<p>Hoarding is caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals which causes a “do-loop” of repetitive behavior similar to the nesting instinct. It is similar to OCD. Behavior modification and sometimes medication is necessary to help (depression is a component usually). Unfortunately, the hoarder doesn’t think they need help!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>S stopped spending the night when he was a young teenager. He’s now almost 20 (sorry–I still think of him as a kid!), so CPS is out of the picture.</p>
<p>My ex is definitely ill, though he doesn’t see it that way. At one point in our marriage I convinced him to see a psychologist about his OCD. He went for a while, but quit as soon as the psychologist suggested actually throwing something away. I threw him out not long after that.</p>
<p>I actually know a real life hoarder so watching this show makes me really sad. Sometimes I often think this person that I know lives like a homeless person within a home. My family offered to help clean up but this person refused. I gave up. What can you do?</p>
<p>Right, it’s a mental illness. The piles of stuff are only a symptom. As we see on the shows, there are deep-rooted emotional and cognitive disturbances which have to be addressed before or during the clean-out. Being messy or disorganized or having a lot of stuff is not, by itself, hoarding.</p>
<p>I don’t like the show. The problem that I have when shows that depict mental illness like this become popular, is that people forget that there is a spectrum of severity and that the tv only portrays the WORST side because it makes for the most interesting television. Just like how whenever I tell anyone I have OCD, they immediately think I must be like Monk-- or if I say I am autistic, people think I must be like Rain Man. If I say I had hoarding tendencies (which I used to, don’t anymore), people immediately jump to this show-- when my life was NOWHERE NEAR even kind of like that. Those people are on a completely different planet. It’s very frustrating.</p>
<p>And I dunno, I’ve only seen a couple episodes but I also feel like the show is made just for people to gawk, which I also don’t feel comfortable with. There shouldn’t be anything entertaining about gawking at sick people. Any educational value the show might have in terms of raising awareness I feel like is cheapened by the fact that they only show the most severe kind of cases.</p>
<p>Apparently also, culturally speaking, we as a society are becoming more and more acquisition oriented, buying into the message that having more stuff is better than having less. There has occurred a tremendous upsurge in the rental of personal storage units over the past few years. And people are finding creative ways to start businesses that cater to this trend. If I had money to invest, I might seriously look into portable “pod” storage unit businesses that allow you to fill them at home, and have them picked up and stored in huge climate controlled warehouses.</p>
<p>Yes, it is scary. Like a horror movie. I just watched the cat hoarding episode online. The lady had 36 cats, and 13 of them were dead. Ugh. Amazing amount of denial there.</p>
<p>Those cats are probably scarred for life by their experience. We adopted a kitten who was rescued from a hoarder’s house. I’ve never seen a cat eat so fast in my life! She digs into her food dish like an excavator digs into a trench and consumes a can of fancy feast in just a few seconds.</p>
<p>I’ve known two hoarders in my life–one has actually been featured on one of the TV shows. I think the shows have served a good purpose in spotlighting that hoarding is a mental illness. Going in with a bulldozer and cleaning out a true hoarder’s home isn’t going to solve the problem.</p>
<p>I have known some scary hoarders. One of them had “lifeboat water” that was more than 50 years old! He also had a ton of other things of equal vintage. They filled up his three bedroom home & the large space underneath it, including rusting bicycle parts & so much more. It took weeks of hard work to get rid of much of it so that the home was finally rentable.</p>
<p>A good friend’s brother is a hoarder. He was finally evicted by his landlady and, after a series of small strokes, is in an assisted living facility. This is a brilliant, handsome man who went to Yale and, at one point, had a fantastic future ahead of him. Due to his hoarding and other mental issues, he never fulfilled his promise. </p>
<p>Very very sad.</p>
<p>H loves to keep every paper he ever had. He still has the three boxes of papers that he took with him from his first job 30+ years ago.
I am on the other end of the spectrum and tend to throw things out willy-nilly. I did it once to stock certificates worth over $8000. H caught them just in time.
