Living with a hoarder support thread

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

Hi I'm not sure if anyone else would be interested but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Dh is a hoarder. Not tv worthy but he definitely is an it requires managing. His "room" is the attic. Haven't been up there for years. He doesn't use it other than storing crap and I know he's never cleaned it.
I'm happy for the attic to remain in this state but it's starting to creep down the attic stairs and onto the landing.

He's promised to tackle it (in his own sweet time). I just wondered if anyone else has to deal with hoarders.

He's otherwise great and I'm convinced his hoarding is actually a problem with his brain (learnt and maybe some genetic factors). His family are all awful hoarders.

Anyone else feel like venting about their hoarder partners?

So cathartic to get that out!
I'd definitely urge anyone who has these tendencies, or loves someone with them, to seek help from their GP. By the time things get worse - and they will - it's far too late.
Hoarders can't fix this on their own, it's such a deep-seated psychological problem but there is help out there if you're in the early stages. I wish I'd been able to help my mother. Her life has been utterly destroyed by this addiction.

Yes cathartic for me too!

I also wish my dad would have sought help for it.

The time that was most upsetting was when I was very depressed as a teen and my mum had encouraged me to take up aromatherapy. He had agreed to let me have a cupboard in the dining room for the stuff. One day he went mental about how dare I take his cupboard and threw all my things away.

It is also hard growing up with someone who thinks the rules they apply to you don't apply to them - my room needed to be tidy or he would have hysterical screaming fits about fire risks for example, we weren't allowed to touch things in his hoard but he would constantly steal our things to put them in the hoard at which point we would no longer be allowed to touch them...

Oh and when I was recovering from an abusive relationship and had a newborn DD and a 15 month old DS shouting at me that my flat was a mess and I was going to get kicked out by the landlord...

Offred That's terrible. It hammers away at your self esteem doesn't it.
It's not the stuff that's the real problem, it's how crazy they become to protect the stuff.
The lengths they'll go to and the damage they cause.

The broken shit that's kept because it was so expensive.

A mantle clock remained on the mantlepiece even though the batteries leaked and caused hairy white residue to appear around the face under the clock.

It clearly couldn't work, but it couldn't be moved. To even suggest getting rid provoked a lecture about how nice it looked, how expensive it was and how it was fine where it was.

Of course, people would glance at the clock for the time and we'd have to explain it no longer worked...

It is very hard, as you said sleight, to be a child growing up in competition with a hoard.

Even though I have, I feel, a LOT of insight into it now as an adult there is still a gaping hole in my self-worth which just won't go away.

I am watching this thread with interest as I am quite a bad hoarder and some of this is so hard to read that I hope it may give me the kick I need to sort it out. I would hate DD to feel the way some of you do as adult survivors of hoarding. However, I can already see that it is not only affecting my and DH's life in terms of who we can have to visit and when, but I have to work like a demon to tidy enough to let DD have playdates and even then, as she gets older, those children are going to start realising that our house is not as tidy as theirs.

I think with me it is that dreadful feeling of "it may come in handy one day" but then, of course, when whatever it is would come in handy I can't find it anyway. Also, the feeling of it being a waste of money to just throw something away.

Hey ho - it has to be done though. I definitely don't want to end up on that programme where they wade through 5 feet of old newspapers and mouldy food. The charity shops round us aren't going to know what hit them!

as an adult there is still a gaping hole in my self-worth which just won't go away

^That.

Even after all these years, there is a part of me still buried in The Hoard. And it's the part of me that thinks that is exactly what I deserve.

Possibly because it's not uncommon for parents with the problem to overtly and covertly blame their children for "the mess". And people believe them. When you aren't allowed to throw away your Fisher Price from the 70s, your Adam Ant posters from the 80s etc. (cos they have been officially claimed as part of The Hoard and are no longer yours, to touch, or dispose of) , people see that as proof that the issue is the kids.

And of course, as you move into your teens, even those who recognise it's the parent's problem, prioritise their desire to be understanding of the mental health issue at the heart of the matter. Which can cause them to shift the blame."How can you let your mother live like this ?", "Why aren't you helping your mother to sort this out ?"

What they don't know is the terrifying rages if you even raise the subject. And the long term labelling if you try to take covert measures.

In 1987 I snuck out a bag of yellowed papers that our cat had peed on. Several times. Upon its rescue from the outside bin a 2p piece was found at the bottom of the bag.

Since then I have been the daughter who "throws away money". I am wasteful. I know the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. I am untrustworthy. I am a thief, because the money I threw away belonged to somebody else. The Final Hoard will be lugged away by the council after my mother's death before that version of me ceases to be presented to the world, regularly and often. But it will live on. In the "things I know" of everybody who has ever known her. And in me. Because it has been emphasised for so long, so loudly, so tearfully, that it became part of the picture of who I think I am.

