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?

[FurryLittleTwerp]

iPost almost every room has something in it that oughtn't be there. The whole house is constipated FFS.

Kitchen - the least messy room but some books & boxes that need to go, an old stereo that hasn't been used since before our last house move & a table football that is never used.

Lounge - again not bad at times but a constant battle against dumped work-type stuff accumulating - he sometimes shoves it all behind the furniture if we're having visitors

Dining room - completely unusable because of work-related paperwork - I deal with some of this for him so apparently the mess in there is "my fault"

Hall - his end of the long cupboard completely full of unprocessed paperwork, mine has stored stuff relating to a hobby, unopened post (his) all over the top.
.
DS's little sitting room - one wall completely taken over by piles of video tapes that we no longer have the facility to watch - piled up 4' high from the floor.

Our bedroom - many piles several feet high of magazines going back years all along one wall such that the bed is pushed across to make space to walk round, unprocessed paperwork, unopened post, boxes of sports kit that once lived in the garage, heaps of books. His wardrobe crammed with old clothes going back years - he managed to throw out about 6 items last year - it was painful to watch.

His office - completely unusable - tiny path to the heaped desk from the door, almost to the ceiling in there - he files some paperwork in there sometimes but I've had a rummage & I have no idea where it is. This is the room that was going to be my office, once he'd sorted out the other bigger room for his own office I've been waiting years

His other office - completely unusable - tiny path around some of it, loads of magazines on shelves (I did this when he was away once & managed to clear our bedroom completely - it lasted 6 weeks before it started building up again), empty beer bottles (he wants to peel off the pretty labels & keep them - this has been the plan for the last 15 years), model railway that is set out but never used, floor to ceiling empty shoeboxes (useful in case he needs to put something in them apparently), unopened Christmas presents going back years (unwrapped but boxes still sealed), old Christmas & birthday cards, gift tags, boxes from the last house move in 1998 - all his stuff.

Guest room - bed is usable just but there are piles of things around. My desk is in there, in a corner - not big enough for me so I have some piles of paperwork too which drives me nuts. Also some outgrown stuff of DS's that has been moved out of his room & "can't" be got rid of.

DS's room - normal teenage messy den - nothing of DH's in there, but he does tend to wander in & leave things on the desk - DS hates it.

Loft - completely crammed with stuff, including more luggage than we could ever use & all the "old" versions of everything - TVs etc.

Garage - completely crammed but he manages to put his car away, or rather did till he bought some bookcases for the books in the bedroom & hasn't got round to dealing with them so they are plonked in there... He cannot grasp that to sort out the books he needs to sort out throw away the magazines etc etc - it's like one of those little square puzzles with one section missing so you can slide pieces one section at a time.

Devices - all of his devices, phone, computer, tablet, television etc etc are completely full of recorded stuff, films, photos, music - this happens within 2 weeks max of getting anything new.

Grim, really

Thanks for the links - I'll have a look

[iPost]

apparently the mess in there is "my fault"

^Oh hey. Deja vu.

You sound like it's at a point where it could easily slid over to the extent that you and your son essentially give over being able to function in your own home, to the hoard. The things that stood out were-

-goat tracks starting to form in some parts of the house (tiny paths through rooms)

-leakage into your entirely personal space with him sowing hoard seeds in your cupboard and eradicating the functionality of your study space in the guest room. Which allows him to stake the space as "mine, but I let you be here"

-lack of hoard boundaries regarding child's personal space, so they have no clear cut respite and refuge.

-claiming of child's possessions as part of the hoard. Essentially to your husband your son's stuff is his if he finds it meaningful, so it's just on loan till it takes its place in the hoard.

Do have a look at the clutter scale. It's in picture form, so makes it more accessible than word based ones. Make a record if you can, room by room. What with churning (when stuff gets moved around, but never out) and the slow sneaking of new stuff in, it can be hard to keep tabs on the growth rate. If you are updating records say monthly (or even weekly) you can track the expansion, even if you aren't noticing it on a day to day basis. Plus it is a good tool against the sense of powerlessness. If nothing else you can control the existence of an evidence trail that reveals the expansion rate.