However, I really don’t mean to make light of the true mental illness these poor folks have. Listening to the adult children who managed to escape is heart-breaking.</p>
<p>My husband is a hoarder. We have a three car garage that is so full of junk that you can’t put one car in it. And when I say junk, I really mean junk - worthless useless stuff we will never use, even if we can find it. And we have things that are actually worth something sitting outside in the elements. We have had 3 vehicles totaled by hail damage!! When i got a new car in March, my daughter and her fiancee decided that for my birthday present they were going to clear a space in the garage for my car. They did it while we were away - it was a nasty job. They called wanting the keys to my husbands truck so they could load a bunch of stuff in the back for us to take to the dump. My husband told them to put the stuff in our camper and he would deal with it. I was in tears as I knew it would just stay in the camper. It was a Sunday, so the dump was closed. They knew if they left it in the camper it would stay there, so they loaded the truck up and drove into town and put it in dumpsters around town (I was so worried we would get a huge fine when they told me that). I was so happy when I got home and could put my car in the garage. My husband about had a fit and fussed and p*issed and moaned about it. I felt so bad for them because they had worked so hard and I was so grateful - best present ever.</p>
<p>The good news is my husband has kept the space clear, so my car still fits. The bad news is that recycling stuff like cardboard that the kids took out of the garage but did not take to the dumpsters (they thought he would get rid of that) is now in the camper. (I had no idea till a few weeks ago). We have not made any progress with the rest of the stuff. Doubt the kids will help again after his response last time. It is so overwhelming, i would not know where to start. It is stressful to live with it. Inside and out. Outside We have 2 trucks, 2 cars, and 2 boats that are useless and should have gone to the junk yard years ago. Numerous old lawnmowers and broken appliances that he won’t part with. We even have English appliances (microwave, stereo) that we had in Egypt with us - 23 years ago. They were expensive, so he won’t throw them out - but they are useless. His accounting books from college (he is 69). The garage is full except for the small space for my car, the huge Den is full (I avoid going in there - then when I do i find trash bags full of clothes i sorted to go to for donations still sitting there), a little room I used to use as a sewing room is stacked to the ceiling, and he has a storage facility we have been paying rent for for years - must be thousands of dollars - that is full of some junk from a period where I went ballistic and said either it goes or I do. If something ever happens to him I would have to hire someone to remove all the stuff. It is physically beyond us now. </p>
<p>His Mum was exactly the same. His dad actually bough a moving van and parked it in their back yard to get some of the stuff out of the house. While my MIL was still alive, my sister in law would give stuff to my husband to get it out of the house (MIL would agree because she thought he had a use for it - really - 30-40 year old clothing?) and he was supposed to throw it away. Guess where it ended up - my house. I finally told her to quit - she had no idea he was not throwing it out. She has spent the last year since my parents in law died trying to clear the house out. My son told me we should leave the house to his sister because he does not want to ever have to deal with it. I really would like to downsize into a smaller house and yard as we have an acre and it is getting hard for my husband to take care of it (and I have no desire to mow an acre). It seems impossible, when I do try to throw stuff away he is looking at every little thing. I have resorted to sneaking stuff out to the bin the morning of trash pick up.</p>
<p>If I had it to do again i would be a very minimalist person.</p>
<p>Your D & her fiance are saints and very sweet. I’m so sorry you have to live like this. It is difficult to live with a hoarder. We used to have S take trumpet from a hoarder. The house had small trails where you could go from room to room. It was stacked with all kinds of “stuff.” It had articles about his career, medical bills, newspapers, magazines, etc. It was everywhere–on the treadmill, all over the couch (you could clear a small space to sit). My friend, whose D also took lessons with him found it VERY unnerving & said it reminded her of a relative who ended up with dementia/alzheimers. The guy was brilliant, but it was a tough way to live.</p>
<p>BunsenBurner – Poor Kitty! But, really, she is a very lucky kitty to have found you to take care of her. </p>
<p>I guess part of the fascination of the show for me is how I now look at my own tendencies to buy/keep too many things and allow clutter to pile up in a new light. Shudder . . . It is definitely inspiring me to get rid of things. </p>
<p>One of my elderly relatives was a hoarder. I remember how when I was young, we visited once, and the hoarding was confined to one room. I was fascinated by the room full of neatly stacked newspapers. But over the next 30 some years, by the time he died, I heard that the clutter – cans of food, newspapers and magazines – had taken over the entire house and there was only one chair that wasn’t covered with stuff that one could sit on. I guess the washing machine didn’t work, and the way they (he and his wife) dealt with that was to keep buying new underwear. It makes me sad when I think of them living like that at the end of their lives. </p>
<p>Ellemenope – I’m curious – did the hoarder that you know that was featured on the show get enough help to really solve the problem?</p>
<p>Ah, swimcatsmom, just read your post. That must be so hard when you encounter such strong resistance to cleaning up. Congratulations on reclaiming some space in the garage, though. It’s a start!</p>
<p>
You don’t know the half of it. We have two outdoor cats, one used to be an indoor cat but was banished because he peed everywhere. he had peed over nearly everything they threw out. it was nasty. Her Fiancees comment “I love your Dad, but this is f-ing ridiculous”. He was amazed to discover, at the very back of the garage, the wonderful collection of tools , workbench etc my husband has that we had not seen in years.</p>
<p>Of course now every time we can’t find anything my husband says they must have thrown it away. (like we could ever find it before). </p>
<p>
It is. I just kind of close my eyes to it as much as I can. At its worst (when he started collecting other peoples junk appliances) - I literally thought I was going to go crazy. I finally threw the hugest hissy fit, throwing and breaking things (not my nature at all, believe me). That is the stuff that is in storage. But, yes it is a start. The summer has been so hot (more than 60 days in the 100s - many in the teens) that it has been impossible to even think of messing with the garage.</p>
<p>What a true testament to the love your D’s fiancee has for her that he was willing to help her & all of you in this thankless, Herculean task. Sounds pretty nasty & like it was VERY unsanitary. Will the tools & workbench now be used?</p>
<p>I am hoping that maybe if we clear it a bit more he might start using it again. I need to come up with some projects for him :D</p>
<p>Otherwise my son and daughter/fiancee might as well take all those good tools (like he would part with them).</p>
<p>Maybe the magic words for your s, d and fiancee would be: we could really use this…</p>
<p>I am with you in spirit as my husband is very much the same way except he hasn’t had as much time to accumulate. I get aggrieved when HE rants about the state of our garage and 97.9% of the problem is his stuff, which is junk he will never use. The other 2.1% gets lost in the muddle.</p>