WIBU to buy PIL a copy of Marie Kondo and save them £400k?!

[allthatissolidmeltsintoair]

Regular but NCed for this. I am prepared to be told I am being unreasonable, and that I need to butt out and mind my own business!!

Apologies for length - I didn't want to drip feed.

Context:

• PIL (aged 70) currently live in a very well designed 3 bedroom house (it really is lovely). They also own a currently unoccupied 3-bed bungalow, which they don't really like in terms of layout. As this might suggest, they are not without resources financially!
  
• FIL has mobility issues, and has refused to have surgery to correct these (he's frightened of the anaesthetic). Sadly, his mobility is now severely impaired, and he will probably need a wheelchair before long. However, the design of the house means there is room to modify it to suit his needs, e.g. stairlifts, large corridors. The bungalow is already set up for a mobility-impaired resident, but requires cosmetic decoration.
  
• However, the interior decor of their current house doesn't allow those modifications to be made. Both PIL are hoarders. The house is overly full - there is literally twice as much furniture as will fit, including stuff that simply doesn't work (ancient stereos, uncomfortable collapsed beds etc). Everything is rammed in, and there is no room to move for a person without mobility issues, let alone a wheelchair. However, they really, really struggle to throw things away.
  
• MIL is clearly struggling to manage the existing space in terms of maintenance and cleaning (FIL doesn't/can't lift a finger). They are, however, very resistant to getting in help, despite having plenty of money to do so.
  
• MIL has become irrationally obsessed with the neighbours because they are simply polite, rather than wanting to be bessie mates with PIL. They say 'hello', but they don't stop to chat. She is incredibly enraged by some plastic cladding that they are putting on their house, and the fact that they don't mow their lawn as regularly as PIL. I am actually quite concerned about this as an overreaction in its own right (she goes purple when talking about them). It's a push-factor in the idea of moving, but I can't imagine future neighbours really wanting to have a closer relationship.
  

Problem:

• PIL rang up last night to ask our advice. Rather than downsizing, they want to upsize to a bigger place. In fact, they want to sell their house and buy the bungalow next to GFIL's and knock through to make a 7 bedroom bungalow. The whole reason for doing this rather than simply moving or modifying their existing house is to hang on to all the junk they own.
  

My concerns:

• MIL isn't managing the 3 bedroom space she has. AIBU to think that a 7 bedroom space would make this problem even worse, even if there are no stairs?
  
• AIBU to think that having more space will increase the tendency to hoard, rather than solving it?
  
• AIBU to think that the new space will be really expensive to heat and maintain? The current house is already cold at times because they don't want to put the heating on.
  
• The floorplan of this new dwelling would be huge. FIL already has extreme anxiety issues - I think the size if it might raise issues of security in his mind, where he's at one end of the place worrying what is happening at the other.
  
• There is no real market for bungalows with more than 4 bedrooms in their area. I'm concerned that should either of them need to move in future, this will make it difficult to sell.
  
• I've not seen many knock-through dwellings, but I can imagine that it would be difficult to design a 'happy' architectural solution.
  
• Larger and nicer dwellings are on the market for less than the cost of the two bungalows combined (£600k), without the large additional cost (£100k??) of the work of knocking them into one. PIL have form for having building work done that is expensive and doesn't really solve problems. Very recently, they spent £80,000 installing a new utility room which is never used and has become a store for excess glasses and pots and pans that they couldn't bear to throw out.
  

I should add that DH and myself, and BIL and his partner, are comfortably off and not at all in any need of money. My concern is purely that this is not a practical solution to their circumstances, and is likely to prove another mistake (like the utility room) that doesn't solve the root problems and therefore necessitates a further move in future, to a more suitable place. I'd really like the advice of people, especially if you have relatives who have downsized or upsized at a similar age.

DH is thinking of buying MIL a copy of Marie Kondo's book as a way of raising what we believe to be the real issue here, which is the hoarding. Are we being unreasonable or failing to understand the issues they are facing, though?

[Curioushorse]

God. Bit frivolous, I know, but reading this has helped me make the decision to finally throw out all of my university notes. They fill two boxes and I haven't looked at them in the 15 years since leaving uni. Have taken them with me on two subsequent house moves (where they've gone straight in the loft) and were placed in storage for six months.

Good luck all of you (and especially OP).

[RandomMess]

I can't add anything to help you but it was through my parents dealing with the trauma of moving granny into a sheltered accommodation flat that made them downsize in their 50s DH and I are planning to downsize as soon as we've got rid of a couple of children!!!