It also helps for those times when forthright claims that the hoard is static/shrinking can be cut short with dated evidence. Not for him. For you. Cos... sometimes you can start to wonder if it is you who is seeing a swelling that isn't there if you get told often enough that LOADS of throwing out has happened and you still aren't satisfied. And it can help to start giving you a sense of where your absolute boundaries are, before they are breached.

If you were to lay down a rule of no hoard seeds in the kid's rooms, nor your personal spaces (desk and cupboard) what level of initial resistance would you meet ?

I'm leery of adding this, cos the last thing I want to do is make you feel worse, or add to your stress. But I would feel horribly negligent saying nothing. How are you fixed for smoke alarms? And is there a clear path from bed to bedroom door, through halls, down stairs and out of a door, if it had to be done in the dark, at speed ?

Cos a packed loft means rodent activity is highly likely. And with cables sometimes running in that space, rodents and wiring is an increased fire risk, especially when you add a large amount of tinder on top.

Not saying panic. Just saying, hedge your bets. Check your fire alarms or install them. Maybe even stick one in the loft if you can create a space for it. Make sure there is a clear path from bed to out that gets maintained.

Do you have anybody, your family or friends, that know and will provide you with support ?

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

furry

That does sound pretty bad. Does he feel any shame at all regarding the mess. Luckily for me dh will tidy up pretty well when people come over - I try to have people round at least every month as a bare minimum.
He's ok at cleaning unless it is his hoard (the attic).

ipad I'm worried about the attic now. I don't think we have rodents in the attic. But I never go there so how wolf I know?
We sleep under the attic would I hear them?

[FurryLittleTwerp]

I worry about all the paper - no problem accessing the ways out though & we have working smoke alarms.

He makes a token effort if someone is coming round - just the lounge (hides the stuff) which pisses me off even more - why can't he make an effort for me / us?

We hardly ever have visitors these days - he says things like "we'll have people round more once we've sorted out the mess" we not I but when I try to encourage him get on with the sorting, nothing happens & won't let me deal with his stuff. I have threatened a skip (before I realised he has a real problem & when I just thought he was messy / lazy) & he said he would divorce me if I did that I don't think that would be a bad deal these days

[iPost]

when

I can hear ours. But they are massive rats, not teeny little mice. We live in an ancient Italian farmhouse. The only thing up there is beams and the odd half brick. I know they are back when I lie in bed, and hear them playing volleyball with said half brick. The bastards.

There used to be some plastic up there left by the previous owner. It was removed by the fire brigade. The little shits worked out that the last leg of the chimney breast up there would be a nice warm home if they dug out the bricks and made a nice, massive shredded PLASTIC nest right against the new metal smoke pipe.

Was no fun to smell smoke in the house, go outside and see wisps seeping between the tiles. No damage (apart from repairing the brickwork) except for my shredded nerves.

Luckily one of the firemen is our chimney guy so he sorted it out and taught DH where to put large amount of poison. They keep coming back, but reluctant DH keeps getting shoved back up there until we've killed off the latest squatters.

My sister has a lovely, suburban, minimalist, modern house, and the most organised loft I have ever seen. She discovered there were mice up there when BIL went up for some old paperwork and he discovered the plastic box hadn't had its lid fixed down properly. The sods had made nest material out of the contents. Until they'd had access to materials they must have just passed through. But the second she accidentally offered them something useful, they went squatter on her.

It took me ten weeks and pointing out they are incontinent (leaning a pee trail as they walk) before I managed to persuade her that humane traps just weren't going to cut it.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

Farmhouse sounds lovely. Definitely worried about mice now - fuck knows what I can do about it though.

why can't he make an effort for me / us

I've had this chat with dh too. It worked for most of the house except our bedroom. It's normally ok but he's been doing loads of DIY and hadn't put away any clothes for a month.
He asked me if I wanted to have sex and I turned him down explaining I didn't want to have sex in a dusty tip. It hurt his feelings but it made him tidy up.

[Middleoftheroad]

We are moving house soon and I just realised how little I have by comparison to him.

He's taken over

Garage - full of old boxes for everything we have ever bought. Video tapes, hundreds of old paint pots etc. Old TV monitors from 80s - it's like Rumelow's!

