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Ottawa social worker Elaine Birchall can tell you all about people who keep way too much stuff, how you’ll know if you’re one of them and what to do about it.

There are a lot of misconceptions about hoarding, starting with the one that those who hoard are survivors of the Depression or other deep deprivation.

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Not true, says Birchall. While there is such as thing as “adaptive hoarding” — people who acquire and save things because they know they’ll need them — the other kind is “maladaptive” or compulsive hoarding. Whatever that person intended to do with all those things, that has broken down.

“Some of the nicest people I know are people who hoard,” said Birchall, the founder of the Canadian National Hoarding Coalition, who has since trained mental health professional health professionals across North America. Her book, Conquer the Clutter, was published this month.

One of those is Lucy, an Ottawa woman who ended up the “curator” of the possessions of seven family members after they died and couldn’t bear to part with any of it without “total anguish.” That included seven sets of china.