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It's common for clutter to pile up in a garage, closet or attic. But for some, it goes beyond the casual accumulation of stuff over time. The need to keep possessions can be pathological, and is sometimes known as compulsive hoarding.
Hoarding is widely documented, but not that well understood. It's thought to be connected to obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as anxiety disorders and delusional disorders. And it's expressed in many different ways, ranging from collecting trinkets to keeping huge numbers of pets.
Hoarding sometimes makes the news when heaps of stuff are found swamping a house after the occupant's death. Sometimes the stories are more exotic: recently, a Hillsboro woman named Miriam Sakewitz was arrested in violation of her probation after pleading no contest to charges of animal neglect in 2006. Police originally arrested Sakewitz when she was discovered hoarding more than 150 live rabbits in her home, as well as dozens more dead rabbits in freezers.
How have you been affected by compulsive hoarding? Do you collect particular objects, or experience anxiety about throwing things away? Is there a hoarder in your family? If so, how has the family dealt with it? Where do you draw the line between a normal desire to acquire and hold on to material things, and a compulsion?
UPDATE: During the program several people called in looking for resources to help deal with hoarding issues. Psychiatrist Dr. James Hancey of OHSU leads a free bi-monthly OCD support group in the Portland area. You can learn more about that through his clinic. For general help he recommends the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, which lists doctors focused on this disorder and support groups by state. The foundation also maintains a webpage focused on hoarding.
GUESTS:
- MaryBeth Heironimus: Obsessive-compulsive hoarder, and member of the OCD support group at OHSU
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Margie Bird-Buendia: Daughter of a compulsive hoarder
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Celeste Killeen: Co-author (with Dr. Arnold Arluke) of Inside Animal Hoarding: The Story of Barbara Erickson and Her 552 Dogs
Tagged as: animal welfare · mental health
Photo credit: Anonymous / Creative Commons
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Several years ago, I dated a serial hoarder in Portland. In the beginning, of course, I wasn't aware of his issues. When his friends asked me, "Have you *seen* his basement?" I knew something was up.
I've many friends who fix up houses, or are artists with a variety of materials, tools and objects, but what I saw, and what came to be a driving wedge between us was something else entirely.
My boyfriend was a teacher and for 'extra money' would buy things at garage sales and resell them on ebay or Craigslist. He had piles and piles of clothes, of sheet music, of childrens toys, old magazines, VCR tapes & machines, board games, steel trash cans, large bike racks for street parking, parts of playground equiptment, beat up shoes, posters, doors, tiles, retail cabinet diplays, and boxes and piles of semi-functional tools and half-filled buckets of paint.
Sometimes he'd have plans for how to use some items for remodeling his house. When we met, he had enough things to keep him busy on the remodel side, or the ebay side, and he had a full-time job. On the weekends, however, he was fanatic about going to more garage sales.
Years later, he left to teach overseas. I met up with him once near the property he owned and laughed as he compulsively went to a garage sale across the street and spend lik $3 on a pile of, really crappy stuff. Stuff that would sit in his basement and need to be dealt with at another time. Stuff he *might* possible be able to squeak out another $1 for with the right buyer.
On the other hand, he was notoriously cheap. I am a resourceful and thrifty sort, but it drove me crazy how cheap the guy was, and it made no sense to me.
I think the issues surrounding his "illness" really burned up friendships. He was swimming in such a mound of stuff, and frantically thinking of how to swindle, that he missed out on understanding what was right before him.
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http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/we-are-hoarders/Inc
I am a major hoarder of most everything--clothing, kitchen items, books. I grew up in a single mother home with very little money. I sewed my clothes in high school, mostly, but my mother worked and made sure we looked OK and I fit in well. We were not always sure we would have enough food, etc.
Then, when I ended at a teacher and single mother with 2 kids, I had not enough income to quite make it. I am the same size I was in my 20's--now I am in my 50's. I have hung onto some of the clothing from 30 years ago. My husband now is also a clothes hoarder (and tools). We go to thrift stores and find some new and near clothing, and now I feel more free to dump some of my old clothing and other items. My children are not hoarders and always felt confident that they would have enough food, clothing, etc. I tried to keep my fears and worries away from my children so that would be not so affected as I was.
I am trying to change this by facing my fear that we may lose our current income, a disaster may strike, etc. I am a PHD student now and a licensed professional.
