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?

Trazzle

Paperwork is one of the harder tripwires to get over. Becuase there is some truth in the "must hold for X amount of time" resistance to letting go. It's just that truth gets stretched to break point and not even handing over the phone asking the bank to repeat how long statements must be kept will necessarily make a dent.

It's just..there's little point holding on to even the stuff you really should keep if it isn't in something a binder, in some kind of order so it can be found without a ten day, house turned upside down, search and rescue effort ..in the unlikely event it should it be required.

Can I ask what would happen to a hoarder if they say, went on holiday for a fortnight and came back and someone had cleared everything out of the house and thrown it away?

Would they feel liberated or would it trigger an emotional collapse?

I have heard of people being reported to the police for stealing their things, so tread very carefully.

Found it

the Stepping out of Squalor forum

The post I've linked is the one that explains the diversity of causes that can, but does not always, include hoarding.

I don't suggest friends, relatives post there. It is the sufferers' space. But worth a read to see what clicked and caused a change, what resources, tricks and tips have worked for other people, with a view to evaluating them as something to run past the person in your family with an issue.

My DP is a hoarder. I say he sounds like a troll going through his stash when I hear him rustling in his beloved piles of carrier bags. His bedroom at his mums house cannot be entered, there is so much stuff that the door doesn't open, and his Mum's loft is full of frankly... junk.

I had to admit that I give the insignificant things to charity. I ordered a van last week and they came while he was out. That's just the stuff he wont notice is missing - if I got rid of anything from the precious pile next to the bed there would be hell to pay. When I've cleaned the house, he will come home and get very upset because I've moved all this things (ie put them away/dusted them). He admits he has a problem and has cut down since seeing that show on tv and having everyone say that he would be like that if I wasn't here. He even picks things from the rubbish bin.

TBH I worry what will happen if I am ever not here to take control, and like someone said upthread, about the affect on our DC's because DP's dad is also a hoarder and I don't want the kids to think that climbing over piles of carrier bags to get into bed is normal.

That link with the photo's is great Carpevinum. Our living room is a 1 or 2, thank goodness! But DP's parents upstairs is a 7 easily. I think I will show DP that link.

Please tell me if this is hoarding and I am actually very distressed by this but don't know if I qualify...
My DF's wife (10 year marriage, she never was in a step-mother role to me) seems to me to be an obsessive hoarder. I find it very, very upsetting and I would even say grotesque. Their house is immaculate and perfect, she is massively OCD about cleaning, doilies, and such, but they have had to buy a house that has a huge outbuilding to store her cartons of carefully packaged STUFF. Things that are labelled things like "Kenya 1972 - Curtains, Teatowels", and have never been opened since then etc. They have about 4 housefuls of interior decor in one house. She constantly buys new things which she already has; she keeps 40 year old clothes, and sometimes - when my DF tries to get her to pare it down - gives to me 30 year old clothes, all perfectly laundered and ironed (and 4 sizes too big), from Etam (!!!) or whatever, and says things like "my things are so special, but I love sometimes to let them go to a good home" (I send to charity shop next morning).
The reason I am so distressed about it is that last week they moved house again. It took 3 road trains to shift their shit. I know my DF during my childhood was always "buy a new thing, throw the old thing out" type of person, but now he can't say boo to this huge pile of stuff. I even think she shop lifts to keep expanding the collection. Then when DF remonstrates, she gives it to me/my DH as some kind of magnanimous gesture ("I bought it for your DF but it doesn't fit, so here, your DH should have it". Me - inside my head - "Why not return it then, if it doesn't fit? You should have the receipt")
I'm really confused and upset. I feel like I am not welcome anymore. Can't even put a coffee cup on a table, without a swooping of doilies. I feel suffocated by all the STUFF STUFF STUFF. And yet when I was, after my first marriage broke up leaving me on my own with 2 DS and completely destitute, they wouldn't even lend me a plate and fork. I totally understand the poster who said you come second to a pile of 1970s Family Circle magazines, but I'm really confused because basically my DF and his wife are loaded, and all their crap is expensive antiques and stuff, so not exactly squalor.
I just don't understand what's going on and why I and my DB and DSis are just nothing in this. Why the stuff has become more important to my DF than we are - even though he is not the person who is constantly buying/acquiring it.
Genuine question: am I in the right place in this hoarder discussion, or is my sadness something else?

