Anyone else live with a hoarder?

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHopeful]

Dh is a lovely man and I am very lucky to have him but the hoarding is driving me crazy.

He has the ability to clutter a room within seconds. When we moved into this house the agreement was the loft room is his to use as he pleases (ie fill with useless shit).
He struggles to throw anything away, is a world class procrastinator and seems to see the value in every bit of tat and random item of paper work imaginable. Any hint that I may organise or heaven forbid throw something away is extremely stressful for him.

What really pisses me off is that if we have people round they must not be allowed upstairs incase they see his ever expanding messy hoard. Why is it ok for me and dd to put up with this but others can't be allowed to see it?

Grrr. Anyway we are making small amounts of progress tidying up and he is even ebaying some stuff.

Is anyone else in the same boat?

Yes, the panic is real. People don't tend to get it in my case - 'surely you are grateful your mum left you so much valuable stuff/just get rid of it' but because it actually is valuable (most of it although not all of the curios etc) it makes it much harder as not only am I selling her memory and something she found cleverly in another country and snapped up, but I might get conned on the price and besides the things are usually nicer and better quality than I could buy.
I don't spend much at all on things for the house. It is like I have the fear whatever I choose won't be as good as what she had. It's the feeling of loosing myself in her stuff that scares me; there just isn't room for me and my life here.

guilty as charged - I'm a bit of a hoarder

But seriously, I love my stuff and know exactly when he's got rid of something. The only thing I regret is the amount of time my stuff takes up sorting,tidying, rearranging...

The people around you don't tend to forget that people who hoard are people first, not a hoard with a person attached. That's the how and why of them hanging on so long in the face of....regrets that don't include the cost to them.

Lion I totally understand the need to make the best of every object and the fear of selling it short. But could you address that? Accept that maybe you will part with it for less than the maximum it is worth for the sake of gaining the space? And your mum wouldnt want to make you miserable with her stuff she wanted it to bring you pleasure.

then the hoard takes priority?

Pretty much, unless it reaches a severe degree there is little hope that outside agencies will step in and supoort the family member demanding changes yesterday.. There are children all over the UK living in squalor. The bar for intervention is high becuase resources are not there. More hole than saftey net after decades of underfunding.

Without them... what the non-hoarding family members can do is limited.

There are no magic wands. Nobody, particualry the emotionally involved, can magic away the fall out, the tension, the rowing, the tears, the muarning, the grief, the accusations, the blaming, the dragging up and examining of every infraction since somebody threw away a needle after it got stuck in their foot as they ill advicedly padded accross a carpet in 1976.

Attacking the hoard is like pulling the pin on a granade. Knowing that it will explode over and over again, all over you and anybody else caught in the home. And the shrapnel drives deep into your tissues.

Time after time of that is ..... exhusting. In ever increasing isolation due to in-home and outside layers of blame for something that is utterly beyond your control to stop, halt, resolve or reduce .... you learn to be leery of causing such explosions, becuase your capsity to absorb any more body blows grows lower.

It isn't about what the hoarder deserves or not. It's about the limits of human resiliance and emotional energy in the non hoarders in the face of an enourmous problem they don't entirely understand and don't know where to start to get the outside help they need if there is to be any real hope of a corner being turned.

I'm not a hoarder, but I am very bad (lazy?) at tidying and putting away. I also keep every miscellaneous nail, screw, scrap of wood, and plastic container, because they might come in useful someday.

When I'm having one of my periodic clean-outs (never very extensive), I keep this thought in mind: "If this item was on sale for $1, would I buy it?" If the answer is no, then the item isn't worth $1, so throw it away. It kinda semi-works.

I keep this thought in mind: "If this item was on sale for $1, would I buy it?" If the answer is no, then the item isn't worth $1, so throw it away.

I think actually that is a good example to highlight the difference between how a non hoarder's mind works very differently to a hoarder's mind.

Exhibit A - Piece of crap, any peice of crap. A non hoarder would likely answer No to all of the below. But no matter how bedraggled, broken, missing bits, insignificant, buggered up after living under a pile of other crap, untouched and unseen for years due to volume of crap somebody who hoards will answer Yes to one or all of the questions below. And then cling to it like it was the Hope Diamond.

Is it worth money ? Yes
Would it be wasteful to throw it away? Yes
Could it be recycled ? Yes
Could it be upcycled ? Yes
Could it be used in craft ? Yes
Does it hold memories for me ? Yes
Might it come in handy one day ? Yes
Might I want to give to somebody one day ? Yes
Is it important ? Yes
Do I want it ? Yes
Really, really, really want to not throw/give it away ? Hell Yes.

And note the model verbs. Becuase it never will be resold, recycled, upcycled, used in craft, come in handy, given away. It will live in the hoard for ever more with all it's importent, memory holding, potential filled fiends.

And while the person who hoards churns and touches and remembers, the people around them are building their own memories.

Memories of what it feels like when you come last to a pile of crap.