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I grew up in a household where all kinds of things were hoarded: magazines, grocery bags, nuts and bolts, empty pill bottles, etc. One of the primary causes of the hoarding was the poverty in which my mother grew up. She had the attitude that everything has some sort of value, and that by throwing it away you were throwing away money.
As a result of Mom's influence, I had a hoarding problem too. I was fortunate enough to finally be broken of the compulsion I had, which was admittedly not as bad as my mother's, by a patient and persistent wife.
Compulsion is a great word to describe this disease, and I believe it would take a great deal of effort and help to overcome a full-blown case of hoarding!
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I wish I would've known that my ex-husband was a hoarder before I married him. I'm worried there's a hoarding gene and that our children will be afflicted with the same illness. What can I do, if anything, to prevent this problem in our kids?
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My daughter (16) has struggled to keep her room manageable. We have instituted a tradition of digging out at the New Year, and June 1st. I provide the boxes, three at a time -- they are labelled: keep, throw-away, and give-away. We restate the goal of handing off the treasures that are not so critical to her but can become someone elses treasures (the give-away box).
I help take care of the trash and recycle boxes, and she goes with me to deliver the give-aways. We mostly go to Goodwill, Community Warehouse, and kids shelters.
Best of luck to you!
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I feel I have a lot of the traits described here but am aware and keep it under control, so far. I'm 42. Hoarding seems worse in older people. Am I likely to lose control later in life?
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Do hoarders generally seek out things or do they just simply not throw things away? I assume it must vary---there must be combinations. Such as, people who are compulsive shoppers---so they have lots of things because of function, and then people who just don't throw things away. So the motivation must also be different. People getting joy in the act of acquiring and then people getting joy in the act of saving.
It was said in the introduction that people who hoard pets often don't take care of them. Do they not take care of them because of neglect? Or, is it simply too much to take care of?
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This issue makes me so sad! Whenever I go home I'm totally overwhelmed by my mother's home. The only place to sit down is to move a pile of stuff off of her bed. I've taken pictures and can't believe this is where I grew up. My mom has gotten worse over the years - but the tendency to hoard has always been there. She considers herself a "collector" not a horder.
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My mom hasn't allowed any of her children into her home for 10 years, and this has affected her ability to watch her grandchild grow up. The last time I was in her house she had clothes hanging everywhere in the house, her 3 bedrooms and beds and couches and tables are full as well as her garage, her entire house (which did easily house 6 people before). She refuses to let me in to help go through her stuff, because it's "valuable". She shops at Salvation Army and it's "antique". I just don't know what to do.
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This topic is timely because my mother had her house condemned by a city in Oregon a couple of weeks ago because of her hoarding after years of family members trying to help her with this issue.
I belong to the Children of Hoarders Yahoo group that is linked from the COH site above and I highly recommend it, whether you were raised in such an environment or if your parent's hoarding didn't get bad until they got older.
Many of us COHs are frustrated because this disorder is so resistant to change. Part of the problem is that it is such a hidden disorder. Unlike alcoholism, which the general population understands somewhat and is somewhat mainstream, hoarding is still kind of a "freakshow" for people, especially animal hoarding. I hope in a few years there are more resources put into studying this disease. If not for our parents, but for us children who were raised unable to friends over, had to go to school smelly and unkempt, etc.
In terms of my fear of becoming a hoarder, I probably throw more things out than I should. I'm also a bit obsessive about being able to see the floor. I like vacuuming.
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My father is a hoarder and my sister and I have been trying to deal with this our entire lives. I never had friends over as a child b/c our house looked as if we had just moved in and I was too embarrassed. Boxes of papers, TV Guides, magazines, newspapers, etc. were kept for that one article he might want to read one day. He kept every twistie tie from bread bags, every margarine tub, every produce bag, every strawberry basket. There were paths around the house through all of the boxes and clutter. He would cram everything into his bedroom when we had company over so no one would know how bad it was; I called his bedroom the attic b/c of the amount of stuff in his room. I never got in trouble as a kid for coming home at 5am but I got in trouble for throwing a few bags and tubs away.
My father moved overseas in 1997 and I could not help him clean out his house b/c it was entirely too overwhelming. Several family friends helped and as a result of the chaos and extreme clutter, important papers were thrown away. They filled the big dumpster outside the apartment complex and still left an entire apartment's worth of clutter.
Last year I tried to help my father get rid of some things and organize his nice, new apartment. He responded by running into his room to hide a handful of spinach bags. Those familiar paths are present in his new apartment and I as much as I look forward to seeing him in a few months, I am anxious to see how bad his apartment is today.
