My Five Year Old Is a Huge Pack Rat

It is not a bad behavior. Think of kids that leave a trail of toys across the den, bedroom, driveway and hallway! Maybe have a rule of what can be collected, kept, given away, stored. We ALL have to deal with this!
What you might try is to allow her certain places to store her items like get a inexpensive plastic bin or three of them and allow her to fill up to lifes content each of these bins (with lids) And one or two portable bags that one can be for emergency travel and the other for future "travel". I will give you an example. For business travelers for them to repack from scratch a suitcase every time they are told or need to travel somewhere is silly not to keep it pre-packed and ready to go. So the same with your 5 yr old. She needs to have her ready to go pack but with the things that need to be in there. For example old food will spoil the bag while a book could be there along time. But also tell her we need to review the contents of the bag to make sure they are still useful evey week/month or quarter. Same with those 1 - 3 boxes with lids. Best to have ones that are transparent so can quickly assess what is in them and how full they are. There are stories about a man who lived alone and is supposedly true. Saw on TV who was such a pack rat he could not get down the stairs to leave the house safely. He was dating and never could invite his date to his home. It was on TV and he had to get help with his hoarding problem This we dont want to happen to anyone. So this is the time to monitor, control, and teach the child good storage and disposal and value of the space use. For example:
If a bag was full of air, vs full of old chicken nuggets, vs full or shredded paper vs full of cherished bears. What the child Values/Wants will of course change over time and probably differ from what you value. We have a 10 year old girl now. Never moved or what not. But now she has about 5 containers of her stuff. It is better than all over the house!
It is called compromise. PS in Califonia they are trying to ban selling fast food with the incentive of a toy. That might help if nationwide someday.
Kids to trade these food toys. Some parents just tell their kids if you dont do such and such you have X time / days to clean it up or you will decide what is needed or not. Called tough love but that is not what you really want to do! Vs teach, reward, be positive with the child how it helps them to find their things, how things are safer when not crammed into a bag. I will give you an example for me. Am getting a Touch Screen netbook and read in the instructions they are pretty sensitive and to not close the keyboard and lid with the lcd screen with something like the stylus or whatever stuck between the keyboard and the LED LCD screen as it could stress it. So traveling with one of those which it is made to do, and say placed into a sack or bag it must be given its own space and not crammed in with the power adaptor etc pressing it till it cracks. So the same thing goes for your 5 yr old! If she crams five happy meal boxes into a bag they may get crushed and no longer like they were. Kids need guidance and key rules to follow.

As for your Edit: Yes kids freak out and protest but again they need rules and guidelines and reinforcement and warnings before your "clean" them out. Think if She went into your bedroom and started to take your "old" shoes and stick them in back of a closet how would you react? What you value is different than her. But the key is teaching her to see things the way you do and over time this should improve. Also explain that if bags collect under her bed that she cant get to them very easily. But another solution we did: We got roll out boxes like sold at Target, Walmart etc for blankets and shoes. Let her fill them up but first explain that space may be needed for her such and such first. Dont stifle this but mold the behavior. Tell her you value her dong such things but we must learn how, when, why, etc we do such things and how it helps or hurts us. She may still freak out but at least you have a Mutual Reason to recall to help her calm down, maybe.

see if you can talk to your doctor. this will be a lifelong problem, leading to hoarding, bad health, and general a sick life. ;( my MIL is a hoarder, and though she doesnt keep wrappers and stuff (that i know of!) but she keeps newspapers, magazines, old clothes (that arent even FOR women of her size! - kids clothes!! my husband is sure that she has all of their clothes from when they were kids somewhere!!!) every free thing that she can get her hands on. so i kinda know how you feel.

anyway, its possible that she could get some kind of counseling to figure out where the attachment to material goods comes from. spend more time with her and less with toys. dont buy new toys unless she gets rid of X number of toys. dont even let her get her hands on flat out garbage; wrappers nad misc.
give her tools to sort, organize and contain her stuff. the container store is a great source for organizational tools. (its online i believe). maybe shes just a tied down organizational freak LOL. give her tools. a shoe organizer on the back of her door or something will give her many many pockets to fill. :) and that would be awesome.
anyway, good luck! and dont hesitate to talk to her doctor; theres nothing wrong with her if she needs some counseling. ;) its better to try to solve it now than when shes 50 and buried in junk. ;)
good luck!

Hi M. :-)

In reading your post, one thing jumped out at me. The few moves in her life. Did these moves occur before she was 2?

This does seem to have the energy of control around it, but control in the sense that at around age two and up, children learn about their world and get the sense of MINE... and (mine!) yours. :-) They can extend this sense out to the world and their environment, so moving several times can disrupt this sense of what is HERS and what she can control to keep it hers.

I get a sense of things just "flying out of her basket".. as aspects of her life, from her two year old perspective... unable to hold onto things, they just keep disappearing... and this could relate to moving the few times.

As well, any uncertainty in the family could contribute to this sense of "no control" over what is happening to her in her little world. I'm not a child psychologist so don't have any professional answers, but I sense an energetic state of "shock" over "loss" of things and the desire to hold on for dear life so things don't change.. so with this I offer an Energy Medicine technique which helps the brain to CALM and be more centered and connected so that it can deal with life stressors in a more focused and balanced way. Stress in life affects our brains tremendously and our ability to deal with life's simple challenges, let alone the severe ones.

If you are interested, you may visit my website to find this technique, it is called balancing your CORTICES and there are two videos there to teach you about why you want to balance your CORTICES (brain) and then how to. You can click on my name and then go to my business link to find it.

Happy tapping and calming light to you and your daughter :-)
hugs,
A. R.N., Energy Medicine Practitioner

Kids are fascinated with things adults would call trash. When we were little, my grandmother had a tin box (looked like a treasure chest) full of what she called "fun stuff" - old buttons, pins, etc., but we all loved it and fought over it.

My daughter, now 7, is a lot like yours. She loves to pack things into lunch boxes, bags, etc. She uses tissues or paper scraps to create costumes for figurines and stuffed animals, a fascination with using scissors, or something. She doesn't really stuff things to bursting, and what she packs up changes, but she does like all her treasures. She also likes to make displays out of things. she has a lot of the Littlest Pet Shop pets, and she will position them on whatever is available, the ladder to the bunkbed, something on the kitchen counter or dining room table. She's not bad about putting them away when asked now, but at 5 she definitely wanted all her "creations" to stay in place forever (whether these were block buildings or toy displays). Dad would just put them away after she went to bed, sometimes she'd be disappointed, but then she'd just make another one.

All this being said, I think you could "thin" your daughter's toys without her really noticing. Yes there will be a few forgotten favorites that may at some point be missed, but all the junk (too many happy meal toys, even the "cool" ones) can be tossed. Believe me, she will accumulate more, the holidays are coming. I don't think her hoarding is too far from normal, she probably just likes her collection to be together.

Give her one backpack back and talk to about what can go in there. I would also say at a certain time everyday the backpack has to be emptied. You carry your purse around and have a diaper bag too. She is mimicking the need to be in charge of something that is hers.
Is all consuming to her to the stuff in the bag/backpack or does she want some thing in a bag and take it out to play with during day? If she is not playing/using the stuff in the bags then you need to get her some about it.

I like to put things into bags too (book to read, knitting,snacks espically if I know I will be the car a long time or have to wait awhile someplace) and each one of kids have done this too we places to go that do not always have the kind of toys my kids like also it give them the responsibly for some of their comfort in a new place, also allows them to bring something to share too.
J.