Carpe your last post is very poignant and very sad.
I guess anyone who lives with a hoarder has to decide when coming second to piles of shit has gone on long enough :(

If there are child, then that need is more pressing.

guess anyone who lives with a hoarder has to decide when coming second to piles of shit has gone on long enough

My sister was young when it went from "the odd cluttery corner and underneath beds being BoxLandia" to Hoard 1.0.

She didn't have the right to make any decisions. Not for a very, very long time. By which point her "normal" was calibrated in entirely the wrong place.

How could I decide to walk entirely away while she was still trapped there ?

She has a healthy distance now. But when, not if, when, the shit hits the fan I can't decide to leave her to deal with Hoard 2.0 alone. Be it with my mother being kicked out of her home, or carried out after rotting gentely amoung her memories/useful for craft/valuable crap, or as a former person imitating charcoal becuase she couldn't get out of her high fire risk home.

Becuase my sister has to matter enough for somebody to bear hurt for her sake. And god knows our mother was never willing to make that kind of "feeling own pain better than ignoring seeing my children's pain" sacrifice.

So yeah, we do get to decide. Mainly how best to mop up the fucking mess, phycial and emotional, that we get lumbered with.

Gosh, what a sad thread to read

Carpe, your posts are so insightful.

I have no real direct experience, i.e. neither myself or my DH are hoarders, but my grandad is, following the death of my grandmother when his children were small We are not close though and don't live close so I don't have to confront it very often.

But I have been watching the Hoarders type programmes and really feel for people with this problem. Also feel for those who have to live with it where someone close to them is the hoarder.

It has made me wonder if I should try and get into professional organising when I get back to work in a couple of years...

I was married to a hoarder, though that wasn't the reason we got divorced. He hoarded cables, computer parts and paper. He kept all the counterfoils of cheque books he'd ever had - saying that they were nostaligic - what £12.99 Tesco March 1998? Every bill statement, dating back to the 1980s and so on. I too used to fantisise (sp) about a fire destroying the lot. He took over the biggest room in the house for his junk while our two DC had to share a box room.

He came from a family who also had hoarding/cheapskate mentalities. A cold environment devoid of real love. These could contribute in some way to his hoarding, I don't know. It was very difficult to live with as I'm the exact opposite.

I think the programmes about hoarders are not so helpful in a way - a bit like the 'Freaky Eaters' programmes. For the sake of sensational/gripping viewing, they use the most extreme examples they can find.

There will be hoarders watching those shows whose house is in a pretty awful state thinking 'ah, well, I'm not a hoarder because my stuff is on boxes, not piles/you can still get into some rooms/my stuff is VALUABLE, there's is clearly just rubbish/look at them, they are scruffy and mad, I am normal and have a job and can dress without looking like a tramp' and so on.

Like all the people with awful diets thinking 'but there's a man who only eats cheese and has never eaten anything else. Clearly I have no problems with food.'

carpe, I share your hatred of the 'recycle/upcycle/worth something' mantra. And the poster upthread who admits to some hoarding but 'doesn't agree' with throwing things away that can be used sent my stomach flipping.

IF THEY AREN'T USING IT, IT ISN'T RECYCLING OR MAKING USE, IT IS JUST A HEAP OF JUNK.

I said earlier on that one problem with early hoarding is that it can be dressed up as being thrifty etc. I've been accused of being some awful enemy of the environment for wanting to take bags of stuff out to the tip - and funnily enough, the 'it can go to charity' stuff never seems to leave the house. The acts of sorting and selection that need to be done for that that to happen would stop the hoarder from hoarding too badly in the first place.

ebay is a red herring. Unless someone is actively and continually selling ebay, and not finding more crap to buy there, it isn't working.

I am ebaying some kids's stuff, and a few posher items I own that I just don't use enough - no point it hanging in a wardrobe, I'd rather free up the space. It's going well - I'm getting money, stuff is selling.

My partner has mentioned a couple of times that HE will ebay stuff. But he won't. in any case, the things he has that once had some market value are now dirty and battered from living among piles of other crap, and where I can sell stuff with boxes/receipts, there's no way on god's earth he would ever be able to find anything like that among the heaps and piles.

I was pleased about me being able to ebay stuff (more space, spare cash) - but now I am worried dp is looking at all of his stuff with the feeling that it is all Worth Something.

Tell you what though - this IS a sad thread, but I am going to do what carpe suggests (I think it was carpe) and try to create one 'oasis' space this week.

I think it will make me feel better, it will be good for me to make the effort and deal with my own problems in finding homes for things - and it will give me a reason to bag things up and charity shop/bin them. Which I SO want to do after this thread.

There will be hoarders watching those shows whose house is in a pretty awful state thinking 'ah, well, I'm not a hoarder because my stuff is on boxes, not piles/you can still get into some rooms/my stuff is VALUABLE, there's is clearly just rubbish/look at them, they are scruffy and mad, I am normal and have a job and can dress without looking like a tramp' and so on.

I totally agree with that. (actually your whole post resonates strongly with me, but I want to address this bit particularly)

That's why this is a useful tool.

www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding/cir.pdf

To give context, on telly they are all 9 squared.