This is a problem that is very difficult to treat; the person must admit they have a problem and many do not. It makes me sad, upset and worried that I too may turn into a hoarder, or already am in a little way. I'll catch myself holding onto something thinking "I'll use it one day" and make myself get rid of it if I haven't used it in over 6 months- one year. We need a support group for the relatives of hoarders. This isn't a problem that is going to get better on its own.
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There is an online support group here:
http://www.childrenofhoarders.com/bindex.php
There is both a message board on the site and a related Yahoo Group.
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We live next to a hoarder in a rural area in WA. They collected horses and they collect things. Animal Control got involved in the horses--because they were backyard breeders. Before we lived here they collected pigs. They have a sweeping effect on those they live around. Their children are a little different too. I cannot imagine growing up in a space you can't even walk around.
I heard that often abuse is at the bottom of hoarding--is that true? Hoarding is a way of maintaining control?
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Animal hoarding can quickly reach a point of criminal behavior when animals are suffering. The results in many cases are gruesome and horrifying. Such cases often also involve children or elders who live with the hoarder and are suffering along with the animals.
You can find a lot of information about animal hoarding at the website for the Hoarding of Animal Research Consortium:
http://www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/hoarding/
Quote "the depth of the pathology underlying this behavior is just beginning to be uncovered"
This document analyzes the causes and treatment strategies:
http://www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/hoarding/pubs/AnimalHoarding_WEB.pdf
They also categorize types of animal hoarders ranging from the "overwhelmed caregiver" to the "exploiter hoarder" (the underlying causes of their behavior may be different) in this document:
http://www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/hoarding/pubs/AngellReport.pdf
Regarding laws against animal hoarding, you can go to the Animal Legal Defense Fund:
http://www.aldf.org/article.php?id=250
They also have a compendium of state laws regarding animal protection:
http://www.aldf.org/article.php?id=259
Illinois is the only state whose criminal animal protection law recognizes "hoarders" as a specific type of animal abuser, and any hoarder convicted of animal cruelty is required to have a psychological evaluation and treatment. More states should follow suit and should also prohibit possession of animals following any cruelty conviction.
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I have some of these tendencies, and there was something resonant about what MaryBeth said early in the program which I'd like to hear more about: she said "I can't do it by myself."
For me, as far as I can remember I've craved times when people help me sort through my stuff. When I was a kid I'd want my mother or grandmother to help me clean my room, so I could share the kind of stress MaryBeth describes, and have somebody help me through the decisions.
Over the years, I've been fortunate to have various friends help me clean up junk. I've had both good and bad experiences with it. For me, I think it hinges on whether someone respects that I have the final decision. If somebody sees something they think is junk and tosses it without asking me, it's not going to go well. But if they work with me to maybe make boxes to sort things into that they're merely suggesting I get rid of, that works well.
But at the root, I think it has something to do with a not-entirely-healthy desire to have people show concern and interest for me through exploring my stuff.
I'd be interested to hear more from MaryBeth about this.
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What many of us COH have found is that our hoarding parents refuse all help, so if you're at all worried about becoming a hoarder, you're probably OK.
Having been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder, I've found that with certain items, I have trouble deciding what to discard--especially papers and notes and things that contain ideas for future projects, especially because I can't remember these things without the reminder.
I have a great book on organizing yourself if you have ADD, and it actually recommends having a "clutter coach" to help you decide what to throw away.
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Cassandra, would you mind sharing the title to that ADD-organization book? I have similar trouble navigating my papers and notes, knowing that some of it is the way my mind works and a good deal of it is material (articles, printouts, etc.) that is more compulsively accrued and needs to be recycled/tossed.
Thanks to everyone for the discussion, and OPB for the topic! I've found today's show both personally helpful and enlightening.
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Katie, the book is ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life. It's a great book in general about ADD. It will help if you have executive functioning and descision-making problems. It even addresses the issue of OOSOOM--"Out of Sight, Out of Mind". I need a visual cue to remind me to do things sometimes, and apparently this is an issue with hoarders as well.
Unfortunately this book will not help full-blown OCD hoarders, but I do see some overlap between ADD symptoms and hoarding symptoms. If a person were to deal with the sentimental attachment, control issues, feeling of lack, etc. that go with hoarding, that is, the why of keeping stuff, this would be a good companion book on how to go about getting rid of stuff.
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Thank you! Your reply is very much appreciated.
I'm definitely going to check this title out; my gut feeling is that it will target my own problem areas.