Conservatory a graveyard of video games consoles and huge monitors dating back to 1980. Think Radio Rentals.

Lounge - loads of DVDs, video games in cupboard

Bedroom - two wardrobes and various drawers full of manky old clothes dating back to before we met.

I told him we needed to have a sort out before the move to make moving easier. Loads of my stuff made it to the tip but no, the dozens of old mobile phones, magazines and wires remain....

[FledglingFTB]

My auntie was an agoraphobic hoarder, to a point where she couldn't even leave a restaurant without a doggie bag (on rare times we got her out of the house), which would then sit in her fridge for months.

She became a chore. You could no longer visit and enjoy her company. My dad ended up doing jobs for her, whilst my mum tackled the kitchen and I made small talk about her clutter. I do think that in some ways she actually relished the attention.

The saddest thing when she passed was that there was no opportunity to grieve. It was difficult to think beyond the monumental task that she'd left behind. Clearing out a 2 bed bungalow attached to the rafters, either the council threatening to prosecute for damage to their property. Very sad, and ultimately bad memories.

[Nanny0gg]

What would your hoarder partners do if you told them you couldn't live like that any more and you were leaving?

[Glastokitty]

My dad was a hoarder. He had newspapers piled to the roof (he was a journo), and when he died it took six of us a week to clear out his two bedroomed flat. It was unbelievably awful and stressful, and we lost so many valuable and precious items because we simply did not have the time to sort through every single thing. We found over 500 quid of loose change, bags of shopping that he had obviously lost, and don't get me started on the mice droppings. I actually got really depressed after he died and the state of his flat really didn't help. I've gone a bit the opposite way. When I emigrated three years ago I took the opportunity to get rid of probably 80% of my belongings. We only took 30 boxes of items between three of us. It doesn't take long to accumulate stuff though, but the things I do have are things I love, and my house is easy to keep tidy. Living with a hoarder would drive me mad, I know its an illness but I just couldn't bear it.

[Devilishpyjamas]

I've just had a tantrum about all the fucking files. I can't sort anything until they've gone (have own paperwork that needs sorting) because I can't get to the fucking filing cabinet (or anywhere).

Apparently it will all be sorted next week (it won't be - have had years of that promise). I am going to nag & nag & nag though. Am sick of it.

[FurryLittleTwerp]

That's what I hate Devilish - the fact that I am forced into untidiness by the mess. I'm not even that tidy FFS, I don;t mind a bit of clutter, work in progress etc.

If we are on holiday he prides himself of keeping his things more tidy than mine

I get the promises as well - years & years of promises - I'd rather he just said he was never going to clear it than make false promises

[Devilishpyjamas]

I am starting to get fierce. I am chucking out a load of my stuff & am standing over boxes & bags insisting they get removed. I think
I am going to have to do it box by box, but will get there. Have to really - the amount of paper in the house is a fire risk.

[Devilishpyjamas]

My parents hoard crap in the garage and spare rooms that aren't used in a 'this odd shaped bit of wood might be useful one day' type way, so I have an inclination to keep things in case they're useful. I am changing that! But another reason why I need DH's crap out the way - so I can move! My parents crap doesn't spill into their living area!

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

I like fierce devilish I can't pretty much guarantee it won't be sorted by next week. But keep on at him, little by little he can do this.

I'm thinking I might be lucky with dh in that he is relatively contained in the attic - we have friends coming over this weekend and I will be shocked if he doesn't clear up the overspill from the attic that's working its way down the stairs.

nanny I think most hoarders when faced with "it's me or the hoard" would really struggle. Most do what devilish's partner has done and promise change but not deliver.

I'm sure some have picked the hoard over their partner
I remember living with my parents when they were depressed. It was awful and I did feel like demanding they just cheered the fuck up. Unfortunately you can't just stop being depressed and you can't just stop being a hoarder.

I do believe though that if a person is depressed / hoarder / another issue but they don't seek treatment their partner isn't required to tolerate it because they are ill / it's not their fault.
The hoarder (etc) needs support but if they aren't prepared to help themselves you shouldn't be obliged to sacrifice yourself and your happiness for them.

