I have a hoarder parent.
The hangover some days can be profound. Doorbell dread, shame... these are things that as a youngster you can absorb. They can eat away at your self esteem. They can erode your sense of self and your place in the pecking order of importance. As in do, or don't you count more than the teetering pile of Family Circle on the stairs that threatens to break your neck everytime you go up to the last working loo?
Last working loo becuase things break. But if fixing gets postponed until the house is less shameful, or the loo can actually be reached by a fixer...well things can stay broken. Rotting quietly under a fug of air freshner, regularly applied, never quite as effective as you kid yourself it is. And the more stuff breaks and stays broken, the more the squalor spreads.
The hoard is very good at taking over as it oozes and slides its way past doors, into beds, covering surfaces and making heaps ... like some kind of slow motion tsunami. And as an adult escapee the oozey nature of it can leave you fearing stuff, just benign stuff, your whole damn adult life. Throwing away perfectly good things you aren't using it Right Now in case it breeds, or mice take up residence in it.
You have a choice. Your children don't. They depend on your decsion making. Inviting a hoarder into their lives, their home, is not making a priority of their needs over other people's wants.
I haven't touched on what it is like to live with the manipulation, explosions and rages of some hoarders. I can talk about the hoard now. But I can't touch the sides of the emotional fall out. In their desperation to preserve the hoard gloves can come off, lines in the sand can get crossed, deep scars can be left on young minds who do not have the skills to cope, but hear loud and clear that through the anger and veiled blaming that ....in some way the hoard is their fault. For not having not done something like help with the housework enough. Or for having done something that renders the hoarder unable to release the hoard. Like accidentally broken something they couldn't see becuase during the hoarder's last churn it got buried and then got stood on. Kids get blamed a lot because it works in most cultural contexts. Messy kids. Don't help. Look at the result !
I hate this. I hate talking about it, remembering it, dealing with the weeks of flashbacks writing this will provoke. Normally it lives in a little tightly sealed box, shoved deep down and furiously ignored on purpose. But you can't know what you don't know. And you and your kids need for you to know what it can be like.
Run.
Run for your children's healthy minds.
Because you owe them not to gamble on the hope that he is curable/managable (unlikely) , and you have zero guarentee that your children's resilience is set at level "Utterly Impervious" (unlikely).
Run becuase there is a very good chance that you won't be able to control the degree of squalor into which you as a family can sink. Don't under estimate a hoarder's determination to bring in more stuff. Don't over estimate your own ability to resist being ground down... until you feel nothing but helplessness, while everybody looks askance at you for "letting it happen".
People blame children (via "why didn't you DO something ?" ) for parents' hoards all the time. They aren't going to give you a free pass as a spouse. It's a double whammy. Spend so much energy and waking time focused on holding back the tide... and then get blamed for the seepage coming from all the nooks and crannies of the anti-hoard sandbags you spend your life hauling, shunting and stacking.
Love is not enough. I loved my mother. It was no protection, no vaccination... all the love in the world could not disappear the reality that when push came to shove, we were less important than a stray sewing needle jammed deep in my foot, a mouse dropping decorated recipe ripped from a magazine in 1973 and numerous "valuables" that she was going to make her fortune with at car boots sales one day !
Because everything in the hoard is valuable (sentiment or cash).
Everything ! ......except the people standing bewildered and knackered, in piles of allegedly priceless/deeply sentimental stuff, that looks suspiciously like dusty, dirty, mouldy ... crap.
You have a chance not to risk that for your children.
Don't blow it.
And ... It is a whirly mind fuck. It can leave you winded, confused, with a sense that this is somehow mostly your fault for not having handled it right.
That is bollocks.
This has jack to do with you.
You never stood a chance against the hoard, the causes of the hoard and the continued impulse to hoard.
You do however have full control over your feet.
Run.