Dang, it seems like every person posting here has hoarders for parents. I'm starting to question that use of the term.
Not gonna lie, before I met my in-laws and really came to experience their form of hoarding, I threw the term around.
Here is what we are dealing with:
Cats. everywhere, kittens in the bathroom because one of the cats had them on a towel in there. None taken to vet with any regularity, hardly any fixed. Indoor, outdoor. Feral.
An entire room devoted to crafts and yarn bought on ebay and other auction sites. Boxes stacked floor to ceiling.
Living room with a loveseat & two chairs. Room on two chairs to sit, every other surface in living room covered with blankets, towels, trinkets, pillows, random decor. Can no longer access the house from front door into living room because of 'stuff' in front of it. Hallways lined with stuff.
Kitchen - cabinets with doors hanging off of them. Piles and PILES of random bakeware and serving dishes. A pile of dishes on every surface. Overflowing trash can. Open cans of cat food and foam paper plates with dry cat food on kitchen floor. Bags upon bags of plastic grocery bags, empty used containers all over the floor. A large, old freezer that has old food put in foam cups - no lids, just randomly placed in there with old, OLD food. I'm talking - got 5 berries left? Put them in a cup and in the freezer and forget about them.
Back porch filled with random bags of stuff that leads from kitchen to outside. Just enough room to walk thru door to enter. More bags & boxes full of old, used containers like jelly jars, plastic bowls like cool whip comes in - food storage things like that.
Outside - porch with old freezer on it. Old, broken items. Yard full of random crap, old plastic Christmas decorations and plastic flowers just laying around. Broken mowers. 4 storage sheds full of random stuff they've accumulated...like old aluminum siding parts and toilets. There are at least 6 of them in there - my FIL used to work, about 20 years ago now - for a major trailer home manufacturer and so when folks bought a new trailer my FIL would install them & fix anything that was broken in transit to site. And he brought it all home with him 'in case' he needed it.
And that is just a snapshot of it. It means something to them, but has no sentimental or monetary value and so we've had to make those plans I mentioned up thread to get the ball rolling to get rid of it all when the time comes. I keep a list of cleaning companies, roll off dumpster outfits, dumps & Goodwill type outfits for anything that might be worth passing on to someone. Plus services for seniors in need for when the times. Depending on who passes away first, we have different plans to deal with each of his folks as they each collect/hoard different things. All this while keeping them at arms length because we just can no longer deal with the situation.
When my Grandma passed away, her house was full - every closet/cupboard/storage area had stuff in it, but I would never have called her a hoarder - she just lived there for 50 years and accumulated a lot of stuff.
