Compulsive Hoarding

[jen0610]

Yes, my grandmother on my mom side was.

She was always this way, I never knew her house to not be stacked with junk. And until the family put her in a home, there was no stopping her. And even in a nursing home, she had issues with her stuff.

I vividly remember the weekend when the entire family had to converge on their home and clean it or the city was going to condem it. And that was back in the 80's when I was a teen.

One of the boxes my aunt pulled out, popped open. Inside she found stuff from her best friends first wedding, that she had thrown out 10 years earlier after her divorce. Gandama dumpster dived. Whatever of interest she found, she bought home.

There was a path in their house from the front to the back, with paths branching off to get to other rooms. We never stayed for very long at their house. We never ate anything in that house, nor did we ever use the restroom.

When we cleaned it out, we had to slow down when we found that Grandmas hid money everywhere - purse liners, coat liners, in book and magazine pages, inside of cerial boxes under the plastic insert, inside of a small pin box that was inside of a purse that was wrapped in a blanket inside a box. And sometimes the money was wrapped before it was hid. She would take 4 quaters, wrap them in foil and put in a bag of flour.

As kids, we were amazed by what we thought was cleaver hiding, but as an adult looking back, she had a sickness that no one back then knew how to deal with or what to call it. Even though we loved our grandma, we always grew up defining her as the "bag lady" grandma to our friends.

 

[jen0610]

In our front hallway, we had a stack of newspapers that he always intends to look through to see if there are any articles he wants to clip and save, but he never seems to find the time to do it. Whenever the stack gets taller than our 13 year old DS, I make DH get rid of a bunch.

My grandmas stack of newspapers was - 4 ft high, 10 ft long, 6 ft wide, with a narrow 1 foot wide path in the center. It was on her enclosed front porch. As soon as you opened the door, there it was. From the edge of the door all the way to the wall. And the sream she let out when she caught us with a pick up truck backed up to the door, pitching stacks out in the clean up. You would have thought she just saw someone killed in front of her eyes.

 

[Kimberly]

I don't try to get her to clean it up. I have tried that in the past and it only made her feel shamed and anxious. So I just leave it alone. Mother is a 76yo woman with a fully functioning mind. She likes living the way she does and as long as it isn't completely a fire hazard she can continue to live in it. It's not filth, it's just clutter. I go down to see her a few times each year and usually we'll work on some project of her choosing. I try not to get to overly invested in it, though, because I know that as soon as I leave she's going to have it as messy and cluttered as ever.

I can say this is the way my father has always been... my aunt on the other hand... sometimes I can't even walk in that house without my throat starting to close up a bit. I keep trying to convince her to let me hire some help for them, and at least START cleaning that place up... but she asks for the money instead, which I know would be a mistake.

 

[browneyes106]

Two aunts on my mom's side have hoarding issues. One aunt has a large 6 bedroom home which she has owned since the 70's. Four bedrooms are pretty much packed with stuff in boxes. My aunt also has a camper trailer in her yard that she uses for storage. Her house isn't too dirty she dusts the boxes, storage containers and stuff a few times a week.

My other aunt isn't as bad but she tends to buy too many hobby supplies and saves magazines, newspapers and even church bullentins. Her house isn't as clean as my other's aunt house.

On my dad's side one of my uncle is a hoarder who lives next door to my grandma and he uses my grandma's basement to store a lot of stuff.

I had a friend in high school who briefly lived with his grandfather after his mom's death and he said his grandpa saved pretty much anything his late grandma owned and his grandpa was a compulsive shopper of camping gear, cookware and etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH_qC0BojaA
This is from Kathy Griffin's recent comedy special and she talks about the A&E show Hoarders. I thought this was a bit funny.

 

[Handbag Lady]

With my mom, she knows she's a hoarder, but she isn't "one of them." She even watches the Hoarder show and says things like, "Can you imagine if they come to my house! I'd be mortified."

She cries when I toss things. When we have her over to our house, when I cook, I tend to throw stuff away as I use them. Those sytrofoam containers that they put meat on from the grocery store? I take them straight to the dumpster. She sees it and says, "Oh, you can make shrinky-dinks out of those, let me keep them."

I have to just toss them instead. I try and have her watch me, that one CAN continue to live and throw away things, but it doesn't work.