[Fishface77]

Can I ask as a "sentimental storer", what would happen if you destroyed the hoard? If you systematically got rid of it all?

If you showed them (us?) and their belongings the same pack of respect they show you and their DC?
How long would the fall out last?
What form would the fall out take?

Are the people living with hoarders scared of the subsequent fall out?

I sympathise with you all. Terrible way to live for the hoarder as well as the families.

[Peregrina]

As one married to a 'sentimental hoarder' ninety nine times out of a hundred the stuff which is so important that it has to be kept for 20 years is just shoved into a box and stuffed in the garage and they really don't know they have got it, and wouldn't be able to lay their hands on it, if they wanted it. It amuses me sometimes to see DH scrabbling around for something so vital that he shoved in the garage, and then fail to find it.

Scared of the fallout - no, not usually. I would genuinely not mind stuff which was really of sentimental value being kept. But it needs to be stored properly.

[iPost]

I'm sure some have picked the hoard over their partner

The majority of "not a mild case" hoarders pick the hoard over everybody. Including themselves. Their health, wealth, happiness, and their entire life handed over to the required service of The Hoard.

One of the saddest stories I watched unfold in a support group was when a hoarder died. Her son, not a hoarder, had to travel several states away to deal with her house. Leaving his fiancé back home while he got it done. Her last post, two whole years after he had left for a six week trip, was heartbreaking.

"He's still churning"

His mother's legacy to her (formerly non hoarding) son was such a degree of guilt created over throwing away what meant everything to her that despite running from the hoard a decade earlier...he clicked into her habit. Of moving mounds around, shifting through piles, but never actually getting anything out of the house. She died, and "nature/nurture" sucked him into her place. I doubt she would have chosen that for her only child if she'd had a wholly free choice. But the compulsion made the choice for her. And they both ended up drowning in the result.

Hoarders, despite all the divorce threats they make if the hoard needs protecting, don't tend to leave people, even if you do a blitz while they are out and they come back to what to them looks like the biggest betrayal ever known to mankind. You'll pay, but not in the way they promised you would. They generally can't leave, or instigate separation. Cos home is usually where the hoard is. Splitting up the family often puts the family home at risk of sale, which means the hoard is at risk of being touched by somebody else to shift it all out. And then having nowhere big enough to put it.

The majority of them, once a certain point is reached, can't find a way back to a state of controlling the urge to hoard, regardless of threatened consequences. Not even when the threats are the removal of the children made by social services. It becomes a game of one step forward. Then two back as soon as the urge gets too strong to fight. Dire threats are carried out. And still protection of the hoard carries on.

Partners, family members, children of hoarders tend to be the ones who instigate separation. Because they reach a point where they recognise that the only person they can save is themselves. They could spend a lifetime with a hand held out trying to haul the hoarder out of the clutches of the Stuff Tsumani and the result would be the same as if they had thrown the towel in and walked away years ago.

There is nothing wrong with trying. Just because there is a high fall back rate and a high family break down rate doesn't mean in any individual case there is no hope and no point in trying to see if the person you love is the one that can buck the trend with the right sort of help.

However, everybody should have an exit plan.

Spouses are better off if they have already established with a legal professional where they stand custody/division of assists/maintence wise, well before that information starts to look like it might be needed in practice rather than theory. Because you can't build a reliable exit plan on assumptions based what held true for somebody else when they divorced.

Dependants are better off if they start salting away a "just in case I ever need it" savings plan. So the actual means to leave are there, if a crunch point arrives. Sudden, dramatic hoard downward spirals do happen. They can be linked to a stressful event, or just that a tipping point was reached and all semblance of control was let go. These sorts of sudden, dramatic hoard spirals can leave the other occupants left high and dry if the house becomes infested, dangerous, damaged (but unfixable due to lack of access and shame) and they have to start creating their economic exit plan from scratch, at one of the lowest points of their life.

It's OK and perfectly normal to hope for the best, but having to plan for the worst is unfortunately part of the reality. Because the compulsion that created the hoard tends to win, and the people tend to lose.