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I have a friend who literally has a path thru her house. I tried to help her (at her suggestion) to clean her kitchen - I went to her place three Sundays and managed to get her to toss out maybe one or two things when her cupboards were overflowing and the counters were covered. She is working on it on her own now and knows she has a problem. She has been threatened with eviction and will clean up for an inspection but within a month it's back to the same condition or worse.
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A lot of hoarders won't act until there is an emergency. My mom would only act when someone called in complaints to the city.
It's great your friend recognizes there is a problem, but that is only half the battle. A lot of people think that if they just clean up the mess that that will cure the problem, but the underlying issues are still there, and the clutter usually comes back worse than ever.
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thank you for this discussion....
this thought has come to me:
my daughter does "scrap-booking" ...i've noticed the amazing amount and variety of stickers and such available to creat "pages" for big events in life, etc...
since some of what your guest has said suggests that she wants to remember events and parts of her life, would a possible solution to SOME of the hoarded items be to sit with someone and create scrapbook pages to represent the event...to, in some way, have the scrap book page now represent the event instead of the broken bridle or the bloodied shirt....photos, tiny icons, etc. can hold just as strong a representation of events as huge pieces of clothing or equipment....
the tiny shell on my shelf does this, the tiny pebble, the photo, the little eiffel tower....
has anyone explored this? replacing the big piles with wonderful scrapbooks?
thank you!
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One suggestion I've seen is that the hoarder photograph the item so that they can remember it, and then discard the item.
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My great grandmother was a hoarder. I never actually saw her home, but I remember seeing her car when I was younger and even it was full of stuff.
Her favorite thing to collect in her home (according to my aunts) was newspaper. When my grandmother died, the aunts and a few cousins went to the house and went through things, took out what had sentimental value and then sold the property as-is. The man who bought it knocked it over and then got permission from the city to burn it.
Unfortunately, I've seen some of the same hoarding behavior in one of my aunts and in my sister. My sister's hoarding isn't to a level that is terribly noticeable, but I fear it will get worse.
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I have not been paying close attention to the show. Are there statistics on hoarding? Is it just lumped together with other obsessive/compulsive behaviors?
It is obvious that the people on the show recognize it as a problem and some even find it embarrassing. Is there any way to work through it with a psychologist?
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As hoarding is considered a mental illness, it would show consideration to use first names only. I question the comment that there is no treatment. My friend who had this problem has passed away. She attended a support group and was making a great deal of progress in getting rid of her stuff. I would like to hear from anyone who can share how they have been helped. People may be afraid to come forward as there is some shame envolved with this disorder. The tone of the conversation I am hearing makes it clear why. Thanks, DJ
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One guest today, MaryBeth, also attends a support group. On the show she talked about the progress she'd made and how she's managed to reduce anxiety with help, and then in turn slowly tackle her hoarding. She and Margie both spoke about how difficult this is to talk about because of a shame around mental disorders. I got the impression that stigma made it hard for them to get help because it was a big obstacle to overcome, even within their families. Your suggestion on names is very thoughtful. We do consider anonymity for shows where it seems appropriate. If adult guests are comfortable using their full names, we tend to be too, although I can imagine some situations where further protections might be important. -
One of my friends has hoarded and filled her home. She still has all the clothes of her children, their toys, schoolwork - plus her own possessions. It's nearly impossible to walk into her house, there's no chair for a guest to sit in, and she only has half a bed to sleep in because the other half is full of books and other things. There's a smell of mold that she doesn't seem to notice.
However, I think from her perspective this is a positive way to live, and it gives her a sense of safety and security. It preserves her memories of better times, when her children were home. I think it keeps out the hurtful world, too. It's a bit like an emotional fortress or oasis, that keeps the world at bay, and secures the things and memories she cares about.
Viewing her situation from the outside, it seems horrible. But when I understand her perspective, I can see it helps her survive.
Nancy in Portland
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Is there any pattern to the way this behavior begins? Are hoarders originally collectors? Do they generally start hoarding in an area they are interested in? And perhaps it spreads to everything? Do they start in youth? Do they have other compulsive behaviors?
