Infographic on compulsive hoarding

In dealing with her mother’s home in Minneapolis, Ms. Sholl has spent much of her life alternating between feeling shame about its squalid condition and attempting to rid it of the books, scraps of paper, empty food cartons and thrift-store tchotchkes littering every available surface.

When she learned that her mother had cancer, in 2006, Ms. Sholl flew out for one last-ditch cleanup attempt, an effort that inspired “Dirty Secret.” “The stove was piled feet-high with dirty pans,” Ms. Sholl said. “It gnawed at me that she was living that way.”

Many children of hoarders know the feeling. Even as scientists study the cognitive activity that accompanies the disorder and television shows like TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive” and A&E’s “Hoarders” have made it a mainstream issue, scant attention has been paid to how hoarding affects families of the afflicted, especially their children.

The Personal Analytics of My Life by Stephen Wolfram

"Boing Boing: Xeni Jardin" <rss2email@nocko.net>

charming short video of a man in manhattan whose home is a bit like a junk shop - charming, utterly charming.

"Cheese is plentiful in all holds of Skyrim, which gave me a first vector to channel my energies towards once the Breezehome was mine. Wheels and wedges soon became my most sought-after loot. I’d even re-enter cleared dungeons immediately on exit, thinking I’d missed one. I was dumping cheese in Lydia’s bedroom from the day I got the keys and within a few weeks, had filled one corner to the ceiling and covered her bed in eidar stilton. However, my cheese hoarding came to an end 100 hours in, when the game intervened to save itself. A friend challenged me to do Unrelenting Force in my cheese room. The frame rate immediately hit single digits – and has never fully recovered."

Song Dong is a Chinese conceptual artist whose latest exhibition consists of over 10,000 household items laid out in the Curve Gallery in the Barbican Centre.

Waste Not is the external representation of his mother’s depression, brought about by her husband’s death, which resulted in her becoming a serial hoarder. Over seven years she amassed many items ranging from hundreds of plastic bottles through to dozens of empty cardboard boxes. The fact that these are everyday items will make you question your own possessions. Will those boutique bags or childhood toys really come in useful one day?

Song Dong: Waste Not is on at the Curve, Barbican Centre until 12 June. Admission is free.

RT @jay_gross: haha brilliant: --some of this sounds all too familiar. #reallife #kipple #hoarding

REALLY looking forward to Barbican Curve Gallery installation: Song Dong: Waste Not... On #hoarding #memory #kipple