I am an emotional hoarder but I'm getting better and feel the need for clear out having just read these updates...

[mathanxiety]

Very sad situation and way beyond the scope of the book , unfortunately. They are living in a museum, not a home.

Any way you could send them off on a holiday and hire a skip while they're gone?

Or could you persuade MIL that in order for them to be allowed to stay there they will need to clear stuff out, there will be equipment and FIL will need clear floorspace, and tell them all their precious junk can be moved to a nearby storage facility and then secretly dump it all from there? Pay for six months and start getting rid of it immediately.

Or is there such a thing as an agent who would handle sale of all the stuff, if it's too much for them to do this themselves? Maybe a local auction house would do a valuation and then they would be sure they weren't being taken to the cleaners.

(I did the KonMari method at Christmas. It was wonderful. It's all about what you will keep, philosophically, and thanking the stuff that has served its purpose in your life and sending it on its merry way. But I am not a hoarder and just needed a better method that the one I had been using previously to cull possessions, mostly clothes and footwear.)

[wallywobbles]

Tortoise has got me thinking. If you got all sibs involved and did all the gifting now each sibling could then take their gifts to be disposed of. Do you think pils might agree?

[SoupDragon]

Any way you could send them off on a holiday and hire a skip while they're gone?

This approach is what the hoarder programmes on TV say is absolutely the wrong thing to do and can simply cause distress.

[Peregrina]

Hiring a skip?
You will never hear the last of it, because the hoarder won't know what went but will assume that it was something which they treasured and had put away for safekeeping. In practice, it won't have been - it will be the hoard of yellowed 30 year old newspapers, not from the time when something momentous happened like the Berlin Wall coming down, but full of details of what minor royals or z list celebrities were up to and other such trivia. Or it will be the broken clocks which they were keeping because they were just about to get them mended, and now you have thwarted them, and the fact that they have been in a draw with leaking corroded batteries in for 10 years will escape the hoarder. "Why it was only the other day that I put grandma's old broken clock away, she paid a lot of money for that."

Then the house will fill with more newspapers, etc., etc..

[loooopo]

We had this situation with MIL - she also hoarded animals - 10 minging, flea ridden, stray cats at one point - and the house was filthy, cat shit everywhere.

You have to take control by stealth.

Don't waste your breathe trying to bring logic to their irrational thinking. DH tried for years and years - she would not let him help until she got started herself - which of course she never did.

But we knew she was deeply ashamed of the place as no one was allowed in. So we played to that.

One day we took her to see a stunning new build luxury rental apartment - which she was blown away with. She agreed to move in whilst we sorted the house. She took a suitcase of clothes and bought new furniture (just sofa, table chairs and bed were required).

She never looked back. She loved the new apartment. We insisted that she had a cleaner and we kept on top of her tendency to hoard by clearing up and clearing out every week - so it never got bad again. The cats were re-homed. She was relieved and although the plan was to go back and sort stuff from the house - she never did as she never needed anything.

You cant bully these people - you need to use a carrot not a stick - and then some subterfuge.

Maybe inspire you MIL by taking her to see new shiny scandi furniture and show homes and get her to look forward to having such a home. Or send them off to live in a lovely minimalist holiday apartment for a few weeks so that they get the feel of the freedom?

Tell some lies. Invent some scenarios "A children's home in John O Groats really needs some side tables" "A hospice in Lands End is looking for books" "Shall we donate" etc.

If you tackle her hoard with her use the MK principles - so by category and then sub category - not room. Maybe shifting the FIL books might be a start point and means it is not directed at her immediately.

[loooopo]

Digitise their lives -- show then that all the newspapers and the recipes within are online....

[NightWanderer]

A friend of mine, when her husband retired, he had so many books. The house was already overflowing but he had hundreds and hundreds more from his office. So they sent them off to be digitized. I have no idea if he ever looks at them but at least they are still there in digital format. The books are destroyed during the digitizing process.

[Chchchchange]

I'm not sure they'd even read Kondo's book but it's worth a try lending them a copy. It really has transformed my life. I was clinging onto all sorts and the idea of getting rid was terrifying. In reading her book I've realised that it's ok to say goodbye to treasured things - they've brought me joy and I treasure the memory of that but I don't need to keep the item. The joy it brought me remains. It's nice to let someone else get use of things that are just sitting in my cupboard, too. I can afford nice things - so many can't. I feel so LIBERATED. I think even if your pil's won't read it, if you do it yourself and witter on about how great it is, it can be catching.