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My mother and I also had this push/pull relationship you've been discussing, with me trying to clean the house, and her using every excuse I am hearing from your guests. The big breakthrough came when I was approaching middle age myself, and I suddenly saw the essence of her humanity: that she was unable to control this compulsion and knew it. I talked with her about this, with sympathy and daughterly love, and she admitted it to me for the first time. After that she was able to let me clean without reciminations, only the occasional lapse where she would accuse me of throwing away something precious (and apologize later when she found it). I should also mention that my Dad said after she died, that she was an incredible woman, and if he had the choice, he'd take her back mess and all. Not having the choice, we cleaned the house (took three of us three weeks just to make a dent in the mess), and he remodeld it at the age of 75.
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Hoarding seems the wrong word. It conotates seeking stuff, then keeping stuff. Having experienced it directly through my mother, I think it's about NOT BEING ABLE TO THROW ANYTHING AWAY.
Life is cluttered for us all. I am always trying to keep on top of it -- the paper, magazines, advertisements, school materials that come home, mail, etc, etc. Then there's the debris I invite into my life -- items that come in excessive packaging, clothes I enjoy once and year but still, I want to hang on to. I am constantly staying on managing it: keep or recycle or throw it out....
My mother was brillant, adventurersome, sooooo proud. My four siblings and I hadn't been allowed into her house for 20 years. I'm certain no one had been in. She passed away and we ceremonially entered her home knowing that it would be bad.
Her home was as bad as what's being presented, but worse. As we conducted the equivilent of an archeological dig, excavating layer after layer, we found every present we'd ever sent her, most still in their boxes, every grade school assignments we'd every done, every letter we'd every sent her. We found clothes in the layers; I assume it became easier to purchase a garment than find the lost article. There were no aisles to walk through, rather a 5+ foot deep layer everywhere. Her kitchen was non-functional, so the one good thing was there was no food items in the layers, no animals or other horrors.
There is guilt -- how could we have helped her to GET IN CONTROL, have a functional kitchen, have a safe home. I am certain we could never have changed her when she was alive. Yet, I still feel so guilty about "abandoning" her while she was alive.
It's all about letting go, getting control by release. Even without having a problem, life's clutter can be impossible to keep at bay. I have a quote by Dinah M. Craik I keep around to help me:
"Keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away."
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Is there any form of procrastination in hoarding? Like at some point is there intent to throw the item away and it just never happens? Or is the intent always from the beginning to keep the item. Such as: do hoarders think "oh I will get rid of these books after I read them"---and they just never get around to reading them and the cycle never stops---or they can't realistically keep up with the cycle?
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as far as my mother goes, there is not procrastination. Well, to be honest and clear, she SAYS it's procrastination but she has honestly never had a clear purpose to begin with. She's going to write a book, she needs this article. But of course that's not true, she certainly has no real desire to write a book. She keeps paper bags and plastic storage containers for keeping food in, but she lives by herself, and her refrigerator has broken.
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My wife is a hoarder. One of your guests mentioned the need for compassion. It IS a disease with really difficult ramifications for the person who has it.
My wife had to deal with a huge fear: if I get rid of something, what will happen to me? She literally couldn't differentiate her "stuff" from her self.
We were lucky: she came to understand that she had an illness. So she bagan the process of therapy.
She had to learn how to "revalue" her things. She might pick up an old piece of paper and spend 20 minutes trying to decide whether to dispose of it or not. It was an existential struggle to decide. But now, she's able to allow her daughter to sort paper for her -- her daughter has learned the "sorting principles" that my wife insisted on, but it's enabled us to recycle a hundred shopping bags of paper.
The internal struggle to separate one's self from a thing, to realize that a memory will stay with you despite what you throw away, to know that a relationship with a person won't suffer if you throw something away that is associated with that person are all extremely difficult things to work through.
Her psychologist helped her understand that she needed to learn how to do the sorting. So most of the sorting has been done by my wife (much of it with her daughter's assistance) herself...The "victory" is that our garage is no longer chest-high with boxes of stuff, our guest room is now a guest room and not a full-up-to-the ceiling storage room, we can use the dining room for what it was intended and cook in the kitchen, we can have guests in our livingroom -- there's now a place for them to sit.
As your guests have pointed out, the hoarder must come to accept that they have a disease and need help. One statistic I heard was that 80% of hoarders deny that there's anything wrong.
I am very grateful for our psychiatrist with his precient mediction regimen, and our psychologist, who actually comes to our home to help my wife continue to "de-hoard."
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Hoarding goes all the way back to my grandparents' depression era upbringing. This was passed on to my father who has filled up my parents double wide as well as two single wides he has aquired.
Some of these characteristics have been passed on to me but I also adopted a bit of OCD for clean and clutter free as a result:-)
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My mother uses being raised during the Depression as an excuse for keeping things, but my father was also raised during the Depression and he's a neat freak.
