a second!

So my Dad just moved and was about to throw out his baby shoes that were cast in silver, until I convinced him that I would keep the "keepsake." This from a guy that ACTUALLY uses old undies for polishing furniture, etc.

Nice example, K T G!

I'd say false. My father was a pack rat (never know when you're gonna need it) but my mom was not (why do you have so much junk?). My wife is a pack rat (but someone gave this to me...) I am not (but you never use it.)

It really just depends on the person and what they've experienced. Mostly, the "what they've experienced" is probably moving. I've moved a lot in my life (once 4 times in a year) and find that its easier to do if I have less. However, since I'm a dj I have a huge music collection which has made moving difficult but I've even edited that down to classics/must keep records.

the women on my mother's side of the family tend to be packrats. I think I'm the first in many generations to work hard, not terribly successfully yet, against that tendency.

First, I think it's hilarious that so many women voted against the idea (who wants to be known as a packrat!?) . I'm one of them.

Second, it's not true. My mother is a major editor of junk and always has been. She doesn't even like shopping. My grandmothers on the other hand are the world's most annoying packrats. I guess my mother's tendency is a large reaction. I'm probably somewhere in the middle.

This comment is admittedly anecdotal bs but I'm a supreme editor of stuff, just like mum. Husband was packrack. Dad was packrat. I always wanted to be a packrack, just to buck the system, but I really suck at it. Am thinking the mens want to be all lean and mean like a well-designed electronic system. Some may be. But I don't think this is a quality that aligns to gender. And besides, even if it does, how do you figure in gay men, gay women and the never-ending variations in between: the femme female gays, the butch female straights, and the ever-mysterious sandal-wearing Peppermint Patty? I could go on, but oh hell, I'm callin' it a day on this one.

Well -- my good friend is currently trying (TRYING) to get rid of his stuff and he's having a hard time letting go. He's got all kinds of stuff -- a motorcycle that doesn't run, two cars he's kept for "parts", a big industrial photocopier he bought "in case he needed to xerox something" that he can't operate since it requires specialized toner, boxes and boxes of books and paperwork for the past 15 years.....etc. He's going through agony getting himself to let go. He wants to move to Europe and wants to get rid of everything, and just can't.

And my father, bless him, still has a bunch of clothing he owned before he met my mother in 1966, not to mention his old army fatigues and boots and kit. And every tool he's ever bought (which have crept into odd places like boxes he keeps under the kitchen table). Not to mention the rifle reloading equipment he bought to make his own bullets the summer he took up deer hunting (hunting season stretched from 1979-1981 in this house, and the stuff has just sat there ever since.)

The living room tables are heaped with his car repair and other repair manuals, and all the health books he bought since becoming diabetic. One wall is taken up with all his audio equipment that he bought in the 70s (but never plays). The living room bookshelf is stuffed with a large collection of travel video tapes (think Rick Steves, think VCR) that my dad bought but lost interest in watching. Etc. My mother keeps attempting to get this stuff out of the living room and kitchen (or at least organized more neatly) but it never happens.

All this is well and good, except he is constantly nagging my mother that she has "too much crap." This is the man who has totally taken over the closets in the master bedroom, forcing my mother to hang all her clothes in a spare bedroom's closet and in one dresser (half the space of the master's closets, and my dad also overflows two dressers on his own.)

What does my mother actually have? Two bookshelves full of books (some of which are actually mine), a cabinet full of cookbooks, a cabinet with her wedding silver and china, and her sewing machine/supplies. All her "stuff" combined could (and practically does) fill only one room of their 3-bedroom house.

(To be fair, I still have a few boxes of stuff in their house, which I've been slowly getting rid of to get out of their way. We're actually down to things my mom thinks I shouldn't get rid of but I do -- like all my dolls. She's not ready to let go of my dolls. Though she did get rid of her wedding dress. Hmm....)

Men keep large pieces of farm equipment and old cars and appliances in case they need a part. Women keep christening dresses and the odd dried flower. Oh, maybe that''s just my family.

To whom it may concern at AT: I could answer the first survey question but not the 2nd. I've had a lot of problems posting comments too lately. I'm only mentioning it in this comment because it happened just now. Again. And I've written to the contact address a couple of times and no one has written back or assisted me with it. This happens whether I am logged in or not. And it seems to be completely random.

In my experience it tends to be the men in my life that are the packrats. Between my grandfather, and dads garages, to my ex's "collection" he's had since childhood, it's deffintly the men.

Seconding that gender is a social construction. So my choice in what I might choose to keep could be influenced by that.

Both my parent's keep stuff. Both purge. What their idea of usefulness is impacts what they keep.

i hope this post is a joke. Packrats and neat freaks come in all genders.

It is "something else". Men and women simply pack different things.

Men tend to pack so-called "useful" things. e.g. Books (that he never reads), electronics (that no longer works, furniture (that don't fit and never will), car stuff (even after the car is sold), computer parts (that are no longer working), sports memorabilia...

Women tend to pack more "worthless" stuff. e.g. Clothes (that might fit us after we lose 20 pounds one day), shoes (that are 2 size too small, but it's Prada!), cosmestics (that give us rash but we pay too much to waste it, stuff toys (from friends and pass boyfriends), food/seasonings (that we might eat some day), and everything "that we might need in the future"... These items are also more bulky-looking. It is therefore women clutter appeared to be more useless in a glance.

I was going to tell you about my old man but the survey result says it all.

My father is almost incapable of throwing things out until his office is a complete wreck. The only thing that motivates him is occasionally being ashamed for me to see what his office has come to look like, because he knows I'm about to come visit. And that's mainly because I painted (10 years ago) his office to look like the courtyard of an Abbey, and he loves it to look nice.

