My mother hoards, though we don't call it that. My husband & I moved into the house in November with the agreement that we will eventually buy the house. For months we kept asking to see the house, i knew she had some hoarding tendencies, but I wasn't allowed in the house to see what was going on. So finally it was time to move in, our lease had run out and she kept pushing move in back... After a grueling two weeks we managed to clear the bedroom where we're staying and the basement enough that we have a little normal spot for our things. We all agreed that we would have Christmas at our house, thinking this would be a great goal, last Christmas with Mom living in the house. So here we are, the week if Christmas still cleaning. I declared the kitchen off limits since I have cleaned it over and over again, yet, now things clutter the counters once more. On top of all this I am pregnant with our first child, the room that will be our baby's room was to be cleared so we could paint it over the week my husband has off between Christmas & new years... I know things will get better but a lot of the time I just get mad because more and more things keep popping up Where we've already cleaned. I have no clue how to deal. Any suggestions from experience would be great!
My wife is similar to your mom...but she managed to hide her dirty little secret until after we were married. The first time I started to see the tendencies and said something to her, she got major pissed at me...and it has gotten steadily worse over the years. I'm sorry to say however that I really don't have an answer for you. I haven't found any way to successfully deal with it. Except for a few rare occasions when we're expecting company she's always "too busy" to clean up or change her habits - and even when she "cleans" for company, we've pretty much given up use of our living room because of the piles of shit in it. I got tired of continually fighting it - unsuccessfully. My long-term solution is to divorce her and move out, but we can't afford divorce yet. In the meantime I try to maintain control over my little corner in my bedroom. I'll be interested to see if anybody else has dealt with this problem sucessfully...
If it sits for more than 4 weeks then you pobable don't need it. Toss it out. My Dad used to bring things into my shop that he thought we needed, after about 4 to 6 weeks when I knew he would forget about it I would just toss it. You have to stay on top of it or it will drown you.
Rent a dumpster and throw all that crap out. Also, change the locks so your mother can't get back in the house.
Teach her the joy of giving?.... Is it like, useful stuff, or just like magazines and stuff? If it's nice, like she's a dumpster diver, call the thrift store and tell them to send a truck, they'll probably have a pickup stop by, if you can get a nice pile. Or just explain that whatever they can scavenge is theirs. And if there's particularly nice but useless stuff, craigslist or classifieds or something, sell that shit! Teach your mom the american joy of hoarding money. Or you could TRY to remove anything worth very much, and sell trips into the house..... however many dollars for everything you can carry on your own, per trip in.
I think my mom is a hoarder too. She has a decent sized house, 3 bedrooms, a kitchen a den a living room and a dining room. She only uses the master bedroom and the kitchen and den. Alll the other rooms are used for storage. When I lived with her I would just periodically clean everything out for her, but its gotten pretty bad in the last few years since I moved out. She puts things in weird spots too, like half of her spices are in a cabinet with old rags, letters that are probably like 10 years old, and a bunch of candles, and the other half of the spices are in the medicine cabinet, which also contains more candles, more letters, and a bunch of chewed up dog toys. I'm damn near OCD with how I keep my house, and very spartan and minimal, so it drives me crazy to go over there. I don't really have any advice to offer. Hoarding is a psychological problem, and unless you can get her to get some help in that area, your best bet is probably just forcing her to clean everything out periodically.
After working all day I come home to find my mother, who has had off the last two days and said she would start cleaning the kitchen, hasn't even started it. I swear! Sometimes it is so hard to acknowledge that this is a mental condition and not just her being lazy! To top it off before she started the kitchen I asked what I can do to get it started and she gets all irritated with me. I understand this happens when you push someone like this to clean one of their messes, but the kitchen has been cleaned several times, by me, and keeps going back to it's original state which I have told her time after time is unsanitary and unhealthy for her, my husband, me and my unborn child. It just doesn't seem to matter. I just don't know what to do. There's gotta be someplace to go that has tips/support for family dealing with this crap!
Therapy, I need it myself, I hoard and have for years. It is hard to organize yourself if you are a hoarder without advice advice from someone that knows how to organized properly. First you got to admit you have an issue.
As has been stated, hoarding is a mental condition. You can't just tell them to throw out the things they don't need. They literally can't without real help. My grandmother is a hoarder. There is are some paths in the house from room to room, but otherwise it's crap stacked to the ceiling. She is extremely paranoid and even a suggestion about selling something will cause her to believe that you are plotting to take her things. The only options for her situation is ignoring it (which her children are happy to do), or a "hostile takeover", having her deemed unfit and clearing it all out yourself. I know that I would not want to be the one to do the latter. She's paranoid and owns guns.