I think a Depression-era upbringing might be a contributing factor to hoarding, but there have to be other triggers, whether biological or psychological. Otherwise, every person between the ages of 69 and 120 would be a hoarder, as would every person who was raised by them.
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I agree with this speaker now. I believe loss/grief must be at the core of this.
My parents house is a mess. I often wonder which came first the parents no one wants to visit or the mess of a house that makes visiting impossible.
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i was fined approximately $140,000 by marion county courts and ended up losing my 20 acre farm and all my stuff>>>i think it was a land grab >>the county or state certainly made alot of $$ >>>i guess this is one mental illness that the state feels perfectly fine exploiting as a revenue source>>>> if u want more info feel free to email me >> quidid00000@aol.com
since having been abused by the court >> i just dont do anything anymore >>i certainly do NOT feel like i can get any JUSTICE
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My mother feels that the City is being unfair to her too, for condeming her house, but it was unsafe, unsanitary and a fire hazard. There was no heat, no hot water, limited use of the plumbing, few of the appliances worked, and she was unable to secure her home against intruders. She has had many warnings in the form of years worth of complaints from the City, so this shouldn't have been a surprise to her. She is deeply in denial about the severity of the problem. We are really glad she is out of there and safe.
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My father died in October of 2008. My sister was living in the home, and managed to fill a 5 bedroom house with "stuff" to such an extent that you could not sleep in any of the bedrooms. When my dad passed away, it was difficult to separate the things close to my mom and dad, and the things which my sister bought, many items having the price tags still attached. This is an expensive disease, but it can also be deadly. My father tripped on clutter, broke a hip and never recovered to his old self. He died within a year.
Paul
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I have dear friends who have collected so much valuable stuff that they have filled up one house and are working on filling up a second, along with storage spaces. They can not invite us over, though we get along fine. Their hoarding has become an untouchable topic. It was brought up once during a crisis, one of them was willing to begin, but then nothing changed. They are knowledgable about the value of collectibles, so they have facts to back up their reasons for hoarding.
Still, their collections get in the way of relationships.
I feel something of the collector in myself, when I get ready to throw something out, I feel a fear that I may need that thing, may need to read it, use it, build with it, or , perhaps sense the realization that it took a lot of energy to build it so I want to save it for some future use.
When it comes down to it, though, I sometimes realize that, while I may miss the item down the road, I will miss other things if I keep the thing. Things like relationships and the piece of mind that comes with an ordered life. At least more ordered.
My spouse says I still keep a lot of stuff...but occasionally, and unpredictably, I may find a use for some odd bit, re-affirming my choice to save. Those erratic pay-offs seem to be a part of addiction.
Even so, for this summer, getting rid of things has surpassed the thrill of buying things. It feels like casting off chains when I can let go of those things that I want to save in order to support my life, which are actually holding me down, using up my living space and my brainspace I could be using for this moment.
I hope that I either my friends can learn to confront their hardship or I may learn to accept it...maybe both? I don't really know how to accept them and be responsible as a friend in not letting this dis-ease, if it is that, harm them. I have brought it up, but not in a while. I value their friendship and want to be a good friend, especially through hard times. I wonder what to do...
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My mother is a hoarder with other OCD traits as well. The hoarding is on a lesser scale than some I have heard about , perhaps because my younger brother (who is in his thirties) still lives at home. I believe the hoarding began in response to my parents' divorce in 1980, which made my mom the sole caregiver and breadwinner for herself and four kids.
Food is the major item for my mom: she will purchase maybe 6-8 of the same thing, especially if it is on sale. She regularly has enough food on hand to feed about 15 people. Just getting something out of the fridge is frustrating, it's so packed. I think she has a fear of going hungry, although she makes good money and has no one to support but herself.
She has kept clothing from the 70' and 80's (the time my siblings and I were growing up). All the closets are brimming. She also keeps papers of all kinds: magazines, recipes cut out from the newspaper, junk mail, brochures from places she visits (like tourist or information brochures), scraps of paper with driving directions, health information. She carries a bag filled with these things when we stay at a hotel on vacation. There is a near continual arranging and rearranging of piles of paper that goes on, like to be idle is impossible for her. She has been talking about moving closer to work (she commutes an hour one way and is now in her sixties) for many years, but it is always a matter of "getting the house ready". She takes "baby steps" sometimes and will bring a garbage bag or two of clothes to my house for me to go through and take to Goodwill.
