I have a hoarding problem. AIBU to ask for any advice?

[timetosortmylifeout]

This is a long post so for anyone who gives it their time I really appreciate you!

Just posting for some advice really in case anyone has or knows someone with experience with this. Not sure AIBU is the best place but I need some advice and fast as I am not in a good place and need to work through this fast.

I've always been a bit of a hoarder, come from a family who always kept stuff, had cupboards stuffed full, never wasted most food even if way out of date etc... grew up living out of boxes between my mums and grandparents and student halls... with all my stuff stored across several places at any one time.

Fast forward to now, been living with my partner for ten years. First few in his house which was a small two bedroom. I paid hardly any rent at the time and yet the house was full 90% with my stuff. I refused to acknowledge the problem or actively work on it then. Bless him he just accepted it even though our spare room was full of my junk and with each new hobby and interest, I'd buy new stuff.

Not just that but with every interest I go all in. Got into cooking and bought probably hundreds of cookbooks. Then skincare, same. Then arts and crafts.. now have a room full. Before that there was clothes.. candles... supplies from abroad I couldn't get at home.. probably have at least a suitcase full of bath and body works from trips to America etc. It is a real issue and I just lived my life and kept my lounge relatively uncluttered and ignored all the crap meaning 2 out of our 3 bedrooms were a challenge to access or find anything.

Fast forward to today, we have been living in a bigger house which I've filled yet again with 90% of my stuff and my partner had a better approach and gently sat with me and offered to help me sort through the worst room, categorise and declutter everything. With his support it felt less intimidating but I realised I do have a huge hoarding problem as I get extremely anxious and distressed when sorting through things and find it so hard to throw an item away if it has value or could be needed etc.

The items I am 'storing' aren't junk, it's all nice things just excess stuff. I'm embarrassed to say I have three times as much pantry based food stored in the spare room than I do in the actual kitchen. It's disgusting and most things were out of date before they were even used. As for the money I've wasted! It is disgusting and I'm extremely embarrassed but also feel that admitting this and potentially getting some very blunt responses will help me feel accountable and nip this in the bud for once and for all.

I have tried over the years to Konmari and tidy etc but it never lasts long or makes real progress, I struggle to be brutal and just throw things away so if anyone suggests that it isn't so easy for me, so if anyone has any particular tips for a hoarder that would be most helpful.

It's rubbish for my partner as if he wants friends to stay, I need to have plenty of notice to make things acceptable and more often than not we just don't as it's too difficult. I had a breakdown tonight and said he doesn't deserve me and would be happier here alone without all my stuff. I feel so worthless.

From the outside you wouldn't know this about me. I have a good job, I dress well and look smart, have a good lifestyle, outside of my house is presentable and lounge is generally not even messy. But it's upstairs in the bedrooms that the crazy comes out.

He suggested tonight I rent a small storage unit. Throw everything in there and work through a box a week so I don't have the overwhelm of trying to do it and live in the same space. I like the idea and my mum has now offered me a room to use instead of paying.

I thought I could give her the money and each week I keep on track she pays me the weekly fee back. Then at the end of the say 6-8 weeks, I'll treat both of us to some kind of trip afterwards with the money.

No idea if this will work but I feel it's the only solution I can try... I literally have no idea what else to do. I'm so overwhelmed and can't spend any more time living this way and subjecting my partner to all of this. I guess I just needed to write this all down to admit it to myself, but I've had fantastic advice in here for countless other things so was hoping someone out there might have some advice for me.

Feel free to tell me what a skanky person I am, I know that and that's my motivation to get my shit together for good.

My Dad was a hoarder. He died recently and we are now clearing out a lot of stuff. If makes me sad when we uncover something that he could have used that he didn't even realise he had. Or spaces he could have used that he had filled with stuff he needed to own. I am sure he bought things to feel secure. He'd had a lot of trauma early in life.
It sounds like you have a lovely partner in life try to feel secure in his company rather than the stuff you have around you. If you can do this I'm sure you can start to remove the clutter and live the more minimal life you crave.

Firstly HUGE deal you recognise it. Well done!!!

My mil is level 3 and the house is frankly becoming dangerous. They have 3 sofa suites in their house every time they buy a new one they just rotate it through the rooms downstairs. (next time they buy one they will have a three piece suite in their small kitchen )
And so much out of date food. The fridge is 🤮🤮🤮(I can't even begin to think about how we will handle it when we have kids)

Some really good advice on here already.

One other suggestion is to think of something you would love to do (a cruise, disney, hike Kilimanjaro) and as you declutter list things that are good/useable and sell them on eBay or vinted or depop or whatever and put proceeds from sales of items towards that.