The rooms in my mum's houses in the UK (post trauma) were a minimum of three in any given room on a good day (but with a pile of boxes and bags piled behind the sofa and artfully covered with a sheet) . With the worst rooms peaking at a 7. Where that was on any given day depended on which direction she was churning.

There's no illustration on the link, but the stairs and halls were also a minimum of three, but often a four or a five too. Makes it hard to get around and it feels a bit...mazey/obsitcal course/prisony

When she moved the hoard over here after she lost her home, (despite express instruction not to or I would set fire to it - she called my bluff) it started leaking and my side of the home went from it's normal 1/2 (depending on the time of day, 2 being right before I clean and tidy it) to a 3 and then in spots a 4, with me frantically doing a Queen Canute trying to sweep it back from whence it came.

Her side of the house was wall to wall boxes ...except for the space for the bed, and even that had boxes of churnables migrating onto it.

I didn't actually make the connection between my mum and the people on hoarders initially. Becuase their situation was so extreme I felt there was no comparision. And then I heard the "three million reasons why I won't let this bedraggled reciept from 1982 leave my home" script.

My jaw dropped.

And I started to cry.

Took me till I was 40 to work out what my mother had wrong, and to discover it wasn't just us.

www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding/cir.pdf

There will be hoarders watching those shows whose house is in a pretty awful state thinking 'ah, well, I'm not a hoarder because my stuff is on boxes, not piles/you can still get into some rooms/my stuff is VALUABLE, there's is clearly just rubbish/look at them, they are scruffy and mad, I am normal and have a job and can dress without looking like a tramp' and so on.

But the other point of view is that people who are borderline hoarders see it and see traits that they recognise in themselves. I am not a hoarder but can see that I am a potential hoarder. The programmes made me recognise that and nip it in the bud (ongoing nipping!).

I'm not a tidy person. Hoarding is nothing to do with being able to tidy. It's about obsessively holding on to physical things. When I get tired of the mess, I throw shit away and it feels really good.

I recently bought a digital radio. Three days later my son snapped the antenna off. I looked into getting it fixed, but no joy. So I broke down and bought another. The broken one is on a shelf because I still have the hope of fixing it. Really though, I just can't yet handle the thought of throwing away £40. So, it will sit there a few months. When I have emotionally gotten past the anger and disappointment of the stupid breakage and waste of money, I will throw it away.

I think that's pretty normal. A hoarder will never reach that point.

I'm not a tidy person. Hoarding is nothing to do with being able to tidy. It's about obsessively holding on to physical things. When I get tired of the mess, I throw shit away and it feels really good

Yes.

The key point being the throwing of shit away and the feeling good.

There is another face of OCD and depression. www.squalorsurvivors.com/ It can sometimes be co-morbid with hoarding, but does exist on its own too. They have a new forum now, but I can't find link in my bookmarks.

Again the main difference seems to be the throwing away of shit and feeling good about it.

One thing in particular my DM struggles with is paperwork. She insists that the DWP can call you up out of the blue about tax from 13 years ago and insist to see receipts... Apparently this happened to a friend and so she can't throw any of this stuff out. I always understood it to be important to keep bank statements etc for 5 years but after that they can go, yes?

To be honest, I think we are all at the point of giving up - I can't take my DCs to visit her. There's no space. But that is no incentive for her to get help. She hates being home because of the memories so has all sorts of activities to keep her out. Then is adamant that she can't deal with the hoard because she has no time. She is retired and single. She has all the time in the world!!!

Yy to links with OCD. That runs in my family too but again, DM denies that she has any traits. It's just normal to have to make sure everything is turned off. 5 times.

Trazzletoes that's my mum to a T! She has a holy fear of 'authorities' suddenly getting in touch to demand bank statements/ tax returns/ proof of payment of her 1992 MOT bill. It came as a revelation to me when my tidy and incredulous OH put the record straight on this because by the time I met him I had normalised her behaviour to the extent that I actually believed her.

Carpe, thanks for the link. I'm relieved to find that I'm a 1.5 (1 when we've tidied, 2 when we haven't). Parents are 4, plus some space-blocking unused stacked furniture, so it could be worse.

It's so frustrating biscuits! (Are you my DSis?) but because it happened to a "friend" then I'm wrong and she's right and no paper can be thrown out.

Great link, Carpe.

You are right about the programmes, my Grandad is nowhere near the level of the people on the programmes, but he is still a hoarder, probably about a 4 on your link since my aunt moved in with him and keeps him in check.

Fwiw, my husband is not a hoarder, but could easily reach a 3 when he lived on his own! He is very definitely just lazy though, he has no problems at all throwing things away, he just can't be arsed He's a lot happier since I moved in and started throwing stuff away, which is definitely a difference between a hoarder and not, he doesn't attach emotional significance to things. I am also not a naturally tidy person, but I feel very oppressed by clutter, so do my best to get rid of it when I can. Anything at 3 or beyond on those pictures made me feel quite anxious.