I'm really sorry so many people have posted their experiences here, clearly there are a lot of hoarders out there.

carpe thanks so much for all the links, I totally agree with the program's about hoarding making some hoarders seem more normal.

starry sorry you feel like second best to your df's stuff. I'm no expert on hoarding I just live with one . Dh is seriously messy with his hoarding and gets very anxious if he feels the hoard is threatened. Does your df feel anxious at the thought of parting with stuff. My impression from this thread is that most hoarders are messy yours sound pretty tidy and organised.

am I in the right place in this hoarder discussion, or is my sadness something else?

It sounds like you are in the right place love.

I can't tell you why stuff comes before children. I doubt I'll ever know. I know it hurts like buggery though, so Big, Fat Hug.

With your dad, sometimes withdrawal in the non hoarding partner can be a defence mechnisim. By ..ignoring it basically, there is an illusion it doesn't exist, so it doesn't have to be thought about.

Do you see what I mean ?

Yes I think you are in the right place, does it really matter if the hoard is neat and tidy or messy.

Now I'm crying. I have been excusing this for years. I didn't really know it had a name. I watched things like the hoarder programme on TV but that filth and squalor was nothing like my experience, because their house is so "perfect".
My DB was thrown out in a screaming fit by stepM for putting a laptop on a table. My DSis was thrown out in a screaming fit for moving some "products" in the kitchen. She has maybe 200 plates etc but when I didn't even have ONE, she wouldn't lend me and my DC some so that we could start to make a new life in an empty house.
But why does my DF let her do this to his DC, even if we are grown up? Why does he let her prioritise this endless river of things?

starrystarryknut ...this thread, becuase of the nature of threads, won't last forever. But there is a complexity to the child/parent who hoards realtionship that can need some time to untangle and make sense of. The issues that result in hoarding are plural, and comorbid conditions exist, leading to perplexing choices and behavoirs that are not part of the hoarding, but are part of the underlying mental state.

health.groups.yahoo.com/group/childrenofhoarders/

The link above is a group dedicted to the now children of hoarders. It offers a longer term place of support, to peel back the layers of the realtionship and work out what's what, and why. Just reading can help, but I found it really useful to post as well, becuase for the first time ever I didn't feel like a total freak.

I'm not posting it to say post there not here, I'm posting it so when the thread fades into inaction, you're not left hanging, still with more questions than answers. It can take a while to get to grips with this.

And you may never fully understand all of it, or forgive all of it, but a certain kind of peace is acheivable. And it is such a relief.

It's nice too to find people with such common ground. The snapshot won't look the same. The guy who foundered the group was one of the families on hoarders. His mother was living in a degree of squalor that was breathe taking. Others like yourself had another type extreme, where external storage was used to house a hoarde while the home was left largely unaffected. And all the various flavours inbetween. But becuase the unifying factor is they underlying mindset, not the exact form in which in manifests,... it is hard to feel alone there.

Oh starry poor you. You've made me even more determined that my kids won't go through the sort of crap you, carpe or any golf the other posters have gone through with patents.

It's just not fair on them.

Thank you for this. I am so shaken up by all this I am going to bed early just to hibernate and cry. I will read your link but not post again tonight. Please don't go away...

Now I'm crying

That's neither an unusual or bad thing love. It can be a release. Without knowing it's a "thing" where do you put the pain, the confusion, the hurt and the sensation lack of tangible love ?

I promise you won't feel this bad forever. It's like a storm, you'll get your lull when it's spent.

Thank you. Just thank you.

I'm not going anywhere love.

You sound exactly like I did. Shocked to the core, the in floods, bewildered and ...stuff I didn't have a name for. I get it. I really do.

You have to mourn the loss of the illusion of "normal", work out what the "not so normal" is, and have bits of jigsaw puzzle fall into place, which can be illuminating and painful all at the same time. That's alot for one human in one fell swoop.

You've made me even more determined that my kids won't go through the sort of crap

That ups their chances of not... by a few hundred percent. It's the empathy for the child perspective that stops their price becoming invisible.

