You were all right...

[Ditheringdooley]

So- we moved flats but kept old flat with the intention of renting it out. Essential safety works at new place meant we overlapped and were only able to move in early March, basically had our bed, tv and essential kitchen bits and overnight bag of clothes to move in with.
Plan was to empty out flat methodically and arrange for small amount of work to be done- and have a generally tidy up before attempting to let it out.

Covid19 meant that this couldn’t go ahead and instead we moved my mother in law in to the flat (before the lockdown). So- we hadn’t moved out and she was moving in there, we made enough space for her etc but basically my expectation was that she would live there like a guest.

I posted on here a couple of years ago because MIL had a heart attack and she is a crazy hoarder and advice from people on here was not to move her into our property because she would start to hoard it.

You were so right. I hadn’t been to our flat (where all our stuff is and I have lived for 10 years) for a few weeks and immediately was very upset that she had been going through things and could see hoarding type behaviour. Things being moved into nonsense piles, everything in plastic bags.

She can’t go out at the moment as highly vulnerable but it took me back to her crazy hoarded place and the smell of dust, mice, and plastic bags that had disintegrated over time.

I wish that we had had the time to move out before she had moved in but we wanted to move her before there was a lockdown in place- indeed it happened a few days later. We take her food and medicine. She could not be trusted to stay indoors in her boarded place.

So upsetting. But glad I didn’t move her into our place a couple of years ago (when I was about to have a baby). Hoarders hoard. Doesn’t matter the context.

Things being moved into nonsense piles, everything in plastic bags

Did you see all this through the window?

No, I went in while she stayed in another room to get some essentials for myself and daughter, who had run out of her medication and doctor wouldn’t issue another prescription while we still had some at home! Bit annoying.

I'm confused, she's been there 3 weeks and has created her own hoard without being able to go out? How? Did she bring her hoard with her? Or rearranged your belongings you left behind?

Not hoarding in the sense of adding things - so not proper hoarding. But I could see the same behaviour at hand, like she decided to take all the mason jars out of the cupboard and stack them up on the dining table (why?!), and was putting things in plastic bags together without rhyme or reason. In one plastic bag I found my laptop (which had been on top of a table) with a cool bag/ lunchbox, the remote control holder from the sofa...and some other random items. Same in serveral other plastic bags- same behaviour I saw in her place of ‘tidying’ things away by putting them in bags and stacking the bags up.

So while she has unhelpfully rearranged things, rather than hoarding, I was upset because I know that as soon as she is able to go out she will be filling it with all the crap she can find in charity shops, and free newspapers/ discarded newspapers. The idea was that she would live in this flat so we can sort out and sell her flat once lockdown is over. But that’s clearly only going to result in a transfer of the hoarding behaviour.