When you are selling things be prepared that some will sell below rrp value. You need a "net positive" mindset

1. Remind yourself it is expected/normal
2. Remind yourself it currently has NO value to you as it's not been used
3. By selling it you are giving someone else "joy"
4. By selling it you are reclaiming space and bringing "joy" to yourself

You will be surprised how quickly it racks up and you may find it strangely motivating.

I am doing my best with this at the moment - trying to use up the food (not if it's gone manky) in weekly meal plans and I have an app where I've made a sort of inventory of everything I have, so I can check before I buy what I have already. That's impressive, to have an inventory of your food stock! However do you keep it up to date? I trust if it's gone manky you actually throw it out and not put it back "just in case"

What do you fear?

If you reversed the problem and chose items to keep, what would be your worry about the thing you didn’t keep?

What struck me about your opening post time are the words you use to describe the hoarding and yourself: ‘embarrassing’ ‘disgusting’ ‘worthless’ ‘skanky’. I can feel the shame coming off your post and I think you’ve been really brave to recognise you have a problem and ask for help.

I don’t have much experience of hoarding but I know about shame and I can tell you now that heaping this level of shame on yourself will not help you heal. You deserve to value yourself and to live in surroundings that are how you want them to be. I hope you can get therapy to deal with the trauma you’ve been through. Please be gentle and kind with yourself.

Please do not move things to your mum’s or get a storage unit etc.

Choose the smallest room that is unusable at present and tackle it with your boyfriend’s support. List anything saleable on eBay etc, ideally as a job lot, as a 7 day auction with a “buy it now” option. £1 reserve. If it doesn’t sell it goes to the tip. Keep on going until the room is clear. Give yourself a deadline. Move on to the bigger room.

It's a long tough way out, as others have said it will be with lots of support.
To address the items that have "value", they don't, the money has been spent regardless it is now a sunk cost. The item is now using space in your home but not being useful, consider mentally charging the item rent for using that space. It should help see that holding on to things longer than necessary is not beneficial to you.
Sometimes you just have to fling things. I find it tough with things in too good condition to throw in the bin and not worth enough to bother selling. I try to recycle well, our tip has sections for books and clothes or give away for free on FB marketplace.

Sorry if this isn't the motivation you need but you're not a skanky person, you sound like an amazing person

I'm like you, only not food, useless stuff that I convince myself I might need, or want to look at or wear one day etc. I've moved from flat to flat (renting a room, not the whole place) for years and have just dragged insane amounts of crap around with me, never getting rid of anything in between. Anything that couldn't come with me went in storage, or parent's attic. I absolutely would not be able to let someone, professional or otherwise, come in and do anything about it for me. As Georgarina and WanderlyWagon have said up thread, it's the things/feelings divide that needs to be dealt with and I find it too stressful with someone else there.

Weirdly I've had my first proper go at sorting out over the last couple of days. It's taken me until I felt absolutely ready to do it; I physically couldn't until this week.

I think the fact that you've acknowledged your situation in your original post could be a good sign for moving forward. If it's any encouragement at all, I already feel an awful lot better for even having made a small dent in my problem. Two wheely bins filled this afternoon, and a spare room full of charity donations bagged and ready. I threw away a notebook full of shopping and to-do lists from 13 years ago. After seeing that, I didn't even want to see what I'd been holding onto and just put all paper in the recycling bin.

Someone I know deals with her tendencies to hoard by removing a box full of things from the house every day (or every week, depending on how quickly she thinks she needs to regain control) when she feels it creeping up.

I remember the story about the man who was moving house and his rented van full of everything he owned was stolen, nothing recovered. He said once he got through the nightmare of replacing official paperwork etc it was really freeing!

Good luck, it's a horrible place to find yourself in. x

It is a mental health issue you will need professional help getting over it as well as practical help. It is not your fault with the right help and cbt you can address the emotional side of hoarding.
DC who grow up like you can go either way, you done what you know best again it is not your fault.

If you like lists could you list your top three easiest things to get rid of. Get rid of those things and then make another list of your new top three easiest things to go?

It would be a way to break down the task so that you could deal with it and keep the momentum going without it becoming overwhelming.

At the moment my top three would look something like:

1. Bag for life of packaging received (cardboard boxes etc)
2. Old tea towels
3. 20 old receipts

Taking stuff to your mum's or a storage facility could just be making extra work for yourself when you already have a lot on so I'd try and avoid that if you possibly can.

The secret slob on YouTube is motivating the older videos, she is tidy now.
She breaks down tasks into easy steps.

No real advice, except to say please don't move stuff to store elsewhere. The tidy house you see in your head is the reward for sorting this stuff out - if you get it right now, that wish to sort out things is gone.

Also: do buy one more thing. "The Secret of How to Win Freedom From Clutter," by Don Aslett. Very funny and very inspiring! You can get a copy second-hand on Ebay for about £4.