I fear the sale of her house and the move will never happen. She doesn't feel that anything is wrong, and my sisters, brother and I have had many fights with her over it. It worries me as her oldest daughter and the child (besides my brother, who has his own issues) who lives closest to her. I personally want to clear my home of any superfluous clutter I can, and have thrown out important papers at times because of it (like my 2008 W-2's)!
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i was fined over $140,000 by marion county >. ended up losing a 20 acre farm and all my stuff>> it was nothing but a land grab by a neighbor>>>if the truth ever was to be known the GOOD people of Oregon wouldnt believe the corruption
this is a revenue source for the county and state and a way the well connected wolves with the help of the government make an easy killing
if u want more details contact me at >. QUIDID00000@AOL.COM
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Maybe this was talked about on the show, I missed the first half. Is there a good way to introduce this idea to someone who is a hoarder? What kind of help is there for them?
My mother is a hoarder. For she and my father she has two full-size refrigerators with freezers, a separate full-size deep freezer, and a pantry that is full of every kind of pasta, cereal, dessert topping, ingredient, etc... Every day when she comes home from work she stops at the store to get more food. It is a constant cycle of food being thrown away by my father because it has rotted and her being angry that he is throwing away her things. She'll say things like, "Well, if you'd just put it in the freezer it would still be good." It's always a Russian Roulette of whether or not you are going to get something that is edible or not. Not to mention how hard it is to watch them throw away thousands of dollars worth of food every year while she at the same time complains about how they have no money.
The hoarding goes beyond food. Listening to the last part of the show today sounded exactly like listening to my mother. The stacks of paper everywhere that just might have a dollar bill tucked between them... Clothes, books, towels, silverware, newspapers, you name it, she's got it. Can anyone offer some advice? It sometimes feels like I've lost her to this and I just want my mother back.
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I highly recommend the book Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston--I've read my copy many times, and given a copy to several other people, too. It goes through reasons for accumulating clutter, ways to clear it out, and the benefits of doing so, all in a non-judgmental tone. It really helped me, and would probably help those who know they have a problem but don't know where to start.
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It seems extreme hoarding like your guests were talking about is just the far end of a spectrum of organizing problems. I'm in a relationship with someone who has some hoarding traits, although their problems aren't dehibilitating, it does make everyday functioning harder as much of their time is spent buying "treasures", returning, ebaying, sorting and throwing things away. Unfortunately even this low level of hoarding behavior has really take a toll on me and our relationship as I end up dealing with a lot of their stuff myself. Although it's easy to focus on the sad, gasp inducing cases of the extreme hoarder, I think that the "everyday" hoarder is probably a very wide spread problem that is often dismissed as just being "disorganized" or "a collector".
I found a book that's been really great for us in dealing with the root causes of hoarding based disorganization called "It's All To Much" written by the organizer from the TLC show Clean Sweep. He focuses not on what color containers to buy, but dealing with the emotional reasons we keep thing. I'm not even much of a pack rat and I found quite a few things I was hanging onto for that "tomorrow" that will never come.
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My wife also hoards. I used to try to deal with it by showing her an item and asking "do you need this?". The answer was almost always yes. I had to find another way to purge. I tried just throwing stuff away when she wasn't looking, which got me in deep sh*t more on more than one occasion. My next idea was to move some of her crap to a staging area (boxes) where it would reside for 6 months, during which time, if she needed anything in the boxes she could take it out. After the 6 months, anything that was still in the boxes would be purged. She agreed not to look in the boxes during the staging period. The mistake I made with this approach was to keep the boxes in the computer room, where she would spend a lot of time. It drove her crazy not knowing what was in the boxes and she finally just opened them all up and took everything out.
We've now been married 13 years and her hoarding has not improved. The current way I deal with it is a modification of the last idea -- I have a storage unit that she doesn't know about. When an area of the house begins to get full, I'll purge it in her absence and take the stuff to the storage unit. If she misses anything, I retrieve the item from the storage unit. Typically she will only miss a small fraction of the items I remove, as I try not to remove anything she uses. She does not know where the storage unit is, so she isn't tempted to look. When an item has been in storage for a long time, I'll either throw it away or give it to charity.
