Stockpiling or living a prepared lifestyle is definitely different than hoarding.
Even hoarders that don't accumulate trash and garbage the way we see in the famous tv program, are beyond reluctant to give up their things, and quite often, don't even want to use them.
Those of us that have lived generations with the idea that we and only we are responsible for our well being, and that of our family and neighbors, know that stockpiling as it is now called, or simply having enough things on hand to sustain yourself and your community for a defined period of time is not only instinctual, it comes from the necessity that just a couple of generations ago, it determined survival.
My husband and I were both raised to keep a supply of food and other necessary items. His family, because they were very poor, and grew most of their food and preserved it, or would have starved. My family because we were only one generation removed from the farm (and it is/was just a way of life), and my father was ill at a very young age and it was clear he wasn't going to live to see his family raised, so being ahead was seen as a form of insurance (which it really is in any aspect).
We stockpile by preparing ahead of time. We rotate through and use what we stockpile, and we share what we put back with family, friends and pantries as well. We don't usually keep more than a year's supply of most things. A few things we keep more, but those are often our most shared items as well.
In living prepared, your stockpile isn't accumulated during times of shortage or crisis, It will be maintained (replace the two cans of soup you used this week, not buy 10 cases as the shelves are only half full) during that time, but you won't be emptying shelves of product, you already have shelves of product at home. You will simply be replacing or filling in areas you had let lapse, with small, spread out purchases, not shorting anyone else .
We have defined spaces (or pre set quantities) that we fill with stockpiled items, and we usually don't go beyond that. I will admit that during this pandemic, we have broadened some of those parameters somewhat, as we seem to be sharing much more, and anticipating lack of availability because of the current situations.
How I know I'm not a hoarder (well, of these kinds of supplies anyway! lol) is that I easily part with those things if someone needs them, I share them, I am fine in using them and using them up, I set a defined space, and it really bothers me to have excess overspill those defined spaces.
There are more and more people seeing the value of living a prepared lifestyle. It's suddenly become much more mainstream.
What I find odd, and always have, isn't that some people don't do it, but that some people are openly hostile about those that do. I don't know if that comes from jealousy because they can't afford to or aren't allowed to by someone in their life. I don't know if it is because they don't want to appear on the fringe and participate in something they feel they would have to explain. I don't know if it is because they don't have the discipline to do it, and lash out at others that do. What ever it is, it is disturbing to be that people get so upset or judgmental about how much other people have.
I understand anger/frustration/disgust with people hoarding things they will never use, share, want or will simply buy it all to make a huge profit in times of crisis, that makes sense to me.
But to get as upset as some people do, or to dismiss someones choice to be prepared as a character flaw or borderline mental illness is telling me, they don't really understand the differences in hoarding/stockpiling and living a prepared lifestyle. They are really three totally different things.
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