There are a number of "unconventional, extreme lifestyles" known, and while challenging, these aren't considered a pathology - these are just the most obvious ones -
* Minimalism
* Prepping
* Homesteading
* etc. - proably many others to be added to the list
Are all of these realisic, effective, pragmatic, practical lifestyles characteristic of a typical person ?
No, far from it.
These represent sometimes extreme and disproportinate challenges that involve "overcreativity" to achieve perhaps some very far-fetched goals.
Might those other ones entail risks to one's health and safety, might they induce stress, in others ( family members ), if not in oneself ?
And is this substantially and fundamentally different from intentional Keeping ?
Why is Keeping the one made into a pathology, a mental illness, and those other ones aren't ?
( Well, I'm sure if a compulsive diagnoser focuses on one of those others, pathologies will start to pop up like mushrooms )
I would suggest, intentional Keeping is just another one of those, an "extreme sport" or a "hobby", not significantly different in any way from many other such lifestyles or activities.
The only thing is, culturally, all of these have been presented as palatable, if extreme, and justifiable, however overstretched that justification might be ; "Hoarding", however, has been made into a stigmatizing pathology and a mental illness, by Presumptive Valuation ( "worthless", "junk", "trash", "garbage" ) and conflating intentioal and unintentional, competent and incompetent ( if only functionally incompetent ), capable and incapable, and all the different reasons and scenarios.
Minimalists, for example, made a movie, and numerous influencers took it up, and it found general acceptance through the aesthetic appeal of emptiness.
Same can be said of other lifestyles, I'm sure.
"Hoarding", however, received a very different, culturally biased presentation via faulty theories, manipulative experts and toxic hoarding TV shows.
Well, I'm calling bull on all that.
If we reject the pathologization and the manipulative discourse, and start treating Keeping with intentionality and proper methods, while educating ourselves first and foremost, and demonstrate clearly that there doesn't have to be a dysfunction or a slippery slope, that the causes of dysfunction have been conflated and misrepresented, that it's possible to do it intentionally and without dysfunction, while respecting health and safety - I'm sure experts, compulsive normalizers, compulsive diagnosers and all other judgemental, coersive characters will still sign the same old songs, but we don't have to listen to them.