After I clean a space, she notices and has some initial anxiety but it passes after a while. However, now any time she can't find something (which happens a lot because the house is a mess) she automatically assumes that I must have taken it. My solution is creating feelings of resentment, but it keeps our house from bursting at the seams and keeps the spaces functional. The solution is far from perfect, but it's the best thing I've tried so far. I don't know how much longer this system will work. -
My husband is on his way to becoming a full blown hoarder. The combination of an empty nest freeing up space and our reaching a point where we have more disposable income for shopping is making our home cluttered and for me, claustrophobic. We have a car that has not run since 2003, but we still license and insure it because it is parked in the driveway. A junked version of the same model sits in the garage as a parts car. We have 16 racing slicks from a car that we sold 3 years ago. He used to work in a body shop and brought home parts taken off wrecked cars that he thinks are still usable. These take up an entire section of the basement. He has replaced engines and transmissions in several of our vehicles over the past 30 years yet keeps broken ones saying he wants to tear them down to see what failed and if there are usable parts. We also have a motorcycle that hasn't run since 1987. He hangs onto old catalogs, brochures, magazines, personal papers, etc., yet doesn't see a problem because our house isn't as bad as those seen on the TV shows. I see us headed in that direction if we don't get a handle on things. We can't eat at the dining room table. The floor of our home office is completely covered with stuff. Stuff is piled in the living room. Our daughter has stated that when our infant grandson becomes mobile, it won't be safe for him to be at our house. I want to address it, but as a spouse, it is hard. Coming home to clutter is overwhelming. I either avoid going home or just shut down, unable to do anything. Any push to get organized will require a huge proportion of the effort from me, because he doesn't see the severity of the problem or he will be resistant to my efforts. I'm trying to get him to think about why he keeps this stuff...writing in chalk on the tires "why are we keeping these" or on the parts car "you can't work on our other cars when it rains because this car takes up the garage." Will I be able to sustain the effort? I've seen where this can lead. His uncle's house did get as bad as those on TV...I can't live like that.
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I believe my mom's hoarding started after she left my father when I was like 6 or 7, I am now 28. I has gotten worse over the years, especially after my grandmother died and she was dianosed with cancer twice in two years. I am now staying with her and I have two kids. I can't live like this and she is angry at the fact I'm trying to clear out the home. She has mail dated back it 1986. Newpapers, magizines. Not including clothes of one of my deceased aunts, plus my grandmothers. I have even found letters I wrote her 10 years ago when I was deployed on a ship, asking for her to send items to me. She admits she hates the way the house looks, but when I start to clean she goes through what I'm throwing away and keeps it and she complains to the family how I been in the home for two weeks and now I want to clean and saying she is going to go through what I threw away and take what she wants out. I don't know how to handle this and I have 5 more months of this. My kids stayed the summer with her and it has rubbed off on them. They just throw clothes and other items in the middle of the floor in any room and leave it. What should I do?
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As the adult daughter of a hoarder I have experience of living with one. My mother progressed from clothing and paper to animals. To call it a mental illness might be "correct" and "empathetic" but calling it "mental illness" gives a hoarder an excuse to continue hoarding esp. as there's no real treatment - even court orders to stop hoarding animals only results in a hoarder moving to a new location and beginning again. At some level they really do know what they are doing and in some ways it is a way to gain control over other people. It certainly gains them the attention they crave, however negative.
My mother's hoarding, in addition to costing 2 marriages and the loss of her children eventually resulted in action by King County (WA) coming in with bulldozers in an abatement. Many valuable items were hauled to a landfill along with 6 acres worth of garbage. Just prior to the abatement, 40+ horses on the 6 acres were seized - most probably ended up slaughtered for what little meat they had left on their bones. Cats, dogs, chickens, garbage, cars, clothes, you name it she had it. She married another hoarder and the two were a pair to draw to. After filling up a house in Kent (WA) and another in Auburn (WA) they began again with a south King County farm. Those two other houses? Still full of junk - neighbors badgering King County about it. This couple even went so far as to threaten Animal Control with weapons.
Children of hoarders spend countless hours, extreme $$ and vast amounts of energy trying to get the situation resolved. Been there, done that, and as most adult children of hoarders will confirm, it does not do any good. No matter what you do, the hoarding continues.
Currently my mother is in senior housing - the latest in a series of senior housing accommodations having gotten herself kicked out of a succession of same for - you guessed right - hoarding: clothes, garbage, paper, and cats.
Thank goodness at least she can't hoard and starve and neglect any more horses.
In short, there IS NO WAY for the non-hoarder to "deal with" the hoarder in their life, except to walk away to save yourself.
Then you deal with the (misplaced) guilt but at least there's some therapy for that.