I wanted to add something. I hope that I don’t come across as condescending in tone for my posts for those of you that are dealing with or have dealt with the problem in the past. My house is definitely no bastion of cleanliness and I have a lot of sympathy for those facing it.
I’ve actually known about Squalor Survivors and Children of Hoarders sites for several years now because I do know so many people affected by this problem and went looking for information on it.
Here’s a beauty: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-01012008-1464198.html
Note that the couple sometimes lives in a camper trailer in the driveway.
I lived about a half mile from this house-it’s a four bedroom, two bath dwelling with a full car attached garage, assuming they haven’t expanded.
I mentioned this conversation at work and was told that there is a house here in my village for sale that has garbage up to the ceiling.
Apparently, the old woman who lived in it died and her children are just trying to sell it without cleaning it out first.
It’s been on the market for six months.
They’re asking full price.
Remember how I described upthread how my mom is extremely wasteful with food? My mom never went hungry in WW2, but she does try to use the excuse of “I grew up in the war and that is why I can never throw food away”.
If she does, I always point out that, in that case, knowing the value of food, she of all people, should know better then to buy food to let it rot in her fridge. :mad:
Dr. Phil theorised that compulsive hoarders see it not as their junk , but as their junk.
It is the only impact they have on the world…the only proof they even exist. 
That Dr. Phil episode on hoarding is still on-line, here.
I just read that entire episode. One of the things to point out is that he not only has a wife but three grown children that expressed their feelings about the condition of his house on a regular basis. He also had a job and other outside activities.
In my mothers case she lives alone so there is no one telling her over and over that her place is horrible. She is on disabilty so she never leaves the house unless we take her some place.
When her father died we temporarily moved into his home to fix it up to sell. In this time she also lost her job. I think that is when a lot of her depression started. Her bedroom was always a mess. Once a week we would clean the house and her room took more time than the rest combined. Over flowing ashtrays and garbage cans. Stacks of dirty dishes and her dog always pooped on the floor. Stacks and stacks of paperwork. How she even kept his estate papers in order still surprises me. They were all in a binder, organized and with pictures of all repairs and the bills for those repairs. But around her was a hoard of crap.
I tried then to reason with her then and she got very angry and upset with me for even mentioning that she should try and keep her room cleaner. Her excuse was that she could not get around well. I did not understand as if you have a breakfast plate then take that plate back to the kitchen when you get lunch. That just brought on more anger and I would get “I will do the fucking dishes then”.
As I read the episode more it does come down to control. Control of her life, the people in it and the stuff around her. If she does not feel in control then she experiances a lot of stress and anxiety. Suggesting she get rid of items means lack of control.
She has lost control of me which I think depresses her in some ways. She has the need to control other peoples lives and when she can’t or they no longer allow it she becomes angry. She takes it as you are ignoring her or cutting her out of your life. I don’t want to cut my mom out, just her controling ways but they reside together so I have to distance myself. If I do let her in it starts all over and I again have to back off which just starts the guilt train all over again.
I have gotten to the point were I stay away. I know she thinks that I hate and resent her so that is why I stay away. I stay away because I can not handle the emotional roller coaster anymore.
My brother, whom used to be my very best friend, and I are now estranged.
He lives right next to my father. The hording and squalor of my Dads house has nothing to do with our relationship. And I truly understand how hard it is to deal with.
In any case, the extra burden of cleaning (if you can call it that) his house is going to be really tough.
I suppose we can go through it in about a week. Figure out what is valuable, and throw out the rest. Then about a week of cleaning. At that point, we will be faced with trying to sell it.
Tear out the carpet and repaint? Replace the kitchen? Redo the sofit and facia? The back yard and fences need to be R&R.
I donno, I’m thinking that we might end up selling it for about 50% of what it’s value could be and walk away. I dread the real estate guy calling it a ‘fixer-upper’.
I’m sorry to see that this problem seems so much more common than I thought. But when the shades are drawn (literally and figuratively) these issues don’t come into the light. It’s good not to be alone.
Oh, yeah, there’s not a book on earth that’ll reach the hardcore hoarders. (but I still recommend it for people who realize they have trouble with letting go of stuff) And for the ones that want to change, they need to find that sort of stuff out on their own. People can change: look at some of the success stories on the Squalor Survivors website; in every case, it was the squaloree coming to the decision that she needed to make the change on her own. (although it does seem like the threat of a surprise inspection can be very motivating for some people)
I think I’d call people like those Disaster Masters and set them loose. There’s no way the cost of such cleanup could take more than 50% of the value of a house that’s in acceptable shape otherwise. Sure, if the house is falling down it might not be worth it.
