It's amazing that even as their physical body starts to fail, that drive to hoard remains to the end.
It's amazing that even as their physical body starts to fail, that drive to hoard remains to the end.
I am in the process of helping to clean out a hoarders' previous home, a darling little garden cottage of about 650 sq ft. There is a long driveway, a deck, a patio, and a shed- all were stuffed full of TRASH. The house itself was stuffed with furniture- 14 pieces just in the bedroom- and literally a ton of clothing, enough dishes to serve and feed about 50 people at once, 3 refrigerators and 2 freezers full... and everything coated with a very thick layer of nicotine residue. YUCK!!
The house itself has had no maintenance, of course, for the 16 years they were there. The trees and roses are overgrown and in need of attention. There are at least 75 pots outdoors with varying degrees of dead plants in them.
An older couple lived there. The husband died of cancer, and 5 months later the wife just walked out and left it. The friend that I'm helping is planning to move in, in a couple of months when it is finally clean.
This past Monday we stacked up a pile 24 ft long, 4 ft wide, 4 ft tall for the "annual extra garbage" pickup- thankfully, free. Another truck and trailer load of beds, carpet, portable dressers, broken chairs, went to the dump the Friday before that. I took my car full of dishes to the local animal rescue thrift store. I felt bad because they were dirty, but they insisted it was fine, they were happy to get them, "people buy dishes."
We're still looking for a way to get 6 dressers, 3 tables, and 3 occasional tables back into use. Haven't been able to find an organization that will pick them up...
mschrisgo2, You are a good friend to help in all of this. Maybe as you get closer to the end, you can post on Freecycle or Craigslist for the remaining pieces like the dressers and tables that are in good condition.
Bringing a house like that back to life is no small thing.
I wonder if the husband was the hoarder and the wife was just...unable to take it anymore and walked away from the hoard.Originally Posted by mschrisgo2
did you call your local thrift stores? Here they will come pick up with a truck. It is so nice of your to help with this mess. Very sad.
you are incredibly kind to do this for your friend
have you tried leaving the furniture on the edge of the front yard? around here that stuff is gone by morning
I had a lady addicted to QVC jewelry right up to ordering on the day she later died. I never saw so much jewelry (costume) in one place before even in a store. box upon box, trunk upon trunk of earrings and necklaces that were never once worn. Her children said she never went out so even when she was well she never wore any of it.
I swear there is a hoarder switch in the brain.
today I was not so hot with my mom, she needed a towel, I opened the linen closet and the giant garbage bag filled with empty pill bottles fell out. I am so sick of seeing and handling this bag that is clearly trash. I gave her the towel but said I would be back later to deal with the bottles. She's screeching I can't throw them out. I think I'm not going back in and my father can cover this one.
the problem for me with hoarders is I need them to have a "why?" as in justify why you are keeping item xyz. And hoarders don't have a rationale why and I can't deal with the crazy answers when it comes to my mother. I can do it with others, with her it makes me crazy. Throw out the hundreds of pill bottles, why can't she do that? Even though I know the answer, I still get upset.
Random dehoarding narrative - I'm sorry, this is going to be long, or maybe more than one post.
so my plan for today was for my big job to be processing milk, because this is the peak of milk production, my freezer containers are full, and my fridge is backing up.
but first I needed to clean the kitchen. Which was a bigger job than I thought. And while I had the dishwasher running, I realized I couldn't find the cajeta recipe, and then I thought about just picking another job. But I decided to just put the laundry away while the dishwasher was running and make cheese instead.
and I was watching an episode of hoarders while I put the laundry away. It was an episode when the house wasn't awful, it was just FULL. No mice, no dog poop, no tiny little tunnels, no dust masks, just a lot of stuff.
and I LOOKED at my house, and I saw places where I am backsliding, putting things "here for now". So I decided instead of making cheese, I would work my way back in time.
i started with today's mail - all recycled or filed
then the flier I saved yesterday about the doll auction - recycled! I'm not going! (Unprocessed Mail prior to that is mixed into my "in box" - which sadly is an actual 12x10x18 box.)
