Office Hoarders Can't Let Go of Clutter

Aug. 12, 2006 — -- Out of the office, Ben Alexander routinely closes deals on multimillion-dollar homes. But in the office, Alexander is losing a daily battle against his scrap paper, newspapers, years-old mail and outdated magazines.

"I don't like it," said Alexander, owner of Alexander Realty. "But I also don't want to get rid of it in the sense that as soon as you throw something out, you need it the next day."

But Lee Springmeyer, who has been sitting across from Alexander for 12 years, sees a problem.

"His degree of mess is almost unexplainable," Springmeyer said. "There are people in the office that are thoroughly frustrated, because they've just spent five hours looking for a file which should have taken 30 seconds."

Dr. David Tolin, an expert in hoarding behavior and director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at The Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn., said behavior like Alexander's is akin to obsessive compulsive disorder.

"He hangs on to very, very large quantities of things on the off chance that he'll be able to come up with just the right object," Tolin said. "It's that payoff that keeps him hooked."

Tolin demonstrates the presence of that type of hoarding behavior by having Ben play a diagnostic computer game in which his goal is to make as much money as he can.

"Most people going through this kind of test figure out after awhile that there's a good strategy and a bad strategy," Tolin said. "Ben couldn't lay off the bad strategy. He kept coming after the thing that would pay off once in awhile, even though it was clearly costing him."

Clean Up

A few months ago, Alexander took an important first step to clear out his clutter: He hired Patricia Diesel, a professional organizer.

Diesel and Alexander created color-coded files -- green for finances and red for urgent. And during a session with Tolin, Alexander had a breakthrough.

"It hurts," he told Tolin. "I mean it really does. I mean, I'm sitting there with everything in front of me. It goes on all day, Dr. Tolin."

"What's the most important thing you have?" Tolin asked. "It's your time, and you're giving that up for what -- pieces of paper?"

"That's exactly what -- that's what happens," Alexander said. "That's exactly what happens."

Alexander cleared away some of the clutter and replaced it with a picture of his daughter.

"You cleared away the garbage to make room for the good stuff," Tolin said.

"I see," Alexander said. "I mean, it's true. I mean, I see."