‘We made goat paths so we could clamber over it. It got in the way of living’

David Woods, 50, from Edinburgh, has lived in the same house with a friend from university for the past 18 years.

He was put in touch with Life-pod around five years ago by a mental health support worker after the number of books, DVDS and CDS he had acquired became unmanageable.

“It was very difficult to get around the house. The rooms that we had weren’t really suitable for the job,” he says.

“The bedrooms and living room were cluttered with stuff. We had made goat paths so we could clamber over it. It got in the way of living.

“You’ re not necessarily aware of it. I thought it was quite normal to have so much.”

David, who is now managing his disorder with the help of Life-pod, says he mainly buys non-fiction books as he is “try- ing to work out what’s going on in the world”.

“It gives me a sense of having at least a grip on what’s going on. We live in very turbulent times, and it’s part of trying to understand them,” he adds.

“But you end up not learning anything anyway, because you’ve got so much stuff you don’t know where to start.”

He says he is unable to pinpoint the underlying reason behind his disorder, but describes it as “the same as any kind of addiction” in that the financial toll doesn’t seem to matter at the time.

“The impression I get is that it starts off quite early,” he adds. “I’ve been told that it can sometimes start as a childhood trauma, and then festers, and comes out later on.”

David tells the story of a friend who once had his house cleared by the local council after they deemed his hoarding a health risk, and says he feels “quite lucky” this hasn’t happened to him. The great thing with Life-pod is that it has been done over a long period of time and it’s been done with compassion,” he adds.

“If you just go in and say ‘We’re going to put all your stuff in a skip, it doesn’t matter what it is’ – can you imagine how that would feel?”

In an increasingly digital age, he says he and other people with the disorder are tempted to download things rather than buying physical copies.

“Although you can’t see it, it’s still there, it still has an impact on your mental health,” he says.

David says he is now managing his disorder and is grateful that it is becoming “more and more understood”, but doubts that it will ever disappear.

“There are peaks and troughs,” he says. “I don’t think you can ever get in a position where you completely stop doing it. I don’t think it’s ever going to be easy.”