I'd say she's halfway there. She won't admit to me she has an issue, she just makes excuses as to why the mess happens, which is always a lie, however she is willing to get rid of some things. I need to talk to her about treatment, she said she was at the doctor and that she was diagnosed 'crazy', which really upset her. After really sticking to talking to her about it I found they told her she has OCD, but it took a lot to figure that out, I honestly think they confused her with everything they told her about her condition and the only way i could tell is because i researched the hoarding issue and knew what to ask her so i could understand what she was told. Either way, I've heard nothing from her in the way of treatment, not sure if they want her taking meds or going to a therapist, I think at least seeing a therapist might help. So really, she has admitted the issue, but I think it scares her and she doesn't like to Keep admitting it. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with, and I've dealt with some pretty tough things in my lifetime. I'm hoping once we get her out of this house she will want that fresh start that she deserves and keep her new place the way she used to keep this house. This will be the first time in at least ten years that we will have a Christmas in this house even remotely resembling the Christmases I grew up knowing and loving. I would consider going therapy with her, I really think I know where this comes from. The house depresses her because it's a constant reminder of the life she used to have before my father left. He left her with this house and two kids to raise, but he left it knowing there was already a lot that needed to be fixed and she had no way of fixing it. Then 2003 my grandpa, her father, died. After that I think things started getting this way, but I had no clue. I wasn't invited to the house, but I assumed it was because of her busy work schedule, instead I find it's because of this issue. I ended up cleaning the kitchen yesterday, again... Every sound I heard last night from the kitchen sends chills down my spine wondering if I will find it trashed or in the same way I left it. There is now a lot of stuff in the garage, which is at least better than being in the living spaces. We were able to get the basement cleaned plus the whole first floor, which included living room, dining room, kitchen, family room and bathroom. It wasn't easy, we've fought about it a lot, but it's done and I vow it will stay that way, even if I'm the one managing the upkeep and cleaning up after her on a daily basis. I am VERY PROUD of how far we were able to get and I know it's taken a lot for her to do all this. Now, if we can at least get the hallway and what is to be the baby's room cleared and cleaned we will be in business. The garage will wait till the spring, at which time we will organize it, decide what she will keep (which will need to fit in whatever more manageable place we find for her) and the rest we will sell and pay off some of her bills (paying off bills is a real motivator for her) and what we cannot sell we will donate (she sees this as 'at least my things aren't being thrown away'). I know wherever she goes my family and I will have to strategically find a way to check in to be sure this doesn't become a problem again. She has certainly come a long way, and though the backslides aggrivate me to no end, I have to acknowledge that she is trying and that we couldn't have come all this way without her letting us.
Though I will try to remain positive i cannot help but mentions that it took 7 hours, of which some of that she was sleeping, to get the kitchen going back in the direction it was before I cleaned it yesterday. Thankfully she is away till 11 and I will have time to clean it again without her yelling at me. Two steps forward, one step back... At least we're getting somewhere I suppose.
There is no where to go. This is as good as it gets. If I don't complain, I soon find I have fewer complaints. Complaining is a dispiriting application of our own energy, an active attack against our own capacity to make good of any situation.
It's amazing how common hoarding really is. My boyfriend's dad is a hoarder. He is a collector too. He has enough dvds to start a rental store and lazer discs and vhs stored up and now he's accumulating blurays. He doesn't really have the money for that stuff but the really gross and unsanitary stuff is what makes being in his house near unbearable. There are bugs and it stinks of trash and mildew. I don't have a clue how to help him but my boyfriend has the bug a bit too. I've found that when I consistently make a stand and say "this is useless I'm throwing it away" things get better and he's more agreeable about it. But when I let it slide for long periods of time, he gets more defensive about it. So I guess it just takes the constant reminder that it's not ok and having to get rid of things regularly to keep him comfortable with it... Otherwise we'd be storing every empty box and happy meal toy he got his hands on
Oh boy - and there was me thinking that I was the only one who suffered from this. My partner K WILL NOT thrown things away ... but she will not PUT them away, either. The house is a complete fucking pigsty, and I am so completely freaked out at having to live in such utter squalor. I'm trying to get on top of it ... but it's difficult when she completely refuses to co-operate. I clear a surface ... she treats that as an open invitation to dump fresh stuff on it. And she completely freaks if I either try to clear and tidy any of her stuff, ro suggest that maybe she ought to.
My husband is a hoarder. He finally decided that my daughter and grandson need to come live with us. I don't know how we will dig out from under all the shit he has stacked up to make it so no one had room to move in with us. At least that's his most recent theory about the massive clutter. He was this way when he lived alone before we got married; but he had a different excuse back then. Back then it was supposed to be a stage of rebellion after leaving his first wife. Yeah right... Oh well...Wish me luck. I'm trying to sort through crap and cleaning while he is building a remote control airplane.
Usually the government will find out about a hoarding problem after there has been a medical emergency at the house and the paramedics find out about it. At that point the person may be legally forced to clean up the house. That's one way of a hoarding issue coming to an end, at least temporarily. The government's concern is about things that can spread disease to the surrounding area, such as human or animal waste, mold, mildew, and fungus. I've noticed that hoarding seems to become more of an issue with people over age 50. Not that it isn't an issue with other age groups. Perhaps older people have more time and spare money to accumulate belongings and younger people are too busy with work, school, and raising families to have extra time for hoarding. I know a few people who are hoarders where there is clutter all over the floors. It's difficult to even walk through the home. It is so ingrained in them that the issue is practically intractable. It's like dealing with a hard-core anorexic. It's a mental condition, as others have noted. Some of the ones I know project this hoarding mentality onto people around them who don't even live in the same household. If a relative says they are throwing something away, the hoarder will plead with them to not throw it away. It's not even the hoarder's property and the property is in another house.
I have a habit of hoarding things, but I still manage to make things look organized, and I would not let myself get to a point where I cant walk in my house without tripping over something.
