The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter

by Matt Paxton;Phaedra Hise

  ▶ The Food Saver

  Janelle had a kitchen full of cans that were twenty years old. She guessed that her refrigerator hadn’t been opened in sixteen years—there was too much clutter stacked up in front of it. As soon as we cracked it open, two of my workers started vomiting.

  The bins and drawers were full of dark liquid and two inches of green black muck that had once been lettuce. We found black eggs, which at first we thought were carved stone eggs. The food was so moldy that it had all grown together into one gnarly mess.

  On the pantry shelves, a lot of the cans were empty. When we looked at them closely we discovered holes gnawed in the bottom. (Rats can get into a can, and once they’re in, they’ll clean it out. And because they’ll stay in a house until there’s no food left, Janelle, like most food hoarders, had a severe vermin problem.)

  In her mid-sixties, Janelle had raised a family of five boys, all of whom had long since grown and moved away. Her husband had died several years ago, but Janelle was still shopping for bulk food bargains. Her habit continued to spiral out of control, even after her kitchen became all but unusable because of the clutter.

  Food hoarders are some of the most reluctant to admit they have a problem. They are often very defensive, arguing that it’s not a big deal. Maybe that’s because everyone eats, so a food hoarder seems to be collecting something “sensible” that anyone would want.

  Food hoarding is exacerbated because hoarders are big on buying food very close to or past its expiration date. Their excuse is that marketers just make up those dates to get customers to buy more food. Even when the cans on Janelle’s shelf were bulging, she sometimes ate the contents anyway because she figured the food was safe after it had been cooked. Not surprisingly, her sons were becoming increasingly worried about her health.

  The more I work with food hoarders, the more I think their problem may come from a mentality that has something to do with “beating the system.” Janelle, for example, took pride in her individuality, and valued her independence. Ignoring food expiration dates was an easy way for her to rebel against authority.

  Food hoarders are in hard-core denial, although when confronted they tend to be more embarrassed than pack-rat hoarders because food hoarding is just so messy. Interestingly, it has been my observation that food hoarding prompts more family fights than any other kind.

  ▶ The Clothes Hoarder

  Nika is typical of a major subset of hoarders—she couldn’t get rid of any clothes. She was a carefully groomed, fortyfive-year-old plus-size woman whose weight had fluctuated pretty regularly as she yo-yoed on and off various diets. When she was heavy, she kept her “skinny” clothes because she was convinced that she would lose weight. When she was lighter, she stored her “fat” clothes—just in case. She kept really old clothes because she thought they might come back into style. She even had a cache of clothes, many of which were barely used or even unworn, because she was planning to donate them to charity—when she got around to it.

  Nika had clothes stored in the bathroom, where the shower curtain rod had long ago turned the tub into an extra closet. She had so many shoes that they were stored in every room, in their original boxes. She had a collection of more than five hundred purses that she couldn’t even get to because they were all buried under bags of clothes. In fact, what Nika had was the Great Wall of Clothes, stacked so high and so solidly that it would have held up the ceiling if the house’s support beams ever gave out.

  For Nika, having a house full of stuff meant she had “made it.” Her husband, Andre, didn’t agree. And even though the two lived together, Nika admitted that they barely talked. Her hoarding had all but driven him away.

  Like many clothes hoarders, Nika had also fallen victim to television home shopping shows, buying the same item in many colors or sizes “just in case” she ran out. The UPS man knew her by name, and even arrived to deliver more packages during Nika’s cleaning.

  The predatory behaviors of these home shopping networks make it difficult for hoarders to avoid making purchases. The sales techniques target compulsive shoppers in the most insidious ways. For example, they call viewers “friends” and invite them to take advantage of special “insider” opportunities, which appeals to an isolated hoarder’s need for friendship and connection. Hoarders like Nika make a choice to buy things, and they are responsible for their actions, but television shopping tactics create a particular challenge that’s hard to overcome.

  ▶ The Memory Keeper

  Roxanne lived alone in a trailer home, spending most of her day in dirty sweat suits, sitting in a recliner and chain smoking. She wore her brown hair in a long braid down her back. Her skin was sallow from a liver ailment, and she coughed constantly. Roxanne’s adult daughter hadn’t been to visit in almost a decade. Roxanne was completely alone—no family, no friends, and no close neighbors. Roxanne didn’t have any real relationships, but she did have lots of reminders of her past: She had saved almost every item from her daughter’s childhood.

  There were two rooms filled five feet high with her daughter’s dolls, toys, crafts, and clothes. Roxanne had strollers, a crib, and other old baby equipment that she was convinced her daughter might use one day for her own kids. Roxanne kept saying that her daughter was coming back to pick her things up, but the truth was that her daughter wasn’t coming back. In fact, her daughter told us that she’d been happy when she was finally able to move out of that cluttered house and was so fed up with her mother’s hoarding that she hadn’t returned in ten years.

