<p>My mom is a hoarder and moved in with me 4 or so months ago. I clearly didn’t think this through when I made the offer. She has hoarded up her bedroom as much as possible given her current limited access to garbage. About 90% of the floor is littered with old newspapers, magazines, bits of paper she has written notes on, old coupons, photos, etc. Her bed is covered in the same way. Whenever I approach her to at least pile the stuff on top of the many surfaces provided in her room, she gets upset. She would never agree to counseling or meds since she doesn’t believe she has a “problem”. I don’t want to just come in and start pitching stuff but boy is it tempting.</p>
<p>I don’t take divorce lightly, but I think living with a true hoarder would probably be the nail in the marriage coffin. No way I would not go berserk trying to negotiate getting rid of 28 year old bank statements or empty wrapping paper tubes with someone who refuses to admit he has a problem and won’t consider therapy.</p>
<p>^ Hoarding behavior is not rational. Negotiate getting rid of an empty cardboard box? … or a blank VCR tape? … or a bag of expired coupons? … or a bin containing several hundred unmatched socks? Life’s too short. Besides, it sets a bad example for the kids.</p>
<p>^^^^So what is the solution? I think living in filth would be a bad thing for the kids, too. I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it, particularly in the case of the ones who refuse to acknowledge that what causes problems IS a problem.</p>
<p>I’ve been reading with interest. One of my sisters is a hoarder and has been since childhood. Nothing will change her. In a few years her house will be uninhabitable. Then she will probably put a mobile home in the front yard. In her mind this will be merely short term while she renovates the house. Of course, putting a mobile home in the front yard will require moving enough stuff to make space. So she may have to put that mobile home across the road - which will mean she destroys that road frontage/potential building lot as well. Now that I consider it, I can imagine a scenario where she blocks the road between the house and the mobile home and when they come and take her away, she keeps explaining she was going to move all the stuff in the road tomorrow. They just need to relax. She is taking care of this. </p>
<p>If anyone knows how to “fix” people like this, I’d be delighted to hear.</p>
<p>cleaning up for her doesn’t help - and just makes her unhappy
explaining doesn’t help
guilt tripping doesn’t help
medication doesn’t help
she refuses to discuss the issue with a doctor, because to her it isn’t an issue</p>
<p>“So what is the solution?”</p>
<p>Several years ago I asked a Hoarding Therapist exactly that. The response was “effects on the family are not my concern.” Whoa. But message received: Hoarders do not let family welfare influence their behavior. It’s up to family members to make the necessary decisions. Obviously deciding what’s “necessary” should involve considerable thought, since all roads to success will be inhospitable.</p>
<p>I cleaned up the attic last week going through every storage box and pulling out lots of spring & fall decorations I have no use for or are discolored. After I was done I showed H how neat it wasandhe commented why I have 3 boxes of kids books in there. They are classics that the kids want to keep. Mind you, this is from the man that won’t throw out the college course books because he might need to show someone what the class was that’s on his undergrad transcript. Really? He has a masters and professional designation!</p>
<p>One of the boxes I pulled from last week was Christmas cards. Over the years, I’ve just tossed the ones we get in a box. Finally I say down and pulled out all the pictures and old letters and have a shopping bag full that our preschool has agreed to take.</p>
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<p>Wow. </p>
<p>Well, if children are involved, then their welfare must come first and foremost. I’ve seen a few of these hoarding shows where the hoarder puts everyone through misery and damages the kids, both in a physical and a mental health standpoint. All too often you have a passive mate afraid to rock the boat, and by virtue of that, is also putting the hoarder’s needs over that of the kids. No way I’d allow that to happen to my kids. I think it would be much healthier for the kids to be in a safe one parent environment than have to live like that in order to keep a hoarder from going ballistic.</p>
<p>DH was clearly a very neat person when we met. I had never heard of hoarding at that time. But I guess on some level I was attracted to the cleanliness and order which was in his living environment.</p>
<p>Not that the other extreme couldn’t be just as awful. I’ve seen Mommie Dearest and Sleeping with the Enemy. :eek:</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