Also, when we were moving, we chose a dry day and put tables outside the house labelled FREE STUFF - PLEASE TAKE ANY ITEMS YOU WANT. We cleared loads!

And for any metal items, there may be a scrap metal man with van who will collect free if you look on local selling sites.

Big hugs OP.

I too have hoarding tendencies and grew up in a disorganised house. My big fear with de hoarding and throwing out stuff is that I’ll accidentally throw out valuable. I know I learnt this from my mum.

These days I actively avoid visiting my parents at their house as I just find it too stressful. There are parts of their house that need repairs that haven’t been fixed not due to lack of money but the hoarding issue. Their fridge is too old and doesn’t keep things cold properly and their oven needs replacing too. My dad is more a collector than a border but has given up trying to get my mum to throw things out as she just gets upset. I genuinely get anxiety about having to sort through al, their stiff one day when they die as morbid as it sounds.

My house is nowhere near as bad as theirs. Really just the spare bedroom, built in robe in the main bedroom and shed outside that need work. Apart from that it’s pretty uncluttered and possibly even a bit too minimalist.

I think a storage unit is a really bad idea, it just enables you to shift the problem and before long the storage unit will be full and the house will be too.

Reading the sunken cost fallacy might help, especially when it comes to things like out dates food

Would trying to sell the things on Facebook market place (so they are collected, no post office trips) help in letting things go?

Clutterbug is great for how to organise and manage your house depending on your personality/orgsnising style. But this podcast in particular is amazing for decluttering motivation, listen to it!

clutterbug.me/2020/08/tough-love-what-you-need-to-hear-to-transform-your-home.html

Flylady can be a bit cult like(!) but is good for getting to the emotional side of what stops you cleaning and decluttering. This is a link to decluttering craft:

www.flylady.net/d/br/2015/11/29/16676/

I don’t think your mum storing stuff, even for money, would be fair or sensible. Storage units are expensive and unless you deal with the mental health issues a risk is buying yet more stuff.

You clearly have money, so would pay for good mental health services, for help with the excess spending and hoarding.

I would really advise against getting a storage unit. My parents thought this would be the solution for my dad's stuff he was unable to sort. He treated the unit as yet another place he could put things then refilled the house and ended up paying £80 per month for a storage unit for over ten years.

There are food banks and women's charities near us who are desperate for donations. Maybe if you saw how much others could use and enjoy the things you can't, if would feel easier. But above all this: therapy, preferably expensive and private.

It sounds like your DP doesn’t understand the MH issues and is ‘enabling’.

I don't think a storage unit is a great idea. It's going to cost you money every month until the problem is dealt with and many people find that it's easier to pay up than confront the problem within.
Maybe the room at your mum's? If she is understanding and supportive and will work with you on this. Will the guilt of clogging up her bedroom make you get a move on with sorting or are you just spreading your issue to someone else's house? Only you can know.
The biggest deterrent to a hoarding lifestyle I have ever seen was an old lady I used to know; her house gradually filled up from "very cluttered" to a real TV-worthy filthy hovel situation over the years that I knew her. She would not accept any help or do anything about it and as it got worse, she wouldn't let anyone inside. When she became old and infirm and was admitted to hospital for something or other, social services deemed the house unsafe for her to be discharged to and she was taken into residential care against her will.
She wanted to stay at home with carers visiting and social services would have preferred this (cheaper) but it wasn't possible because the house was in such unbelievably bad state of filth and disrepair. There were no relatives and every single one of her possessions ended up in a skip outside the house. Awful to see. Who would want to end up like that?

Its a dorm of ocd and you need therapy but you know that and have started so thats brilliant.

I think a stumbling block can be the capacity to get stuff out of the house once youve decided you can/will no longer use it. Listing stuff on ebay/facebook can take ages and a lot of headspace. There are companies that will do all that for you and take a cut. From what you say a lot of your stuff is hobby based so youd probably be able to sell a lot of it on. And now when no one can go to the shops it really is a great time to be selling stuff online.

Theres always shelters that will take toiletries.

Theres a lot of pressure to think of the environment but I think that should not be your problem right now.

Do not hire a storage unit or use your mums room and fill it with things to sort. You will just increase your items to fit the space and mum or the unit will be stuck with everything long term

Get some counselling help or find a book or podcast to help you unpick why you hoard. Loss or trauma is usually central I’ve heard. Start getting to the root. Then aim to start one room at a time. Least previous items first straight to charity shop. Find good charitable causes you want to support. You will find a weird sense of relief and freedom after a while when you’re in the throes of things. It will get easier but the first steps are the hardest.

Women’s refuges for toiletries yes

Are you me? A lot of what you said rang true. I am trying to tackle mine one bin bag at a time. DH was getting a bid fed up of the clutter, so I said I would get rid of 1/2 bin bags a week. Have done this the start of Jan, so have shifted a fair bit so far.