The Hoard has part of me trapped, because I failed to make what made it happen, stop. And several of the adults around me enforced and emphasised the belief that it was my responsibility, to various degrees, to make reality different. They did it because they thought they were being kind. To her. Cos she couldn't help it. So I was supposed to help it for her.

It'll happen again when she dies. I fully expect the world and its mother to decide that as she was the primary victim of what ails her, we (her children) are the villains who failed her.

Which wouldn't be so bad, except that the "buried under the thousands of copies of Family Circle" part of me, believes them.

Oh ipad it's really not your fault. No one can wave a magic wand and foxy our mums hoarding.

I honestly really worry about what would happen to the kids if I died for some reason (I'm healthy so hopefully this won't be an issue). At the moment dh is happy and is managing the hoard and can throw some things out.
Without me I'm sure he would be less happy and secure and there would be no one moderating his hoarding.
He's not the most sociable of people at the best of times. I can imagine the kids being unable to have friends over.

it's really not your fault

That is not as popular a perspective as you might think it is.

When Hoarders and its ilk first started being shown, comments relating to people's reactions to the "entertainment" were produced by the ton.

Very small children are typically the object of pity. Older children, even those as young as 11 or 12, became the object of criticism from anybody with a keyboard who fancied an opine. Near adult, or adult children became the outright villain of the piece for many viewers. A significant number emphasised that they had empathy for the person with a mental health issue. But they evidently still needed somebody to blame.

We, the children of somebody who hoards, proved handy in that regard, for not insignificant numbers of the "newly informed".

It reflected the most common message I had received in real life.

It is a good thing that awareness is raised that the issue exists and mental health is at the heart of the issue. Although, hoarders as entertainment would not have been my first choice as the vehicle. But, humans do what humans do, deprived of one bad guy, they reached out to snag a new one.

And the non-hoarding kids got regularly reframed as s/he who failed, rather than s/he who is still equally Buried Alive, even when they have physically managed to get away from The Hoard.

The frustration, anger, passivity, helplessness of the children was often not viewed as a result of living with, growing up with, a person who hoarded and the emotional tools they would use on their kids, to better protect the hoard from their protests/suggestions/tears. It was perceived as a personal failing of the children, and the reason why no solution had been found in a timely fashion.

When you consider that it is not uncommon for those that hoard to use their children as the root cause of the hoard (they are so messy ! everybody leaves all the clearing up to me and I can't cope ! they have So Much Stuff ! Look at what you've broken by falling over stuff, this is why it's such a disaster in here!) the external public agreement works as a powerful validation of a message many of us have long received (overtly or covertly) from a parent.

In my logic centres, I know it wasn't our fault as the kids. But.. the rational can offer little resistance to the emotional stickiness of a oft received message, that has been going on for decades, and gets reiterated every time another case is shown on TV, or features in the news.

True iPost.

My goodness, this thread is interesting, and heartbreaking at the same time.
I couldn't stop reading it once I'd started.
iPost , your posts bring tears to my eyes, what a story you tell, so beautifully written, and yet so haunting.

I suffer from OCD, and like clear surfaces, get anxious if shopping is not put away imediately etc, and like everything in its place, and clean.
I have many routines and love structure. My anxiety makes me irritable and bad tempered.
I often wonder in sadness, what stories my five dcs will tell in later years.

When she was bad
My kids are old enough now, for me to worry less, and although they have idiosyncrasies they are very self aware. I have primed them quietly to keep an eye on their Dad should I pop my clogs unexpectedly, and have no qualms about involving SS at the first sign of problems and using the probably ASD label as well, if necessary. I don't want him to be missed because he would never ever ask for help.
When DS1 was a baby, I asked DH how he would cope if I fell under a bus. His answer was that he'd miss the baby. I asked what he meant, and he said he'd have to give him up for adoption. I explained firmly that there were many other options to giving away our child, and that he'd better bloody not or I'd come back to life and kill him!
He's not a very flexible thinker...

He's not a very flexible thinker

He's really not is he At least my dh wouldn't give away the kids - although I imagine MIL and FIL would be heavily involved.

what stories my five dcs will tell in later years

They can hang out with my lad. I have ADHD. Hyperfocus is my kryptonite, and his greatest irritation.

You don't sound like my mum would, were she on the thread. She would post here with a decades long rehearsed, defensive set piece. She would minimise the impact on anybody, but her. She would tell you how innately "resiliant" children are, especially when they are the main architects of the physical representation of the problem.