then I started cleaning up from fair week - putting away the things I took to enter. As I moved around the house I found a book for the goodwill pile, and a plaque that says "my house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy" - nice thought, but no. Goodwill pile! Pot I never glazed because I don't like it - trash! Dried grain stems "to make decorations" - compost! And I looked at the fair ribbons and realized that because I carried everything home in a basket, many of them were wrinkled (plan to return them is in purge thread) and I thought, well, I could press them, and then a voice in my head reminded me that I had been assured they cost pennies, and I THREW THEM ALL AWAY.
and when I was in the basement I gathered up the egg cartons that I keep not using because they aren't really structurally sound anymore, and (pausing to imagine eggs tumbling to the floor) I threw them away. And I noticed I could smell the cat box.
the cat is an indoor/outdoor cat and only uses the litter box if he gets trapped inside too long. He was a 16th birthday gift for my son. And even after my son left for college, we kept up the fiction that the cat belongs to him. Whenever he came home (about once a month) he would clean the litter box. My son graduated in May, he packed up and moved to Wisconsin, he came back for a very fast visit for my daughter's wedding in June. The litter box has not been cleaned for two months. Here is reality - my son lives in Wisconsin. He did not take the cat. The cat is now mine. I cleaned the litter box. And I cried.
and then I dumped the used cat litter in the trash can so I wouldn't change my mind and try to save the fair ribbons.
i won't be done with fair clean up until I clean out my car and take stuff to goodwill on Thursday (I have plastic necklaces from fair to take). But I moved back to the week after we went east - I cleaned the boxes off the porch. I put the jam making equipment away, I still have more to do.
i know ultralite has suggested that all my activities are a form of hoarding, but I think they are more "what I would rather be doing than cleaning up after myself/dealing with the hoard. I would still rather be doing many other things, but I am realizing I need to put the breaks on and dig. I can't just do what I want because I am externalizing the costs.
when we started homeschooling, someone asked dh how the homeschooling was going, and he said "oh, the homeschooling is going great! (Dw) loves homeschooling. The house is going to hell, but the homeschooling is great." For 12 years, the house continued going to hell. The homeschooling is over. The homeschooling has been over for 5 years. And I need to stop "getting the hell out of the house" (to the barn, the studio, my classroom, thrift shops, art shows, the garden, the mental escape of my latest project...) and just take the time to get the "hell" out of the house - for the people who live here and the people who want to come back. And my new cat.
CL: it sounds like you gained some insight today. At one point in this thread UL said people always relapse and rarely recover no matter the addiction/disorder so I did a little research and found that this is not true. my personal/professional experiences have taught me this was incorrect so I looked at some studies. For example, people that abuse alcohol are 3x's more likely to stay sober if they quit on their own versus treatment or 12 step programs, etc. People only change when the pain of staying the same is more painful then changing. Some things are harder to quit then others. For example cocaine is tougher then alcohol or pot, etc. Also people must have the cognitive ability to make that decision. So if you end up with vascular dementia from drinking too much you have damaged the part of the brain that will help you quit drinking. Also some people relapse and some don't. But for some people relapsing is a part of the process and eventually they make it. Look at how many times it takes some people to quit smoking before they finally are successful. So how bad do you want to change, do you want it or does someone else want it for you, how uncomfortable are you willing to be to achieve change, etc? It is these types of tough questions that people need to ask themselves when trying to change. Also it takes 21 straight days for something to become a habit. Announcing to the world can be helpful as it makes you fully committed to the change. If change was easy everyone would do it. It is hard but entirely within our control if we choose it. People often drop bad habits when faced with a health crisis and are afraid that it will kill them. Others keep along the same path and die younger then they should. Some addictions are worse then others. I don't think anyone probably ever died from hoarding. All these points I make are things that each person has to look deep inside of themselves and decide how is it that we want to life our lives and what are we willing to give up or not to have the life we want. Hugs)
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