I think just about every collectible community has been rocked by the recent spate of shows about hoarding.  

The Breyer community has been quietly abuzz about an episode of TLC's show Hoarding: Buried Alive that features a Breyer collector (Season 2 episode 3, "Prison of Garbage"). 

One could argue that even one Breyer model is more than you need, given that they serve no "useful" purpose.  But where is the line, really?  

Compulsive hoarding turns out to be far more common than most people think, somewhere on the order of 3% of the population.  Although these shows do have an exploitative, "circus freak" aspect, they do have the value of making it okay to talk about hoarding.  

Just giving us a vocabulary to use is helpful; a lot of people never knew how to express "my mom has too much junk."  Now that the word "hoarder" has reached our collective attention, I am seeing all kinds of conversations popping up about people, friends, and family.  It turns out that we all know at least one hoarder, even if we never knew what to call them.

If you have too many Breyer models, does that make you a hoarder?  And how many IS too many, anyway?  I have only seen clips from the TLC episode which features the Breyer collector, Barbara.  But it seems to me that her problem isn't the model horses.  It's all the other crap.

"Stuff piled against the wall" and "narrow pathways through junk" are two hallmarks of a hoarding problem.  In the clips I have seen, the collector does have this problem.  But it's not Breyers that are piled against the wall.  It's not model horses you're picking your way through.  It's not Breyer horses clogging her coffee pot.  

Model horses can be expensive, and they take up space, it's true.  But collecting Breyer horses is a thing, if you follow me.  They are not garbage, nor are they random broken stuff you find on the street.  Fliers, junk mail, plastic spoons: these are things that hoarders accumulate.  You can see these things piling up into drifts in Barbara's house.  Collecting these items is not a thing people do.

Compulsive spending on Breyer models is a different story.  It's okay, albeit borderline, to skip a meal in order to pay for a Breyer.  It is not okay to skip paying another bill (like the electricity bill, or the phone bill) in order to pay for a Breyer.  

I know I'm working against the grain here, but buying Breyer models needs to be put in its proper place in your life.  And that place is BELOW paying your regular bills.

We often get posts from Breyer collectors who are cleaning out, and want to get rid of dozens - even hundreds - of models.  Whenever I see these posts, I always cheer for them!  It's so hard to take that step, but it can make a huge difference in your life.

It's a tricky topic, and I'm glad it's one that Breyer collectors are addressing.  Trust me, the day they film a Hoarders episode about my other hobby, knitting, is the day you realize that collecting Breyer horses just isn't that big a deal!

Photo credit: TLC