If none of the usual suspects worked on the thread, she'd have an almighty great meltdown and any (former) child of a hoarder posting on here would come away feeling like they were practically Hitler's cousin, just caught stomping on kittens. (due to decades long rehearsal, she knows where the buttons are and how hard to push)

Everybody else might come away with the impression that she'd lost her grasp on the concept that we were separate beings, whose inner dialogue and emotional range did not mostly reflect her own at any given time. And they'd have a point.

But she isn't here. And there is a reason for that. Part of what allowed it to get as bad as it did was her reluctance to stand in the freezing cold waters that go hand in hand with "gazing at my reflection as a parent and facing the glaring imperfections I can see".

I think that's what many of us with "A Thing that makes life harder" have to hang on to. Will we fuck up ? Yes. Most people do to some degree, at least some of the time.

But do we see our children as real live people (albeit shorter) and do we see them as they actually are in the physical, mental and emotional environment we are creating for them, rather than how it would be more comfortable to perceive them ? Do we look at where we did screw up? What the ramifications were for people who are not us ? Did we learn something from that ? Did we cling on to it, despite the discomfort, to at least aim for longer stretches of time between slippage into the clutches of the worst aspects of the condition ?

The ability to give an honest yes to that goes an awfully long way. Because the invisibility of the impact on you as the child, (despite standing right in front of your parent, bleeding from the latest needle buried halfway in your big toe), is perhaps one of the greater causes of pain, and the greatest impediment to a parent hanging on to at least some degree of control over their symptoms. Without some degree of control, there is no help in the world that will ever offer a realistic solution.

It's really hard work having kids AND A Thing. WHich is probably why I still love her.

I get it to some degree, even though we are outwardly quite different in many ways. Mostly cos I think we share the same Thing. It's very inheritable. I don't know if she has it worse than me, but maybe she does and I am simply, by luck of the "degree of condition" lottery, better placed not to make my child my invisible, collateral damage by accident.

Or maybe I had the advantage of being a Child with A Thing, with a parent with A Thing. So I've walked this road from one side already, have a map and know the trapdoors I could set for Squirto if I don't stand guard over my urges and rubbish impulse control. Ever (knackeringly) vigilant about keeping a real, deep slip into the condition at bay.

Your five kids and my one could conceivably come together one day and have a joint, entirely justifiable, complain about My Mother and Her Thing and Its Impact On Me

But I think the best indication that it wouldn't sound identical to this thread, is that we are here, not hiding from the full picture which includes the way the condition reflects on our children's lives. But instead willingly standing knee deep in it, letting it prickle sharply, to better aid keeping focus on beating back the seductive, or demanding nature of some symptoms.

As cold and spikey and as unpleasant as it is, it gives us a huge advantage over welded on blinkers.

Would I prefer to be showered with diamonds ? Yup. But as gifts go, cold and spikey self reflection is not to be sneezed at. Not when you consider the alternative lived by those who did not get it, or turned it down.

This is a fascinating, eye opening, heartbreaking thread. Thank you to everyone who has helped me to understand this a bit better. iPost, you write beautifully.

iPost Thank you.

IPost your mother's defensive manoeuvres are chillingly similar to mine.
Including blaming me to all and sundry, for being so 'messy'.
As I got older she progressed to telling incredibly strange lies about me. Really odd stuff about having multiple abortions, being a drug addict, working in strip clubs. When I bought my first property she told everyone I was unemployed and the flat was paid for through housing benefits?!?
I didn't find out about these till years later. There's nothing I can do about it now. Her (my) wider family will always view me with suspicion.

Sleight

If it's any consolation, and I don't expect it to be, the recognisable defensive manoeuvres are ever so common. I joined the children of hoarders support group years and years ago when it was still very active. The deja vu was... almost overwhelming. You'd have thought it would be a relief to hear it wasn't just me. But seeing it written all over other people, former children, meant I had to look at it, see it for what it was, and acknowledge the gravity of it. My denial kind of took a hit. And I was rather attached to the comfort of denial.

The strange lying is also not uncommon. I've heard various explanations for it. Making the child an unreliable witness, making it easier for their child to be perceived as "bad" to reduce sympathy for them and set them up better as the cause, or amplifier of the chaos. Even seen it suggested that the unusually high level of inside air pollution (mould spores, mouse dropping dust, ammonia fume build up from rodent/pet pee within the hoard etc) might contribute to altered thinking. So to them it's not a lie. It's a pollutant induced delusion, or dementia-esque reaction that they genuinely believe.