Anyway, I really feel for you, it sounds a nightmare. I'm trying to help my parents (though their house really isn't that cluttered) and I keep saying to them - imagine one of you had a terrible illness and died (cheery daughter, me) - or if you suddenly had to downsize or move into one room in a nursing home, what would really matter? Luckily they're on board and realise that they can't keep as much as they have. We've really bonded over sorting through stuff together and talking over memories. Much harder if you're 5 hours away though. Keep plugging away, hopefully you'll make a difference

[mathanxiety]

Yes, the skip idea is really a knee jerk reaction of mine.

I agree with posters who say a more subtle approach is needed. I like the idea of sending them off to a clean and minimal holiday apartment to get a feel of that. I also like the idea of capitalising on their liking for Scandi furniture. This affection of theirs seems to me to be an unconscious expression of the idea that they really don't want the millstone around their neck that they have right now. They may in the end be relieved that the responsibility of holding onto all the old things is no longer theirs.

Digitising their lives would be great, and maybe introduce them to Pinterest? You can hoard away to your heart's content there but it's all online.

(Though they seem to be more custodians than hoarders, and feeling guilt about the stuff they have rather than a hoarding impulse. I would have thought hoarders were people who can't pass a charity shop, pick through stuff left out for the bin collection, go to jumble sales, etc.)

Having done MK, I would start with clothes, not books. At this point of the year, I would start with summer clothes.

[thinblueline2]

OP I think this is none of your business.

[ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba]

OP

Your first post is too long. Can you declutter it a bit pls?

[Gwenhwyfar]

"I would have thought hoarders were people who can't pass a charity shop, pick through stuff left out for the bin collection, go to jumble sales, etc."

No, they don't have to compulsive buyers, just people who refuse to throw things away, even if those things are broken or actual rubbish.

[NightWanderer]

There are so many different types of hoarders. I also watch the show, it's mind blowing. Perhaps you could get your in laws to watch the hoarders program on YouTube. I watch about 5 minutes and I have to get up and start tidying.

[Gwenhwyfar]

My DM's seen the programme. She probably knows she's a hoarder and that she also has OCD (as many hoarders do, it's not just a disease of 'clean' people), but that would never change anything. She refuses to throw things away and there's nothing anyone can ever do about it. There's no need for her to be buying new things for it to be a problem, just imagine keeping everything you've owned for 60+ years and everything your children have ever owned (she wears our old clothes and we had loads of clothes as we were given bin bags from jumble sales and relatives). DF has VHS videos - God knows what for and so many books that some are duplicates and of course there's the obligatory thousands of old newspapers though DF does try to throw those away when DM's not looking.
Digitalising would definitely not work for them, they wouldn't be interested. They'd probably kill me if I chucked their stuff in a skip when they went on holiday, even though that's what I'd like to do.

[Peregrina]

DBro hired a skip when my parents were forced to move due to declining health, and he was never forgiven.

Digitising stuff wouldn't work if it destroyed the originals, because that is effectively throwing it away. Throwing away to a hoarder almost causes a breakdown.

[BoffinMum]

I feel your pain.

My PILs were hoarders and it has taken three years from FILs death to clear out just one place and make a start on the other. That's most weekends engaged in one way or another with clearing, planning clearing, Ebay, charity shop runs, arguments about other people's old things and dump runs.

Their parents were just as bad and DH can be pretty awful, and his brother and SIL even worse. Broken crap, moth eaten things nobody has used since 1920 stored in old trunks, dangerous or uneconomic old electrical items, knackered and smelly beds, old newspapers, collections of plastic carrier bags (as in deployed as collectables). Human beings and their needs and disregarded in favour of the hoarded items, which are often poorly kept and unusable by the time they are rediscovered. For example we have just found a 1933 Raleigh bicycle in its original form that would be worth hundreds had it been put away in the adjacent garage but DH's grandad elected to put it at the back of the (half open to the elements) coal shed where it was left to rust over the subsequent forty years.

Meanwhile the house was rammed with all this stuff to the point that, on the rare occasions we did go to stay when they were still alive, we had nowhere to unpack, the house was unaired and smelled, as climbing over things to get to the windows was problematic and many of the windows had home-made double glazing on there that couldn't be removed, beds had grubby sheets and the house was glacial as the heating was practically non-existent. Very unwelcoming. Yet they genuinely wanted us to be there, oddly.

I think running houses like this is form of laziness and greed. Laziness in that you leave your sorting and disposal problem to other people ultimately, and greed in terms of taking up a bigger space footprint than others as your 'stuff' ostensibly has priority over other human beings and you are not thinking about the space other people might need or appreciate when they come to visit. I find it disrespectful of other people in both regards.