Housing prices around here are very low, so this house is for sale at $80 thousand. Right now, they’d be incredibly lucky to get $20, so it’s way worth it for them to spend a couple thousand dollars getting it cleaned.
People can be so penny wise and pound foolish, though.
I think this is exactly it. When I read these stories (and think about some of the fairly marginal things I’ve saved over the years), I think of this article by Paul Graham. Stuff used to be expensive, but now it’s not. Now it’s so cheap that it costs to have too much of it. Our brains and culture haven’t really grasped that change, yet, the same way that our bodies haven’t adapted to plentiful cheap food.
I purged a few hundred books and some other stuff recently, and it was hard for me to give them away. Even though I hadn’t read them for years (or in some cases, ever), it did feel like I was giving away memories. And then, once they were gone, it felt great. I had enough room on my shelves for the books I liked, and that’ll be a few boxes fewer I have to pack in the next move.
My mom is currently getting rid of lots of stuff in preparation for a move to a smaller place, and the last time I visited, I ended up coming away with much of the detritus of my childhood. I said I didn’t want it, and she said that she had been saving it for me for years, and I might want it in the future, and I said I didn’t want it now, and finally my girlfriend convinced me to take it. They had both, at some point, reached a point at which they did want some physical reminders of their childhood, and semi-convinced me that I would, too. Now, some of it I did want. I’ve got some hand-drawn wrapping paper that my best friend made me when I was 8 years old, and some pictures of me as a child, and some newspaper clippings where I was in the paper as a kid. All that’s good. But am I ever going to want a worksheet I colored in when I was in elementary school? Am I going to want a whole box of them? I don’t think I will.
It’s not just that stuff is cheaper, so is room, up to a point. Stuff piled up in a five-room house is much more likely to spiral out of a hoarders’ control then a smaller condo would be.
A nice way to test that theory would be to compare the percentage of compulsive hoarding in the Netherlands versus the USA. This cite claims that both countries are very similar in the amount of money spent on luxuries, but there’s a big difference in how much room the average household has.
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Can I tell you folks why I’m worn out and drinking a beer right now? Okay, I will…
I just came from my mom’s friend’s house–nearby. I went to try to help her install a new printer. As soon as I went in the house, the smell hit me. No animals but definitely has not been cleaned in a very long time. The carpet bears this out. Every time I reached around her tower, my head would bump the bulletin board and push pins would fall onto the pile of crap on the desk which does not need to be there. I had to install a new mouse as well and there is barely room to move it around even just a tiny bit. Bobby pins kept falling off the desk and onto the keyboard. It’s not hard to walk in the house, but it’s definitely cluttered in there. And guess what’s in one of the computer document files? Clutterers Anonymous. She must be in one of the local chapters.
I felt emotionally wrung out just from trying to work in this small and nasty space filled with dusty and stupid crap that gets in the way of the smallest movements and tasks.
The hoarding friend that I have mentioned upthread left a message last night saying that the room where she sleeps (not her bedroom, which cannot be entered) flooded and the water came up beneath the carpet yesterday due to heavy rains and a structural problem which the family has never fixed because they never wanted to spend the money even though they had plenty. So now she has wet carpets, wet clothing which had been left in a heap on said carpet, and she went to bed breathing in the moisture and a horrible odor. She sprayed Febreze on it as if that would actually help anything. This had happened before, at least once. How much mold and stuff must be under there by now?
I wish she had gone to a hotel but she won’t want to spend any $ on that either. Her oven no longer works, the sink drips profusely from its pipes when she washes dishes, and so on. But I doubt that she will hire anyone to do repairs due to the cost and, of course, she doesn’t want people seeing how bad the house is.
Sigh.
I think I’m having an anxiety attack just from reading that paragraph.
I told a friend that I now have Clutterdie-o-phobia–the fear that I will either be killed by clutter or that I will die and someone else will have to clean my house.
Books are going to Goodwill. More kitchen gadgets have found a loving home. We may end up sitting on the floor eating only finger foods if I keep this up.
We’ve spent this morning removing two black-sack’s worth of stuff from my daughter’s bedroom. I have no idea how she fit that much crap in there in the first place as it’s not a *big *room. This has prompted me to get even tougher on my own accumulations of crap I don’t need.
