Hoarding, compulsive shopping, clutter, a mixture?

[Cadfaelfan]

Does anyone have any ideas about how to begin approaching this?

With Christmas, I am visiting relatives. One relative has always liked to have a lot of ‘stuff.’ I don’t often go around to her house because I find it overwhelming. Having just been, she is clearly reaching a stage where the sheer volume is having negative consequences. I realise I can’t ‘fix’ her, but it was obviously getting to her and I don’t know where to suggest she begins.

Part of the problem is the advice is different depending on the issue. But I am not sure what the issue is. If it’s hoarding it seems there is nothing to be done unless the hoarder 100% wants to do something, and even then it’s a tough road. If it’s compulsive shopping, then counselling may help. Anxiety: counselling and maybe medication. Clutter: Marie Kondo, or similar.

The shopping is mostly household consumables and food. In theory, these are 'needed' items, but she bulk buys. Her required number of anything is around 20, fewer than this in the house seems to trigger her to buy more. She stocks up and then everyone gets bored so she buys alternative brands. She also struggles with getting rid of things. She has bookcases full of videos, no video player, but the videos were ‘expensive when I bought them’ so she doesn’t want to dispose of them. Same with clothes bought thirty years ago: wrong size, never worn but can’t be disposed of. She tried car booting to shift stuff but it overall made things worse because she started to bulk buy items to sell at a profit. Sometimes they do but in the interim, things pile up. It also seems to have re-enforced the idea that her stuff has value and can’t just be got rid of.

The thing is, the house doesn’t look like any of the pictures which are normally used to assess levels of hoarding. www.hoardingconnectioncc.org/CIR_Living%20Room.pdf

It isn’t messy like that. You can see the floor. Everything is neatly stacked in piles. Nonetheless, there are three of them in a nine-room house. Three rooms are too full to enter. In addition, the loft, shed and garage are full. Several of the remaining rooms have a second ‘tier’ of storage furniture around the perimeter pushing the functional furniture inwards. There is only single file access up the stairs and along hallways. I am worried about what would happen in a fire.

It is making her stressed. She cannot find important documents. She envies friends’ tidier homes. She feels like they are being judged by visitors. Keeping on top of cleaning makes her anxious and tearful. She talked about wanting to buy somewhere bigger. I think that would be a bad idea. Moving from a small 2-bed into their current place seems to have been one trigger for the explosion in stuff. But they may end up buying a second property if she doesn’t deal with this as they are running out of functional space.

The other people in the house are they happy with situation or just going with it to humour a loved one. What's the dynamic between them?
If there is a child in the property are social services or the school aware of situation.
Would the hoarder consider giving some of her hoarded food obviously tinned or packaged and in date to someone less fortunate than themselves, by donating to a foodbank.
Have the been issues in the past of depravation so everything must be kept in case things go wrong again?
Just trying to view the situation holistically may offer clues as to the cause of behaviour and possible trigger points

The other people in the house are they happy with situation or just going with it to humour a loved one. What's the dynamic between them?
The other people in the house are her partner and their child. DP is a nice guy but comes across as very much an 'anything for a quiet life' type of person. Their child has grown up with it so it’s their normal. I’m not sure how things are going as they are getting older and more aware that other people live differently. There may be issues as they get physically bigger and need more space: they currently sleep in a child-sized bed. There is so much stuff in stored their room that an adult size single won’t fit without a major clear out.

If there is a child in the property are social services or the school aware of situation.
I don’t think so. The child is other than this, well looked after and much loved. The house is jam packed but the lived in spaces are not dirty, although it is very difficult to clean because there is stuff piled on every surface and on a lot of the floor I don’t know what the full rooms are like, because no one goes in there. I can definitely see at some future date it is going to flip over into being impossible to keep clean. I think she knows that, which is why she is starting to stress.

Would the hoarder consider giving some of her hoarded food obviously tinned or packaged and in date to someone less fortunate than themselves, by donating to a foodbank.
I doubt it. She likes having lots of stuff: she just doesn’t like not having any space. Of course, those two things are linked, but she doesn’t see it like that. She would give to a foodbank, but she would buy additional things to give to a foodbank.

Have the been issues in the past of depravation so everything must be kept in case things go wrong again?
No, some less good times financially but never not able to pay bills/ mortgage/ buy food. She does have anxiety and depression and I think the bulk buying is a way to feel insulated from the world. She also has a parent, a grandparent and an aunt with hoarding tendencies, but hers are much more pronounced and happening much earlier in life.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. It seems that the family are enabling her to continue but going against the wishes of someone who has taken control of the household is never easy.
So she wants more space and to find things but doesn't want to get rid of stuff so obviously the 2 things are incompatible. Would she accept moving things around so the child's room is usable even if it makes another room unusable. This would give the child a place to escape from clutter their own space and potentially a full size bed.
With regard to stored food that she no longer needs what happens to it after sell by dates does it just continue to exist and contribute to the stockpile or can she be persuaded to get rid of it for health reasons.

It's a difficult situation as to an extent it appears to be learned /inhereted traits and with dp going with the flow there is no check on situation.
Does she keep boxes stuff came in as well these are often really bulky and often contribute to the size of the hoard.
Unfortunately if she doesn't want to change and is unwilling to engage there is little that can be done.
As an aside if there are signs of rodent activity in the property it is possible that the local authority could become involved especially if the rats could potentially affect other property.

Proper hoarding is a mental illness. A form of OCD. Something in her past possible caused this behaviour. Trauma or a loss maybe.

Clearing things out will not help and can trigger hoarders further when they go into panic mode to replace the stuff.

She needs counselling to understand why she does it

Thanks Starisnotanumber. I think part of the trouble is that she has been playing furniture tetris for years now and things are at the stage where that is no longer possible. There is nowhere for the additional furniture in the child's bedroom to go without either preventing use of the bath and shower, or blocking use of the kitchen, or preventing access to their bed, or sitting in the living room between the sofas and the TV and blocking the line of sight.

The house has gone well past 'cramped side of normal' and is getting towards 'not possible to live in' and so to try to avoid facing the crunch she's talking about moving somewhere bigger.

I don't know what they're going to do. They're only in their forties. Potentially there's another 40 yrs of stuff still to accumulate.

Wheres the money coming from to enable the behaviour? It sounds as if moving to a different place might be a good thing as actually shifting the stuff may enable her to part with some of it or maybe some could go missing perhaps with the assistance of dp as she probably isn't totally aware of what she actually has.
In the short term could you buy her smoke alarms for Christmas the battery ones would be best then if a fire breaks put then there would be some warning.
I would possibly contact school because child is likely to be aware that living conditions are different than the norm and unfortunately there are cruel bullying children in every school.