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What would we call a person who has a hard time throwing away unnecessary things, and, as a result, has a home cluttered with stuff?
This person is not just untidy. What causes the clutter is their urge to buy things they don't need and being unable to get rid of things they don't use.
I think there is an idiom for it. But a single noun or an adjective would do too.
Thank you!
The common term for this sort hoarder, one who hoards. Per the Oxford Dictionaries:
VERB
[WITH OBJECT]
Accumulate (money or valued objects) and hide or store away.
‘thousands of antiques hoarded by a compulsive collector’
Note that this often has a rather negative connotation. There was a rather frightening TV show called Hoarders about such people.
There is also pack rat which is slightly less negative:
NOUN
another term for woodrat
North American derogatory A person who hoards things.
Note: no matter what my wife tells you, neither of these terms apply to me. 8^)
I'd say that this list approximately follows the spectrum from most to least extreme. The "messy" may even have a relative normal amount of stuff and just be unable to keep it in order. The compulsive hoarder may hoard multiple homes and end up living in their car. Not all hoarders have an issue with acquisition; pretty much all hoarders have an issue with disposal.
The list also happens to approximately follow the spectrum from least to most commonly known--I suspect that only members of messy support groups use "messy" as a noun describing a person.
There's also "magpie", with the implication that the person flits around and collects shiny things. I wouldn't consider this a synonym of any of the others, but it is a related concept.
A name for one specific sort of pathological "stuff-collecting" is (since 1975):
Diogenes syndrome, also known as senile squalor syndrome, is a disorder characterized by extreme self-neglect, domestic squalor, social withdrawal, apathy, compulsive hoarding of garbage or animals, plus lack of shame. Sufferers may also display symptoms of catatonia.
The condition was first recognized in 1966[3] and designated Diogenes syndrome by Clark et al.[4] The name derives from Diogenes of Sinope, an ancient Greek philosopher, a Cynic and an ultimate minimalist, who allegedly lived in a large jar in Athens. --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_syndrome
The eponym is a bit tongue-in-cheek: Diogenes of Sinope was an ascetic, and adopted the decision to carry nothing with him that he did not need.
Here is an example of his minimalism (emphasis added):
The stories told of Diogenes illustrate the logical consistency of his character. He inured himself to the weather by living in a clay wine jar[4][20] belonging to the temple of Cybele.[21] He destroyed the single wooden bowl he possessed on seeing a peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. He then exclaimed: "Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!" --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes
People with the syndrome may have millions of things that they actually can't ever need, but usually rationalize their collection "because I need it", or perhaps "because I will need it someday", thus saying the same thing about their hoards as what Diogenes said about his non-accumulation of anything. The humor is fitting, though: Diogenes was a cynic.
Another name for Diogenes Syndrome, syllogomania, is mentioned by Elizabeth Andersen et al. in a case study at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255950905_Do_they_think_I_am_a_pack_rat. In this same paper, the person who hoards is called a "hoarder", as stated in a previous answer. The opening paragraphs express the pathological nature of the condition referred to in your question (emphasis added):
Hoarding is a debilitating disorder characterized by the acquisition of a large volume of possessions that seem useless or of little value to others (Frost & Gross, 1993; Stein, Seedat, & Potocnik, 1999; teketee, Frost, & Kim, 2001). The compulsion to acquire items can become sufficiently severe to cause marked impairment in activities of daily living, social activities, and relationships with others. Broad acquisition of free things is often accompanied by compulsive buying (Frost et al., 1998).
(...)
Hoarding of rubbish (syllogomania) is a symptom of a much broader syndrome of senile self-neglect or squalor (lack of personal cleanliness and hygiene, domestic squalor, hoarding, rejecting society, resisting offers of help, and lack of shame). Initially labeled as “Senile Breakdown” (MacMillan & Shaw, 1966, p. 1037), the syndrome was relabeled as “Diogenes Syndrome” (Clark, Mankikar, and Gray, 1975, p. 366) after the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who pursued self-sufficiency, rejected luxury and domestic comfort, and freed himself from material possessions. (...) Their living spaces are usually taken up with stored garbage, urine and feces in buckets or in packages, and masses of hoarded material, which is the antithesis of Diogenes’s freedom from material possessions.
"Syllogomania" is also mentioned in A Dictionary of Neurological Signs by A. J. Larner (here).
In keeping with other "-manias", then, the hoarder could be called a syllogomaniac, but at the time (2020) a quick Google search shows that word only in a twitter hashtag: https://twitter.com/hashtag/syllogomaniac.
Another label option is disposophobe or disposophobic whose condition is called "disposophobia" at https://www.fearof.net/fear-of-getting-rid-of-stuff-phobia-disposophobia/.
An unverified example at https://glosbe.com/en/en/disposophobic includes:
A disposophobic has a delusional regard for the value of the things he hoards.
