collecting

Oh man, woodworking is pretty bad. Tools galore, scrap wood everywhere, and half-finished projects all over the garage.

Any “retro” collection. Old video games, for instance. In many cases, the barrier to entry is sky high, because there are very few old consoles or games on the market; The collectors have bought all of them, and are never planning on selling.

Cars because they are so big, and ugly when in disrepair. Small scale hoarding is a small scale problem.

Backpacking. I have a big plastic bin filled with equipment that I decided to go another direction with.

But makers are the kings of hobby hoarding, just look at Adam Savage. He has parts for things he hasn't even thought of building. He has a plethora of tools that overlap entirely just because the set of tools is closer to a given work aspect. Walls of bins with various degrees of filled because he bought 100 of something a decade ago that may have a future use.

My first answer would have been retro game collecting, but that's already been discussed, so I'll posit custom PC building. That's a hobby rife with keeping spare parts "just in case".

Source: Self

Warhammer.

The "hobby carpenter" and handymen sort. Guys who like building stuff and own land to do it on. So much crap and sub par materials. Hundreds of salvaged half rotten 2x4s that might be enough to hold a person with a couple dozen of them. Shit tons of insulation just getting soaked outside, tons of random cinder blocks and bricks, etc. Add in a side of drywall, random carpet scraps, tons of various wiring, and a massive assortment of tools that have probably seen more house dust than wood dust.

Not taking a dig at these guys, but you have to be realistic with what you can accomplish. Unless its a crazy good deal/find that you know you will use or be able to give away, don't touch it.

For the sake of space and organization, just buy materials for the project RIGHT before you build it, and AFTER you plan EVERYTHING about it. Account for EVERY piece you need so you never need to buy a bunch extra "just in case".

Hobby electronics?

Need a small part? Better buy 10 in case you break one and because it's only marginally more expensive than getting one. Now repeat for every project you do

Anyone into restoring cars probably has one or two cars that don’t run on their lot. Time goes by and those cars are rusting faster than they’re being fixed.

I’m starting to get into making my own flies for fly fishing. It’s a ton of fun to buy like local feathers and shit but it does take up a lot of space and you’d be surprised at how expensive some of the materials can be

Automotive, back yards becoming junkyards of old cars that "will be fixed one day". Piles of used oil, broken parts, tools that are for only one purpose. Extra car parts, that may or may not work.

Crafters are definitely up there, overall - but I think wargamers might beat them. Hundreds to thousands of models, paints, brushes, terrain, carrying cases, books - it adds up to a hoard of epic proportions. That's just personal experience though. Lego fans can also get to be out there, and TCG players.

Every collecting hobby is definitionally a hoarding hobby.

Collecting stuff is basically the ultimate hoarder hobby.

I would actually love to know what hobbies don’t have some sort of hoarding aspect! I’m trying to think on it and I can’t come up with any at the moment.

I’m sure one of you can help me?

3d printing, if you start it’s a wormhole, where you end up wanting more and more different types of printers, print a lot of useless crap, have a lot of filament lying around, and spare parts. Not as space consuming as automotive or woodwork etc but if you live in a small apartment without a dedicated room for hobbies it can get pretty crazy.

Hams maybe. All the different electronic components, radios, cables, and parts they collect over the years. And before you know it, the antennas are through the roof!

Model Railroading.

It's not the worst, but it requires all the key ingredients - you need to own a home large enough to have a 'spare' room, which means you've got disposable income. And displaying the trains is almost as much fun as running them, so you end building shelves and shelves, which then sprawl out to the rest of the house. Only to realize you're missing the 'key' one from that set, got to go find that, obviously.

And then of course you can't throw away the boxes, because that would lower the resale value, so you need to rent a second storage unit. Not that you would ever sell them of course. But your kids will be sitting on a goldmine!

And that's just the collection portion. It's a crafty hobby, from making scenery & waterfalls & little trees all the way to the special paints to make the engines look aged. That will need a room as well.

And now that we've got the train shelves in the kitchen, you know, I could put a food themed railroad on the table there. Yes I already have the desert themed one in the train room and the prairie themed one in the living room and the snow theme layout in the hallway, but I don't have a silly one. No of course the Halloween theme one doesn't count.

Is this a place to cast shade or self reflect? In the former experimental scientist. They have closets of oscilliscopes, vacuum pumps, cryostats. Enough to furnish 3 or more labs. They always say they'll use it, but the pile only gets bigger.

For me, I have the opposite problen in general. I throw everything away and end up buying or making new shit. Worst is probably code. Fuck making a repo. This is a one off. I can write the same code 3 times before I keep it, but I like to say that is what makes me a decent programmer. And I'll keep telling myself that until I die.

Everything that has yarn.

Yarn just seems to take over a home everywhere I've seen it.

I know people are giving some very good examples, but a pet that can easily turn into a hoarding hobby is hamsters. You get one, get super attached, and then three years later whoopsie doodle, the living room is filled floor to ceiling with cages for all twelve of your little dudes.

This is just due to how much space the little guys need. In the wild hamsters will viciously defend miles of land, so bigger cages are always better. As a general rule, an ideal cage should have 900 sq inches of space and be at least 2 feet deep to allow several inches of bedding. So, one little dude will take up at least 12.5 cubic feet of your living room, or .07 cubic smoots for our friends across the pond. This adds up fast, and it can be easy to get in over your head because each individual little dude requires so little cage cleaning per month.

Junko pop

You must have met my wife. My oath, the amount of fucking yarn and fabric in her stacked to the ceiling sewing room is horrendous. She couldn't knit enough blankets in her lifetime to use up half of it.

antique airplane restoration. So many parts, so many unreplaceable parts, soo many tools, soo many large parts as well.

Cycling can get bad. Some dudes have a garage full of $20k of bikes.

I am on the low end of the bike hoarding spectrum. I have two very modestly priced bikes (one road, one fat) and a 20” box of parts and accessories. You could count the 4 water bottles in the cupboard, 4 bike shorts in the drawer, and 6 bike jerseys in the closet as well. 2 pairs of bike shoes, a hook of tires and tubes in the garage, oh god never mind I have it bad.

Some asshole Transformers action figure sellers on eBay who DISASSEMBLE THE FIGURES AND THEN SELL EACH PIECE SEPARATELY. Fuck those people, seriously.

As a crafter who is more on the Marie Kondo side of things, it’s way worse than that. I’d say a lot of time, knitters and sewists (my two main hobbies) buy yarn and fabric with no specific pattern or project in mind but rather just because it’s pretty. Some of them seem to be proud of their room-filling stashes. Personally I think most people just like the instant gratification of purchasing craft supplies but don’t have the patience to actually create the craft, especially since knitting in particular is very, very slow. I have tried really hard not to fall into this trap and have been actively not purchasing yarn for a few years now, though I’ll still put it on my Christmas list.

Extreme couponing

The reptile-keeping hobby. ):

People who pick stuff off the curb, refurbish it, and resell it.

My neighbor (apartments) does this but mostly around the time rent is due because she doesn’t have a job. She leaves her shit all over the property: half-finished furniture, tools to move it, etc.