<p>My sister doesn’t have children. If she did, the choices would be to remove them from her custody or to allow them to live in her environment. It is impossible to change how she is going to live. She is a wonderful person and the favorite aunt.</p>
<p>Not sure if addressed upthread, but there is a safety issue to be considered. A hoarder near me just died in a fire; piles of paper somehow caught on fire and it was like fuel for a massive fire. Rescue team could not get in the house because of mounds of stuff against all but one door. Very sad. </p>
<p>My husband is a pack rat. I wonder if pack rat tendencies ever evolve into true hoarding. I hope not! </p>
<p>H acknowledges that he does not need some of the stuff and it is just laziness/inertia and available closet space that prevents him from a major throw out. I HATE when I cannot find something I need because there is so much unnecessary stuff in the file, closet, cabinet, whatever.</p>
<p>My SO, who I will be buying a house with in the new year, is a “piler”…little piles all over…he says his own dad did it and it drove my SO crazy but he is doing it too…must. find. solution. </p>
<p>/electronic ulitity notices etc are in the works…</p>
<p>H is a pack rat/hoarder though he insists he has no problem. He would divorce me if I really cleared out his “stuff”. Our arrangement is that he can keep whatever he wants in the basement, but the first and second floors belong to me and the kids. When his stuff begins to pile up, I just move it downstairs and stack it. All surfaces are covered and there are pathways. Yes, it is a fire trap with all the paper, but we have smoke alarms everywhere and know how to get out. We can never move to a condo…assisted living when we have to.</p>
<p>My joke is that I hope he dies before me. The dumpster will be in the driveway the next day. And it will take more than 20 fills. But a big part of me is serious…</p>
<p>TempeMom - Your SO is the only one who can change his desire “to pile.” But you can manage the scope of the “piling” by agreeing to which areas of the residence may be “piled.” His study, fine. A shelf or two in the garage, fine. One wall in the basement/attic/shed, fine. Kitchen counters, dining room table, master bedroom, kids’ bedrooms, guest bedroom, closets, entry way, porch, lawn, back yard, around the pool, near the barbeque pit, against the back fence, in off-site storage lockers, at Mom’s house … um, no. </p>
<p>PS - And don’t ever fall for that line “it’s just temporary” … even once.</p>
<p>(the piles are all paper related but I hear YOU!!!)</p>
<p>On piling:</p>
<p>Everyone in my family is very visually oriented. If the item is behind a closet door, or in a drawer, it is lost. Possibly forever. Papers that are stacked up, and files that are hanging neatly in milk crates are never lost, and whoever needs whatever it is they are thinking of can find it immediately. And yes, this produces a sometimes overwhelming amount of clutter, but we can always find what we need quickly. My sisters joke that we have a “horizontal filing system”.</p>
<p>Hey! My boss has that filing system!</p>
<p>Happymom–I always say “out of sight, out of mind”–literally. Once I don’t see it, it’s gone.
I have a “special” drawer that ANYTHING important goes into (bills, whatever) so that it gets taken care of. Otherwise it may as well be in the universal ether.</p>
<p>When H and I purchased our first house, his parents came to visit. Imagine my surprise when their pickup was full of his stuff…and it wasn’t half of it. He still has stuff at his dad’s, but it just blends in with THAT stuff. I know where he got the pack rat gene.</p>
<p>He also had a storage locker, but moved that stuff back when we put the addition on our house.</p>
<p>I used to let his stuff be in parts of rooms, but it was too much and just expanded. I think a 2000 sq ft basement is plenty of room. None of our kids are hoarders—they just can’t stand all the clutter and junk.</p>
<p>I’m for whatever works. I have a relative who is ADHD-ODD, and was looking for ways to “help.” One article cautioned against doing too much “manipulation” because ODD types are natural disruptors of the status quo and can be very useful tools for change. I’d never thought of it that way. It doesn’t make my relative any less frustrating to deal with, but at least I see potential for a silver lining!</p>
<p>It’s much more difficult for me to see the silver lining for hoarding. Hoarders tend to be very intelligent … perfectionists even. And experts in the field suggest that many are very creative … society’s dreamers if you will. The maddening part is that while they see a thousand uses for an item your or I might throw away, they never DO anything with those ideas or those items. And so, after a lifetime of negative impacts on their communities, their brilliant, creative, dreamy ideas die with them. To me “that doesn’t work.”</p>
<p>What’s ODD?</p>