The other really odd thing about my mom is that when she is over, she cleans my house. I was baffled and still am. After I cook, she goes through the kitchen and makes sure I clean the stove (or she just does it as I am clearning the table) and she insists to do the dishes by hand because they get much cleaner that way than a dishwasher.

I want to think that she's CLOSE to saying she wants help. She really likes cleaning. I think once she gets to that point, it will go quickly.

And spending. Holy cow. My mom cannot walk past anything cowboy related without buying it. Period. She has so much stuff it is downright funny. She'll say, "This will look so nice over the piano." Probably so. But what she isn't registering is that you can't find the piano in her living room. Or the space above the piano. Or that she has 1349 other things that she bought for that exact same space.

 

[tigercat]

My sister is a hoarder. I haven't been to her house for a long while. I couldn't go into her house the last time as the smell was too much. She is a chain smoker as well as owning several cats and a dog. One cat went into the lining of the couch to die. They had to go and find it.
tigercat

 

[SandrA9810]

My grandmother, my aunt, my mom, my sister....

With my grandmother, I get it, she was the child of the depression and you held onto everything you had. but her favorite saying is "better to hold onto it, rather than not have it when you need it". She doesn't understand that it could be something easily replaced if the need for the item ever came up again.
Many people were getting on my case in another topic when I brought up the yard sale that I held with my aunt and grandmother's stuff. I get that it's her stuff, but the house they live in is just too small. My grandmother was a neat and organized person growing up, but I never really quite imagined how much storage space we really had in the old house.
My aunt has wasted thousands of dollars in paying for a garage space at her old apartment (100$ a month x 7 years) just to store all the things that she didn't have room for in the apartment. She did leave enough room to park the car in there... but still, she only parked it in there when there was going to be extreme weather. The rest of the time the car got parked in the cover parking spot that costed like 50$ a month.

My aunt and my grandmother both had enough money, that the things they bought were nice stuff. My mom on the other hand, was/is too poor to afford nice things, and so she just collects junk. My sister is the same way. Her house stinks to high heaven, and the floor is just covered in the kids toys (never enough toys in that house...). The garage is filled with her stuff and my mom's stuff.

The worst part, is they're all hoarders of old papers. I mean I was finding gas reciepts from the early 90's in my aunt's things. And she moved out of her house in 2000, plus had about 3-4 moves before ending up in the last apartment, and just dragged that stuff around. My aunt has about 4-5 "shred" boxes. Some papers that should be kept, other things that just need to be gotten rid of. It doesn't help that she's overly paranoid of her personal information. So everything HAS to be shredded, but it takes time and the shredder can only handle so much. I've tried suggesting a pro service, but she says she has to go through it all first, which she never gets around to.

When I get to cleaning up things... I ask this
1. Do I need this right now? Yes - find a place to put it, No - question 2
2. Can this be useful to some one else? yes - goodwill, no - trash

I don't believe in junk drawers... drives me up a wall. Everything should have a place. And if I want it, then I should be able to place it on a shelf to be displayed, not shoved in a box in the corner of a closet. And why some one needs a whole drawer for pens and pencils is beyond me. Get a little cup, sit it on the desk where it's needed.
I can be messy, throw dirty clothes in a heap rather than a basket, leave things lying around, not put my dirty dishes in the kitchen right away. But I have no problem throwing things away when I need to.

 

[amez]

I've not watched the show Hoarders, but my mom would be considered one. Her house is filled up with "stuff" not any single item but just whatever she finds on sale, or thinks she may need some day, or someone might need it. Her van is the same way. Several years ago when she came to visit us, my husband and step-son cleaned out her van. She had reasons for wanting to keep everything or wanted me to keep it for her! She means well-- like she found six of the exact same belt on sale so she bought all of them and left them in her van. We threw away so much stuff and took so much stuff to Good Will. I had warned her we would be harsh about getting rid of the stuff and as much as she hated for it to go she also appreciated us making it happen.

Six months later when we came to visit-she asked me not to let my husband see her van because she was embarrassed because she had filled it up again after he had done all the hard work. we just keep trying to help her out-we can't fix it but we can atleast throw things away when she's not looking. Her house is just as bad plus she has animals and it's really difficult to go in to visit.