I think things like the Kondo book are valuable in that it breaks the hoarding cycle for people, and as another poster says, liberates them from their possessions and helps them form their own identity in relation to the past. Meanwhile it makes the hoarders easier to visit and spend time with as they get older (when they would have had a lifetime's hoarding under their belt).

There should be a lot more programmes and books on the difficulties of house clearances and dealing with hoarders, I think, as too many people have their heads in the sand and impose on their relatives terribly. Misery all round.

[Dowser]

If my kids packed me off on a holiday while they got rid of my things...I would be fit to be tied.

Equally if they packed me off for the day and turned my lovely white house into a monstrosity from 60 minute make over....they had better run!

I can't think of anything worse.

I hope they would feel the same if I tried to do anything stupid with theirs.

( my house , even though I have a lot of stuff is for the most part neat and tidy and I do do clear outs!)

[Gwenhwyfar]

"I think running houses like this is form of laziness and greed. Laziness in that you leave your sorting and disposal problem to other people ultimately, and greed in terms of taking up a bigger space footprint than others as your 'stuff' ostensibly has priority over other human beings and you are not thinking about the space other people might need or appreciate when they come to visit. I find it disrespectful of other people in both regards. "

No, I think it's an illness. Can't be greed when you're stockpiling useless, old things. Yes, some laziness, but I can imagine that once you start letting things go, it can become a task you can't face. Not sure what the solution is, some form of therapy like on the TV programme I suppose.

[Gwenhwyfar]

Sometimes there's trauma behind the hoarding, for example people who had to move as refugees and couldn't take things with them, then become extra sensitive about losing anything, or people who cope with grief or depression in this way.

[Peregrina]

Boffin you could have been describing my parent's house, including valuable items left to rot, even down to the desire to see us and the grandchildren, (and be generous to a fault, too), but I don't think it's laziness either, but agree that it's an illness or becomes one.

The Kondo book would only be useful if you could nip the habit in the bud, in say middle-age. DH most definitely has hoarding habits, but what pulled him up short was a Dawna Water's 'Life Laundry' programme about 10 years ago. This was one where a small child had no bedroom to sleep in and was camping out on a wide landing, but there was a second bedroom totally unusable because it was filled with the husband's rubbish. DH was mortified, seeing something of himself in the man. (Not that it cured him, mind you, but he's more aware of the problem.) Some of it is learned behaviour in childhood and it needs a conscious effort to relearn something different.

With older people, say 75+, it's almost impossible to relearn, because for one thing, their health has usually begun to decline, and everyday jobs take longer, so there is no time or energy for the extra sorting, which, as has been said, takes hours and weeks. DM also seemed to have no concept of the amount of time required - no, one afternoon will not clear 60 years of clutter, it will tidy one drawer. DM would have been upset to think she was making work for others, because she was very kind, but when it came to the hoarding habit, there was just a total disconnect.

There is no easy solution.

[SoupDragon]

too many people have their heads in the sand and impose on their relatives terribly.

This misses the whole point of what Hoarders feel and why they hoard.

[Peregrina]

Hoarders just can't see that they are imposing on their living relatives - getting rid of long-dead Dear Great Grandma's precious whatever, will upset them more.

[allthatissolidmeltsintoair]

I've been thinking about the emotional side of this some more, prompted by some of these posts. I think it probably differs a whole lot for different people afflicted by hoarding.

In PIL's case, there's an interesting asymmetry. They are the absolute worst people I've ever met for listening to others or engaging emotionally with them. It's not that they don't care or are horrible people - they just don't know how to do it. So if someone raises an emotional issue, they freeze and pretend it didn't happen, or say totally the wrong thing. Yet they are very attached to the belongings of every relative who has died. I wonder if those two things are connected - if they are overinvested in things because they're so bad at soft social skills, if things somehow come to replace and symbolize people? I feel like the two things are connected somehow, though I'm not sure I've done a very good job of explaining how here. (Ideas/suggestions welcome).

I think the solution has to come from them (it can't be something done to them by us - I wouldn't feel right about that), and it has to be about a realignment of the values that they place in possessions so that they are able to live independently and safely in their own home for as long as possible. This is why I'm going to try KonMarie - I think she has a very gentle, non-aggressive way of giving things away that engages positively with feelings of 'loss' that people can have. I think the gifting idea is also a very good one - they can part with things for money, or to a 'good home', so those are two avenues to pursue.