  Hoarders who focus on toys and other childhood possessions are caught up in the past, either their children’s or their own, or both. This can spill over into shopping hoarding, but these hoarders aren’t buying for themselves; rather, their shopping is usually in an attempt to create memories by buying lots of baby clothes or toddler games for a nephew or grandchild. Curiously, much of what they end up buying is not age-appropriate, in what seems to be an unconscious effort to stop time. And, as in the case of Marcie, the shopaholic, many of the gifts never actually make it to the children but end up added to the piles.

  ▶ The Trash Master Compactor

  Although Margaret is primarily an animal hoarder, she also hoarded trash. She was so overwhelmed that she never got around to taking all the junk to the dump. (Living as she did in a rural community, there was no regular trash pickup even if she’d had the wherewithal to get garbage to the curb.) Instead, the bags piled up around the house or got tossed out into the backyard. For longer than one cared to imagine, food wrappers and a lot of the other trash had just been tossed on the floor and walked on until it became a thick layer of sticky brown muck.

  Margaret never consciously decided to save trash. She just fell behind in dealing with it—then got to the point where she gave up caring. Trash hoarding is usually a side effect of hoarding something else.

  Information hoarders like Rick can also look like they are hoarding trash, because much of what they hang on to is junk mail or old newspapers. But to Rick, those items have value. Also, hoarders often keep items like paper towel tubes or plastic bags to donate or recycle, and big collections of these can look like trash to non-hoarders.

  As we’ve discovered before, a trash hoarder’s piles are as revealing as an archaeological dig. At the bottom are the possessions that may at one time have had some value: clothing, books, toys, household items, and collectibles. Then there are the junk mail, old magazines, and other printed papers that date the point when the hoarder gave up. The top layer is just trash of every sort.

  Where Hoarders Hoard

  JIM WAS A preacher who started out storing family heirlooms and church artifacts in the garage. He saved boxes of old photographs, knickknacks, and other family items that he felt someone would want someday. He also kept years’ worth of church bulletins, linens, and discarded service accessories like candles and offering plates. He even had an original copy of Playboy, which may seem strange for a preacher, but maybe he thought it wa
s a collector’s item that would have future value.

  After Jim filled up the garage, the collection began to creep into the house. First he filled up the utility room, then the family room. And when Jim’s wife died, he filled up the house. We never met Jim, only his children. They organized a cleanup of the house after Jim died.

  Hoarding is partly about what the hoarder is collecting, but also sometimes about where. People may not recognize a hoarder who has a clean house because they don’t see the attic or garage filled to capacity. The hoarder who has the space—the attic, basement, garage, and outbuildings—can stave off the consequences of his or her hoarding for a long time. But eventually the creep takes over and starts invading the hoarder’s living space

  Once the garage is filled, of course, many hoarders have to park their cars outside. And for many, a car is just another place to store stuff. In the next chapter, we’ll meet Ben, the pizza man, whose car was filled with so many empty pizza boxes—and had become so disgusting—that he had to buy another car to get around.

  Backyard junkyards (or in some cases, front-yard junkyards) are popular hoarding locations. This is where you’ll find the big stuff—old appliances, cars, lawn care equipment, furniture (outdoor and indoor). Often the backyard hoarder will claim that the value of the scrap metal makes it worth keeping lots of this stuff. I once found an entire barn filled with aluminum cans, probably worth about $10,000. We didn’t cash them in because we ran out of time on the cleanup. That hoarder is still working on taking his cans to the recycling facility, one bag at a time.

  Much to the consternation of their neighbors, property values go down when hoarders spread to the outdoors and the piles mount.

  Outside hoarding is dangerous—and in most cases unlawful. Not only does it attract snakes, rats, mosquitoes (to standing water), and noxious weeds, it also attracts the attention of local authorities. Yard hoarders are often the first to be cited and fined since junked cars and appliances that contain gas, Freon, or other high-risk materials are significant health hazards. A hoarder with lots of land can seemingly keep collecting forever because there are no ceilings or walls outside.

  2

  WHY PEOPLE HOARD

  At just over six feet tall, with long blond hair, Candace, fifty-nine, was an imposing figure. She had been a well-paid advertising executive who had also taught classes on marketing at the university near her upscale neighborhood. She confided that money wasn’t an issue for her as she’d invested well and was able to retire from both her advertising job and teaching.

  But years before Clutter Cleaner came into her life, Candace had slipped into horrible living conditions. In her house, my crew and I were faced with heaps of papers, clothes, books, and trash in every room, all but burying what I came to discover was a lot of fine antique furniture. One bedroom was so completely filled with junk that the door would barely open. Extension cords crisscrossed the rooms because the electrical outlets had been blocked ages ago. And the whole house reeked of dog feces and urine.

  Candace hadn’t been a lifelong hoarder, but a difficult divorce followed immediately by her mother’s death sent her into a tailspin. She started drinking heavily—and the years of self-abuse were starting to show on her face—and in the way she lived.

  Her mother had left everything to Candace, who took her mother’s possessions into her own home but hadn’t bothered to sort, give away, or discard anything.