I'm a packrat, but I got this trait from my father. My mom is always the one having organize, edit, and throw out his stuff.

"Uh, totally, because on Mars there's more room for stuff than on Venus."

My favorite comment thus far. Gender is involved in terms of how such behavior is described, not distributed.

Oh, only people who identify as "man" or "woman" are allowed to vote?

Agreed with the others that 1) gender is a social construct and 2) this is one of the most ridiculous posts I've ever seen on here.

not in my experience

i said something else, so here's my reason.

i think it's more nurture than nature. you can have difficulty with material possessions, no matter what your gender.

for example: my mother, father, and brother all are packrats. growing up, my parents were disappointed that their stuff was occasionally and indiscriminately thrown away. now that they are adults, they imbue everything with sentimental value, and so, they keep everything. my 10-yr old brother is a packrat because he learned the habit from my parents.

on the other hand, my girlfriend is extremely spare. her parents are refugees who immigrated to america with only a few hundred dollars. she and her siblings were taught to enjoy their belongings but to understand that they are just material things.

While I think such stereotypes are a bit silly, I have never personally encountered a man who could organize as well as a woman... or at least a man who demonstrated such an ability. As far as packrat-liness goes, overall I don't think there's a measurable difference. Disclaimer: I have way more crap than my husband! (d'oh!)

I don't think being a packrat means someone is disorganized. My wife is far more inclined to throw stuff out, and purges frequently, but she is also a shop-a-holic, and buys way more stuff than I do.

I'm a packrat, or as my closest friend says, an "Archivist".

I keep things, but I'm meticulously organized. Every draw and shelf has everything in tidy rows. I know where everything is. I tend to only acquire what I intend to keep, and keep it I do. My wife is purging all the time, but lacks my organizational skills. Now, to be fair, I'm a Art Director/Design Director by trade, so keeping things tidy, orderly and organized does play into my professional skill set.

Interesting topic. It is not a gender thing, but an individual thing. No way of establishing just why a person leans one way. Could be childhood, could be physical, could be social/mental. I think the generation logic is the most likely answer.

Both my sisters and myself are virtually spotless with how we live. One sister's apt in Hoboken is mint and she has little clutter. She and I are very similar with how we live. Less is more, but have the right stuff. The other sister, lives with her boyfriend (in grad school) and chooses to have nothing of her's there, but clothes and he is very neat and a collector, but organizes everything. My father is a pack rat, and I virtually had to cut a hand off to help him throw out stuff from his house. Old roles of warped yellow and green wall paper from the 70's. Tells me, he may have to patch up a spot:) That's not irrational, that's just dad. My ex girfriend, who was model like and not an overweight sit on the sofa and don't work type, was an absolute mess all the time. Funny right. 3 Years of living together and she kept everything and subsequently kept it out on the floor, over here, over there, etc, and then she broke my chops for leaving dirty dishes in the sink. ugh..That's reality.

To summarize this, quoting other commentors..

"more women I know hold onto things ("Ooh, this might come in handy") then men ("Hm, I could really use an ____...")"
THIS IS VERY TRUE FOR ME and I CALL IT RATIONALIZATION. Men can rationalize. Women not as good. Sadly, I do not know any woman or have been to any woman's apartment that was orderly, or for that matter minimal. Frankly, every woman I know in Manhattan is an utter mess. My guy friends say, "this is all I need"

and

Consistent to my rationalization comment, this is perfect and so true!

"First, I think it's hilarious that so many women voted against the idea (who wants to be known as a packrat!?) . I'm one of them"

Funny discussion..thnx

Ha. My husband is a minimalist when it comes to MY stuff. When we 'de-clutter', it's mostly my stuff that just has to go, while his is deemed uberimportant and must stay. So, yeah, my spouse is a 'minimalist' and I'm the 'packrat'. Snort.

I think there is a definite difference in how a woman will decorate a home as opposed the the way a man would. Using the word "packrat" is unhelpful because it doesn't really describe the difference between the two stereotypes. When people have to make a decorating decision between an esthetic choice and a utilitarian choice, I've noticed that women tend towards the esthetic (and personal) while men will invariably go towards the utilitarian one. The stereotypical "battle of the sexes" over big TVs and stereo speakers in the living room is a good example. As someone else observed, women tend to decorate with "personal" and "pretty" objects while men tend to go for "potentially(?) useful" and "cool" objects. Women also tend to like to use intense colors in ways men would tend not to.

Obviously, these stereotypes are not perfectly universal, but if you go through the recent Smallest Coolest contest entries, it's not that hard to guess whether the owner is a single man, a single woman or a couple.

Yuck. I come to AT to read the great posts about decorating and I get blindsided by this moldy old mars/venus cliche. Seriously hoping this is the last one.

Nope. "Uh, totally, because on Mars there's more room for stuff than on Venus."

Venus is larger than Mars:

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/interactives/messenger/psc/PlanetSize.html

Fun topic! I would say that of the people I know, the pack rats/minimalists thing does seem to fall along gender lines. But I think it's important to point out that the male minimalists I know aren't better at getting rid of things or simplifying it's that they don't accumulate so much to begin with. They keep things around because they don't want to bother replacing it (even if it is falling apart). Of course, there are exceptions, but I honestly have to say that it does seem to work out that way (even though my first reaction was heck no!)

In my house its not true or false, but reversed. The BF just will NOT let me get rid of his camping gear (unused in the 8 yrs we've known each other), scuba flippers, and just about every ball imaginable, even though the most used stuff gets used once every other year. And we live in NYC, and no, we are NOT that active.

Gravity is stronger on Venus than it is on Mars. !!!

My dad s a total packrat and my mom finally got him to go thru the garage and pitch away! She always wants things clean, and it's a constant battle between them.