And readingnwhat you wrote has lifted me somewhat from the despair of just a few minutes ago of reading children being described as little piggies, who aren't bothered by piles of stuff and mess as long as they have toys to play with. Almost like a hoard or notable degrees of mess were their "natural habitat" and they are virtually immune to all and any ramifications.

starry I'm not much help but I'm not going away either.

Starry that sounds very hard

Well, DH is upstairs, digging through 3+ years of mail and assorted bits of paper, trying to find the things he needs to sort out the letters from HMRC which are now distinctly threatening in tone. He owned up last week to having failed to file 3 years of tax returns which means he owes god knows how much in penalties.

I phoned my accountant who is more than willing to help him fix it, but he needs a few things for her to do that.

He's spent all day wading through bag after bag of empty envelopes, advertising leaflets, etc to try to find what's needed.

Fed up.

Holds starry's hand

sparkly no wonder you are fed up. I am convinced hoarders are the worlds worst procrastinators, not filing a tax return for three years is madness.

Carpe thanks for the links. Thankfully most of my house is a 1 or 2 but one room is about a 6 - one wall is full to the ceiling with boxes of her material, I have 2 ottomans full of her diaries/my first shoes etc and more boxes of antiques and trinkets as well as DD's 2 prams It could be a lot worse but it already worries me that I can't let go of her things. I actually DO believe she would turn in her grave if I just chucked them out. She told me so many times! Also a lot of them do hold memories and I want to show DD one day. Maybe then I will feel it is OK to give them a better home, as I know atm they are of no use to anyone sitting in a box!

He ran into problems with the first return, the local tax office weren't helpful so he decided he'd bury his head about it.

He's still up there now, I can hear bags rustling.

I'm very sympathetic to it normally - I understand where it comes from, and that he needs the hoarding in a weird way. But it does piss me off to find out that it's cost us a lot of money although he won't tell me exactly how much.

The daft thing is, he is the last person who needs the stress - he has cancer ffs. He's admitted he needs help with this tax issue which is a big step, but it's taken him a week since then to start looking for the bits of paper that my accountant needs.

Being positive - he admitted he couldn't fix this one on his own, and he's trying to find what's needed. He did bin stuff this weekend to clear the 'study' for DS's use. He's really trying, and he really wants to sort both the immediate tax issue and the bigger issue of taking over rooms in the house out.

As the child of a hoarder (and the partner of one!) I found the Fly Lady website really helpful in teaching me routine to run a house, She uses 15 minutes of decluttering and the 27 fling boogie to make inroads, amd each week you have a different zone to tackle,She talks about CHAOS which is Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome and how to fight it.
She says often clutterers are perfectionists who cant start a job for fear of doing it badly. I think failure to do tax returns may be like that. Instead of having a rough go and thinking it good enough the perfectionist would be afraid to start. I recognise that!

I actually DO believe she would turn in her grave if I just chucked them out. She told me so many times!

She's gone. If there is nothing after we die, then she's not there to see or feel anything. And if there is, then she's better. I don't believe in any form of heaven, but it would have to be a particularly spiteful sort of god that would condemn the mentally unwell to lug their organic disadvantage for eternity. So if she is up there, she's well now. And rooting for you to be free of her demons. You let go, she cheers, and is relieved that she didn't trap you so effectively in her cycle of investing in stuff what is better invested in people.

Also a lot of them do hold memories and I want to show DD one day.

Careful. Your mum didn't start out determined to chain you up as "caretaker of the memeories". It's a process.

The memories that will count for your daughter are the ones you make with her. Take photos of the stuff. You can share stories of people who are gone, their special talents, their hopes and dreams, without the actual stuff.

But if you keep the stuff despite all reasoning pointing towards a need to let it go, because you percieve them as an essential presence in order to share memories, you are going to be teaching her pretty much what your mum taught you.

And the risk is all the same self imposed pressures your mother passed from herself to you, will pass from you to your child.

You can break this cycle. It won't be easy. It will hurt hard at the start. But your girl's worth it, and so are you.

My DM also struggles with the memories in "stuff". I figure though that she can't get rid of things belonging to my DGM and particularly my DF because if she does, she will have to face up to the fact that are really not here anymore. It's heart-breaking.