[Peregrina]

The saddest case I read was of an American whose house was so stuffed to the gills and had dodgy wiring to add. The inevitable happened, and the house caught fire and there was so much crap that the firefighters couldn't get in in time to save him.

My own late DM was a shocking hoarder, a lovely person despite that. It infuriated me when clearing out her house, to find nice stuff which had been 'kept back for best' but had been stuffed in outhouses or garages and moths and mice had got at it. E.g. some nice table linen which could have given someone 20 years of use, and enjoyment using it, only fit for the tip.

[Devilishpyjamas]

fish - DH's stuff is work. Most long gone but within the piles of crap there will be important bits to be kept. He just CBA to put the time in to sort it. We have had a very difficult time with a very severely disabled child for the last few years, but not now and it needs to get done.

I have filled the green bin have chucked out bags of crap and and am about to load my Boot with stuff to take to the dump tomorrow. It is reaching the stage where I can't do more until his crap is gone though so I am about to keep getting fierce.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

"He's still churning"

That's awful, as is the man who died in the fire.

Your posts are really alarming ipost I have to believe my dh can keep a check on his hoarding - with significant help from me.

Like you say I'm worried about something happening and tipping him into full on hoarding mode. At the moment he is happy but hoarding makes him feel secure (he would never admit this).

devilish I'm really impressed. Keep on at him. I get really frustrated watching dh sorting through stuff. He's so bloody slow it's unbelievable.

[ShebaShimmyShake]

I have a stupid question, please forgive my ignorance. When a hoarder dies, why do people take extensive lengths of time to clear the hoard? I can't help thinking that I'd just separate it into recycling and stuff for the tip, by all accounts there's rarely anything useful in there anyway. If the hoard was so vast I couldn't even separate recyclable materials out of it in a reasonable space of time, I'd probably just send the whole lot to landfill and apologise to the planet.

I'm sure it's not actually that simple, but how come?

[Gingernaut]

Because there's no organisation to the hoard, the valuable (money, birth, death and marriage certificates etc) gets lumped in with the value less - the pizza flyers, old magazines and such

Yes, the vast majority of it will end up recycled and dumped but the survivors still have to go through the often disgusting an sometime harrowing task of sorting through it first.

[MySqueeHasBeenSeverelyHarshed]

I haven't been back to read other responses, but I wanted to pop in again with some other things I've found that have helped me.

For one thing, through counselling I managed to come to terms with why I was hoarding. My mother was volatile and sometimes outright abusive and we didn't have much of a bond, so I grew up with an attachment disorder. One of the things I hoard is food, I was put on a ridiculously extreme diet as a child and I get panicky at the thought of not having easy access to food. At one time she was so angry at the mess in my room (which was fairly typical eight-year-old-girl bits and bobs) that she took everything out and threw it away except for my favourite teddy and my walkman. It's left a mark, a lot of those things she tossed were gifts and now I have a hard time throwing away even birthday cards. I have an itinerant lifestyle at the moment because of work, so my homespace is getting cluttered up again with extra clothes and suitcase packing, but I make an effort to clear up whenever I get space to breathe.

Basically, if you throw away the hoarder's hoard without consulting him/her, you miss the reason they hoard in the first place and they will fill up the space again even faster and with even more stuff. It's almost like they're compensating in case in happens again.

I watched the TV show Hoarders religiously for a long time, especially just before getting psyched up for a clean-up. In every one of those houses there's a background of dysfunction, or abuse or severe mental health issues that have led to the hoarding, and the therapists are always quick to slow down the process when it looks like the hoarder is just tossing things for the sake of it and not tackling the real issue behind it.

Going through the hoard as a whole is overwhelming, but taking it in bitesize pieces works wonders. Clear one corner today, then the space under the window, and gradually it gets done.

[Gingernaut]

Posted too soon

The sheer volume can be so overwhelming that the logistics of finding skips, finding time to go down to the house/flat, shuffling back and forth between hoard and skip, getting through the processes of death and grieving, holding onto a job and running their own households can put strong people on tbeir knees.

Yes. There are specialised cleaners that can clear hoarded houses, but one would have to be made of stone not to flinch at the thought of anything of value being dumped.