I’ll admit to taking 70-odd glass jars to the recycling centre last week, only keeping *twice *as many as I’ll need for preserves this year.
While putting some stuff away, I discovered two caches of books that I’ve never read - one pile was the books I’d already decided I would never read. There are drop offs arranged for both piles now.
As a family, my folks and I are planning the annual rubbish dump run for Easter, both houses, one trailer. All the big stuff that’s migrated to the garages and backs of wardrobes. I may even get rid of my unmatched, third best set of dishes and cutlery - that will clear some more pantry space.
And all this is *since *the New Year’s clean-up!
I know—it’s horrible. Her folks must have carried homeowners’ insurance, but I doubt that she will call them. She won’t want them to see the house. So nothing will change. That’s the saddest part.
I often have little bursts of insight from hearing about mental issues where I have a little ghost of that as a personality trait. It seems to be qualitatively different, but you hear echoes, sort of.
My old apartment was pretty gross, but then again the apartment itself was pretty gross. Mostly it was clutter, but we also had a slight filth problem (and cockroaches, albeit small ones). We rarely had people over, although we sometimes did (and were able to clean enough at least not to be embarrassed in front of our close friends). It also seemed to reject any attempt at decorating as if it were an incompatible organ transplant.
Sometime in 2005 I grew a stereotype and got sick of the apartment. We moved, throwing out a whole bunch of crap, into a much nicer place on the second floor, and somehow this gives me a much better “standard,” if you like – the nicer apartment is something to live up to.
I still have light clutter, especially in my bedroom or office, but nothing out of the ordinary for a busy person. I’m pretty good at intensive cleaning sessions, sometimes late at night. I have a number of “collections” that might be a bit excessive (I save old bills, all of my translation hard copies, newspaper clippings about myself or things relevant to me, NDP stuff, and metro stuff, and I have a lot of fairly un-give-away-able books) but for the most part, they’re under control (i.e. confined to boxes/file folders/specific shelves, organized, and neatly stowed). I would say I’m now reaching the ideal of A Place for Everything, even if Everything In Its Place is still some distance off. There are usually clothes on my floor, but they do get picked up. We used to leave dishes in the sink for ages; now they might go for a few days, especially after a dinner party, but right now the sink possibly has one bowl in it. And not only do we have no compunctions about inviting people over after a cursory tidying-up, but in fact we have weekly gatherings, which for me are kind of an excuse to clean regularly.
By the way, did the logo for Children of Hoarders seem inappropriate to anyone else? They say it’s the blinds rising as the shame goes away, and that’s easier to see in the dark-on-white version, but in the white-on-dark version it looks like the mess level rising to engulf the house!
Oh lordy, my former neighbor across the street had a house like this–a couple of nice real estate agent ladies bought his house for basically the tax liens and a bit over and he moved out leaving all the crap behind. My SO went over there and it was FOUL–rats and their shit, piss on the floor that left spongy spots (not sure if all of it was from the dog,) half empty cans of beans and empty bottles of vodka (yep, that WAS his entire diet!) and just drifts of the most nasty imaginable shite all over the place–holes in the floor facilitated filling the crawlspace with garbage. The nice real estate ladies put up a Craig’s List ad offering everything in the house free for the taking and we had a full weekend of 24 hour CL people hauling crap out of that house. After they were done they completely filled a huge drop dumpster to overflowing with the rest of the crap in the place–did I mention this was like an 800 SF house?
What really sucks is that the house was beautifully rehabbed by a contractor who bought it from the real estate ladies (after the cleanup costs I don’t think they made a single penny on the deal) and finished it just in time to hit the big subprime slump in prices. The guy did a phenomenal job, did the whole thing top to bottom including adding a finished attic that added another 500 SF to the house, travertine and tile floors, new laminate floors, granite counters, gorgeous cabinets, nice landscaping, new everything–he priced it at 215K which was totally a good number but it hasn’t sold and he’s dropped it to 199 in the past couple weeks. Shoot, if I could afford it I’d buy the place because it’s now in way better shape than my little hovel…
Thanks so much for mentioning that Matt! I will definitely see if my volunteer computer tech can change that white on dark version, as that is not what we want to convey at all. :smack:
We see that “house engulfing” enough in person!
Appreciated your comment. -Donna/COH site