I don't think any of the above fit my mother. I think that even before the hoard got truely out of hand she had started a seductive habit of replacing an inconvient truth with a massive lie that rendered the world she was weaving far more palatable than reality. Sabotaguing me for the sake of the fiction became something she was prepared to do. And keep on doing.

I think I posted about it here once, in a thread right after I discovered my father had died and I was reeling all over the place in a state of total shock. Other than that, back in RL only she, me and my sister knows about it. (unless unbeknown to me she's spread it amoung all of the rest of the family too, told them I don't know and sworn them to silence, always a possibility) All 3 of us know it is utter bollocks. But she won't give it up.

You could douse the hoard with petrol and dangle a match, saying "fess up, or all your crap gets it" but she'd insist it was true.

I'm so sorry love. She has very effectively isolated you from your family. And taken away the truth of who you are and what you have achieved.

And it can feel impossible to fight. Fighting back and winning, can look an awful lot like yet more losing. Cos if you fight and are believed, then she risks fall out from her family. And god knows the protective instinct in CoH can run very, very deep when it comes to their parent.

For lots of reasons. But not least because we learned that if they hurt it sets off a new cycle of them hurting us via their coping strategies. Which makes it more understandable why we can have an inflexible response of avoidance when it comes to causing them pain. Even if it means giving up on a robust form of self defence.

My ILs hoard - more MIL than PIL - he is more of a collector & will sell things in order to buy more whereas she starts to panic at the thought of tackling the mess. Several rooms in their bungalow are unusable now.

DH is a hoarder - our house has several unusable rooms although he disputes this, as it is physically possible to get through the doors & move around between the towering piles

Every flat surface has piles of stuff on it. He has kept every magazine he has ever bought (at least one motoring one a week for starters). Paperwork is never dealt with. Cards are never thrown away, neither are labels, receipts, bank statements, packets, empty shoeboxes, beer bottle tops, some empty beer bottles, cassette tapes, worn-out electrical stuff, most old clothes.

It forces me to be more untidy than I would like & I hate it.

He buys large items of storage which then clog up the house & garage because he never gets round to actually using them for the crap. Not that it would help much - I really don't think he can see the size of the problem.

He thinks I am unsentimental & ruthless because I chuck things out. I keep what is important to me.

My mum is a hoarder and I am the opposite, I hate clutter. Unfortunately I married a hoarder and out of four children only my eldest dd has inherited this. It is disturbing sometimes to see what they "collect". It drives me 😡 mad!

I sometimes think being a "collector" is just an excuse for being a hoarder. The obsessive nature of each behaviour is not dissimilar.

Furry

Are the unusable rooms spare rooms, or are they rooms you could do with being able to function, like say your bedroom, the living room ?

It might be worth a look at the clutter image scale and mapping your home to get a clear idea of where you stand at the moment.

There is also a squalor scale A hard word to look at. But maybe that's on purpose. I know my denial was the equivalent of several winter duvets thick, in terms of being able to honestly assess the conditions. It took a very provocative word to force me out from under the self imposed denial.

It isn't always easy to accurately weigh up the point that has been arrived at by yourself. Which is one of the more practical reasons for bringing in a trusted outsider to help with the assessment. The trusted outsider is also an important part of the "seeing things for what they are with the lens of reality" process if the hoarding is, as it is so often, a closely guarded secret.

Are your own family around love? And are they aware of what is going on ?

I just spent 3 weeks visiting an okd friend /former colleague we're semi dating .... discovered he's a hoarder. He was mostly out of town for work, I was between jobs and interviewing. I can't describe how stressful this was. And he's not as bad as some of the TV/online cases. Neither am I a neat freak. I caved one day while he was gone and paid for removal of old junk like huge 90s TVs,many broken lamps & clocks and other ancient electronic stuff and magazines. It hardly changed the Hoarde but I was able to organise the place better and put things away a bit.

Upon return he freaked out over some old car keys I threw out of his vintage cars in storage 000s of miles away he hasn't seen in 10+years. I felt so terrible. I bet he has copies of the keys though. But my time there got much better and peaceful. However I can see it didn't fix the issue at all, after that he would panic about me touching anything, but he made one feeble attempt to tidy up.

The bottom line, our relationship is changed greatly, as the thought of ever visiting him again makes me sick. He's very nice but no future I can see due to the crazy hoarding.

To be fair, I'd be annoyed if anyone chucked car keys for cars I actually owned if they're vintage, they aren't going to be cheap or easy to replace. I think you're on dodgy territory if you're clearing someone else's things without prior consent - be careful with this.

We once cleared a larder cupboard at mils while she was walking the dog and I spotted she had a pickled egg hoard in a cupboard. Some were green. I remember dp going the same colour as we lobbed them.