Hoarding and Garbage Houses
A few years ago, my parents visited some people that had moved far North. My mother, in particular, was bemused by the habit of hoarding that they had developed. The table had collected stacks and stacks of paper. Instead of washing their clothes, they would wear them until they were too dirty and then buy more. The used clothing would just be tossed into a spare room. These are really relatively mild cases, but this article from 1997 highlights some more drastic case of hoarding and also talks about one case of a "garbage house" in particular that seems to be the result of a teenage boy who was overwhemed when his parents abandoned him to care for his younger, functionally deaf, siblings. He obviously has some sort of OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) — he irons his socks — but one wonders if this is the result of growing up under overwhelming circumstances instead of the cause of the garbage house.
The article also takes a good look at when these garbage houses started showing up (the early 70's) and why. A common refrain seems to be that it just "got out of hand" at some point after which the house's resident just gave in to the filth. There is some speculation that it is related to information overload: the news media bombard us with events (beyond our control) and tells us they are important. People are so overwhelmed when they hearing about a hurricane, earthquake, or famine — tragedies they can't control — that they somehow get the notion that their stuff will provide protection. And, just as the news isn't well filtered — events not relevent to your daily life receive wide coverage — neither is the "stuff" that accumulates.
(Thanks to boing boing for the mental jog on this.)