Record collecting versus hoarding

I will share, that having been through a house move, after many years in the previous house. If you have a lot of records....like on multiple floors, and a pending House Close Date; then you will have had a "Come to Jesus" moment, and determined already which of your records fall into the

1) Essential - you are taking - they define you, 
2) Collectibles - nice to have, unique maybe rare records, so worth it to make the effort, and 
3) All the Others - you are calling around to see who will take them. 
I came up with some decent Techniques for unloading records in category 3. 
In the end I still took too many, but I did probably a 35-40% cull.  

So everything in Category 3 is probably hoarding. 

As always, @whart said it all. Well, almost all ;-) .

By the time I reached my mid-60’s, a lot of guys I had known had croaked, and my own mortality started staring me in the face (ever looked into a mirror whilst on LSD? If not, don’t ;-). I started thinking about how many hours I had left in which I could be listening to recorded music, and how many of the approximately 5,000 LP’s and 5,000 CD’s in my library would I be able to listen to again, even once? So I went ahead and did a cull, getting rid of about 1500 of each.

Which I now regret! I sometimes find myself jonesing to hear one of those titles I got rid of, and have even bought replacement copies of some of them. And I continue to learn of music I had missed at the time of its initial release. Plus, good new music keeps getting recorded; what am I gonna do, not add any more discs to my racks, just out of spite? ;-)

At what point does "collecting" records become hoarding?

A very good question that could apply to a lot of other things too.

When you're young you don't see any horizon on life's journey and the voyage seems endless.

Later on, things change and you might be forced to take stock of exactly where you are currently.

Some decide to put their house in order in consideration of the cleanup job that family or friends might have to do after they've gone, whilst others don't seem to care in the slightest.

For them life is to be enjoyed, and the devil can take the hindmost. Too much is never enough for them.

The unfortunate truth is that often what is left behind may hold nothing of the value that the owner had placed in it. There's a good example of that in the closing scenes of Citizen Kane.

And then there are those unfortunate sufferers of OCD.

There is no nice way of dressing up the distress and discomfort that they often end subjecting themselves to (and often others) in their obsessive behaviours.

I try to be a minimalist when it comes to possessions, but there 50 odd LPs that I could not easily bear to be parted from.

My hoarding is now largely confined to the digital medium. The problem is time, the lack of it.

Perhaps this could be called underground hoarding?

big greg, You cannot be a real hoarder if you admit to being a hoarder.  This is a variation on Groucho's famous statement that he would not join any club that would have him as a member.  Knowing you are a hoarder and admitting it demonstrates some level of sanity, whereas hoarding is a mental illness.  So don't worry.

I gave away all of my LP’s some time ago - when I couldn’t read the spines w/out a magnifying glass. LMAO! No longer have to worry about my floor collapsing either! Ah, peace of mind (I don’t have to worry about my analog system and its maintenance either). CD’s are OK - I put mine in plastic envelopes and I don’t save the notes (who needs them with the internet). I can store about 10 cd’s per inch. Probably makes me a candidate for the Thoreau award for simplifying or, at least, becoming simple minded. :-)