  And the more she drank, the less she cared about keeping a clean house. She started to fall behind on simple daily tasks like sorting through mail, taking the dogs out, or getting rid of old clothes. As a person who had been used to being on top of everything, she felt her frustration turn into depression and exacerbate what was already becoming an untenable living situation.

  There were clear signs that Candace had obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Under the piles of things in her house were shelves and storage bins that had been put into place at one time to control clutter. Her framed pictures and other knickknacks were neatly labeled with notes on the back or underneath explaining what they were and who they came from. Her dresser drawers were marked “darks” and “whites” for her clothes.

  Even her squalor was OCD. Although the dogs were going to the bathroom in the house, Candace had limited them to two rooms. Her piles were organized into categories—books, clothes, papers. The house was a mess, and whatever earlier attempts she had made to stay in control had been all but abandoned.

  Candace admitted that once she fell behind on her organization, she really fell behind. She couldn’t accept the middle ground of mild, occasional clutter that most people live in. For Candace, everything was black or white, just like the labels for her clothing. A house that had once been so precisely organized and labeled was now an out-and-out disaster area. She had simply given up the struggle.

  Like almost every hoarder with whom I’ve worked, Candace also showed signs of what I now know to be clinical depression: She didn’t smile or make eye contact; her voice was flat, without any affect. She admitted that she had trouble getting out of bed in the morning and struggled to make simple decisions.

  Candace was clearly an intelligent woman. At one time she had enjoyed spending time with her family and friends, but her social life had tapered off years ago. She seemed to have made a choice: A house full of clutter with its piles of clothes, books, and papers was more important than living what would be by most people’s standards a normal life that included family and friends, hobbies and pastimes, entertainment and travel.

  Those frustrated family and friends, who mostly find themselves excluded from a hoarder’s life, may wonder why their loved one can’t just throw away those ten years’ worth of newspapers piled up in the garage, the piles of old and never-before-worn clothes, or the junk that seems to grow organically in every corner. Wouldn’t a sane person just recycle, toss, or give away this stuff—and move on?

  But while a hoarder may not be certifiable, his or her brain does work differently. Hoarding specialist Dr. Renae Reinardy often compares hoarders to parents with dyslexia who wish to read bedtime stories to their children, but no matter how desperately they want to do it, their brains simply will not cooperate.

  I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, although I do work alongside therapists and other health care professionals with many of my clients. But one learns a lot about a person in such intimate circumstances as a cleanup. I’ve found that it is important not only to help the hoarders get rid of stuff, but also to really talk with them—swapping stories and sharing experiences as we do the cleaning. The issues, both physical and psychological, they are wrestling with quickly become clear during this process.

  I’ve learned that most hoarders love their families deeply and long to reestablish lost or strained relationships. Hoarders are truly in pain from losing their connection with loved ones—and the world at large. Ironically, the only way they see to ease that pain is to literally and figuratively bury themselves more deeply.

  The more time I spend with hoarders, the more I wonder what propels them down this path. Everyone has issues. Bad things happen. The clues to why people hoard are not so simple or straightforward to decipher but may be discovered in the complex interaction of personality and circumstances, in an individual’s ability to respond to life events in a certain way, in genetics, or in more serious psychiatric issues that manifest themselves in classic hoarding behavior.

  IT’S ALL IN THE FAMILY

  One thing that has become fairly obvious to me when I work with clients and their families is the likelihood that the hoarder is not the only one with an issue. As with other medical and psychological conditions, there’s much discussion concerning the genetic roots of hoarding. And if my experiences and observations have shown me anything, it’s that hoarding—like blue eyes or curly hair—can be a family trait.

  One of my clients, Pat, had the help of her mother during her cleanup. Pat and her mother, who were both overweight and wore similar sw
eat suits with lots of gold jewelry, looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. They even bickered like sisters. Every time Pat chose an item to donate or throw away, her mother would move in and say something like, “That’s nice, maybe we should keep that.” By the end of the first day, Pat’s mother had loaded her own car and had even more of Pat’s castoffs in a pile by the front door. Pat told me that her mother’s hoarding problem was even worse than her own, which is something I hear all the time: “If you think this is bad, you should see my mother/grandfather/aunt!”

  A report published in Behavior Research and Therapy found that hoarding appears to run in some families where OCD is also present. And a study done at the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Clinic at the University of California in 2009 found that up to 85 percent of people who are compulsive hoarders have a close relative who is or was also a hoarder. A Johns Hopkins study found significant linkage to compulsive hoarding on chromosome 14 in families with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  It’s not surprising that as I’ve dug into my clients’ backgrounds I’ve discovered a pattern of hoarding along with other family traits.

  TRIGGERS

  While there are clearly links to other mental disorders, several of which I’ll discuss later in this chapter, from my observations it seems that every hoarder has had an event, or series of events, that either marked the start of that person’s hoarding or made an already established hoarding habit much worse.

  All of us face challenges in life. Divorce, death, job loss, relationship breakups, or medical issues—those are some of the hardest things anyone can go through. For hoarders, there are many common themes, the most compelling of which is abuse.