Just spent the last 9 hours cleaning my parents filthy hoarded house….

[HairyBananas]

And made so little progress that I could actually weep.

Quasi hoarding conditions combined with shopping addiction, chain smoking and an no cleaning done in the last 5 years. Thankfully no resistance to throwing things out 🙌 I was fully armed with cleaning stuff and large packing boxes for paperwork, which there is A LOT of.

I spent the first 4 hours tackling bedroom and small spare room, before moving on to the kitchen diner. Made so little progress there in 5 hours thanks to sorting paperwork and wires/other shite for packing. There’s very little maneouvre room which didn’t help when moving things about.

Need to get back there early tomorrow to make another stab at the remainder of the kitchen diner and the bathroom, which is totally vile.

Theres an adult social worker calling Monday and there’ll be trouble if it isn’t at least habitable by then.

I thought I had a good plan in chucking all the dirty clothes into bags and paper into boxes as these are the 2 biggest issues but it turns out that my mum has literally been repeatedly buying toiletries and other items as these ones she originally had became inaccessible due to the hoard.

I love my parents, they are good people so I don’t want to bash them, but I am just so sad at how they live.

Any advice is welcome for tomorrow!

I know you’re busy now and it’s a bit late in the day now, but for anyone in a similar situation I highly recommend watching Hoarding: Buried Alive, it’s on YouTube and sometimes it’s on TV. They go into the psychology behind the condition and there’s a lot of practical techniques that are useful too. It’s really helped me deal with my late parents’ hoarded home.

Social Services might recommend a fire safety check of the home. If they did that, in the first instance @HairyBananas your parents agreement to them coming in would be needed.

The fire safety staff would decide if or how much the clutter adds to the home's fire risk. If all the decluttering responsibility is currently on you, that could be a lot to deal with alone.

The smallest mercy is that your parents don't object to things being got rid of.

Could you put a post on a local group on Facebook someone might enjoy a challenge and want to help you all? I’d try and do the kitchen and bathroom first if I was you x

My mother's house was like this. We had the idea of just removing important things, then getting a house clearance done. Unfortunately she had things like a box stuffed full of junk mail ... with her passport in the middle of it. So we still had to go through every bloody box. It almost felt deliberate after a while - that she had left everything for us to do because she couldn't/didn't want to. My brother and I agreed we would never leave such a situation for our own children.

I believe the mental health issues have just never been recognised due to never being diagnosed.
Hoarding is an aspect of a variety of different conditions/syndromes/disorders. See these OCD sufferers:

Would it be so terrible if he didn’t come home and went into a care home? Are you scared of something? It can be a safety hazard for your parents living like that. I’m sorry you’re going through this. It’s ok to have a boundary here. Don’t burn yourself out over it, this is your parents doing that it’s got like that. It’s an illness. Best of luck for tomorrow.

I'm confused - wouldn't the social worker seeing it in a total state be a good thing? Round here we have a charity that the social workers can refer to who will help with the clearing out when places are in a state. I hope it goes well today though, and glad you have a skip.

I think you’ll be doing this all over again in 6m time and if he’s having falls a fall prevention service may help. This might all be kicking it down the road.

It took four of us every weekend six months to skip and tip the contents of PIL three bed semi. Amongst the rubbish we found drawers full of expired gift vouchers, cupboards heaving with unwanted and unopened gifts, solid silver trays, silver canteens of cutlery, engraved gold pocket watches, family heirlooms, some really valuable stuff that when auctioned made thousands. All mixed up.
They lived like paupers. It left a very poor legacy. I will never understand.

Why do people expect social services to do things that family should be doing when they are capable? This is nuts and will contribute to the end of social welfare at some point in the future.

I have an older sister who hoards, I wouldn't dream of letting unknown people into her home to clean up/steal from her. I've cleared out huge bags of rubbish and removed items she doesn't use/need to make it easier for her to manage day to day. It takes her about a year to get back to where it was before the cleanup. Hoarding is a psychological problem often stemming from childhood poverty and abandonment issues.

You are taking on too much. You will end up sick because you are trying to protect them. Please leave it and let a third party view it. They will probably offer you advice about the way forward.

Pay a professional team. You clear out the paperwork and then it's literally fair game as to what get's binned. You have to be ruthless when it's this bad. It might be a perfectly fine toaster maker for eg but it's not worth the time that it would take to clean it and make it sanitary, in the bin it goes. There's a brilliant girl on Instragram who does these cleans for free.

It's hideously expensive to pay someone. Between £4-15k

Just take the valuables and let a house clearer take the rest isn't a possibility in most hoarded houses as they're just too full.

It's very stressful and hard work doing it for a living relative. Good luck.

How did it go today OP?