WHY GET INVOLVED?
Aside from the emotional toll that hoarding takes, it can make conditions physically unsafe for the hoarder. Piles can fall over and germs can cause illness. A cluttered house can hide serious structural damage. An elderly hoarder can have trouble getting around, and if there are medical issues, it’s sometimes impossible for emergency medical teams to even get into the house to respond.
As we have discussed, hoarding is—and often disguises—a severe mental problem, as hoarders tend to be isolated, cutting themselves off, socially and emotionally, even when they crave human interaction. If a hoarder also has a related mental disorder, that often goes untreated.
Hoarding affects more than just a hoarder. Children growing up in a hoarder house don’t learn to set limits on their possessions and sometimes on their behavior. I’ve seen those bad habits spill over into work attitudes and financial management, so that a child of a hoarder struggles to follow rules on the job or stick to a budget. Children of hoarders talk about the emotional trauma of feeling like their hoarder parent chose hoarding over his or her children. And some of them grow up to become hoarders themselves.
Hoarders also make a big financial mess that someone else often has to clean up. Hoarders who spend money on their acquisitions usually end up broke and dependent on family members, or the government, for assistance. When a late-stage hoarder is forced to clean up, it’s often the county that’s paying the bill. Social workers, building inspectors, and animal protection services are all paid for with tax dollars, so even people who aren’t directly affected by hoarding are increasingly paying the price for it.
And last but not least, hoarders leave behind a legacy that causes a lifetime of pain. When a hoarder passes on and leaves a cluttered house, family members have to deal with it at a time when they are already raw and under tremendous stress, leaving the family unable to go through the natural phases of grief.
Too many families wait until the hoarding gets seriously out of hand before they start really pushing to fix the problem. Watching for the early warning signs is critical, and understanding the types and stages of hoarding outlined in Chapter 1 will make everyone’s job much easier. Addressing hoarding sooner rather than later has tremendous shortand long-term benefits, potentially breaking the cycle of hoarding that causes so much grief. Since many of the mental situations associated with hoarding are serious and could be life-threatening, I advise my clients to consult with a therapist. This is important not only to deal with hoarding, but to improve the hoarder’s quality of life in other related or unrelated areas.
When Not to Clean
SOMETIMES AN ASSESSMENT points toward not cleaning at all. If there is no pressure to clean coming from outside sources, like building inspectors or social workers, and the hoarder doesn’t want to change, then it’s often not worth the battle. Cleaning is a huge upheaval, and part of the assessment should be to decide whether or not it’s worth it.
For example, Mario’s daughter called me about her father’s expanding car collection. Mario had been collecting antique, vintage, and junked cars for decades. He had easily a hundred old El Caminos, Thunderbirds, and other, mostly American models. The cars were piling up in the yard, and parts and paperwork were cluttering up the house where Mario lived with his wife.
Mario was eighty years old, and that car collection was his life’s work. He was an old-school, macho “king of the castle” type guy, who was focused on being in control of his world. For Mario, his self-worth was deeply connected with his collection. Even after his daughter and wife talked to him about it, Mario had absolutely no desire to change.
The house itself was cluttered, but it didn’t present any immediate danger. The piles were low, so they weren’t threatening to topple over on anybody.The pathways were wide enough for emergency services to get in if they needed to, and all of the rooms were accessible.The major systems in the house worked—plumbing, heating, and cooling. Despite the clutter, the neighbors hadn’t complained, and the county wasn’t targeting Mario for a cleanup.There were no children in the house, and although Mario’s wife was frustrated by the mess, she felt that a cleanup would be too stressful for her husband.
After meeting with Mario and his family, I advised them not to clean up. A hoarder cleanup is exhausting for even a healthy, younger hoarder. A family could push its relationships to the limit, rely heavily on favors from friends, and likely spend a lot of money on a cleanup and therapy. In Mario’s case, the stress would have been too much, going through his cars one by one, and the clutter in his house piece by piece.
With no outside pressure to clean, family members decided they would rather have Mario alive and hoarding than risk that the stress of the cleanup would do him in. They decided to let him live out his days with his collection, and plan instead for cleaning up after he was gone. I encouraged Mario’s wife and daughter to continue to put gentle pressure on him to keep the shared space in the house clutter-free. But at eighty years old, Mario wasn’t likely to change his ways. His wife, who loved Mario very much, decided to accept that he wasn’t willing to change that one thing about himself.
3
WHERE TO BEGIN
THE COLLABORATION: A STORY WITH A SOMEWHAT HAPPY ENDING
Roger’s two sisters were extremely patient while they figured out how to handle his hoarding issues. They spent more than two years assessing Roger’s condition and exploring how to help him. During that time they went through what most hoarders’ families experience. They were frustrated, confused, angry, and sad. They felt alone and ashamed. Despite that, they managed to stay positive during the process and focus on what was best for him.
Roger had been living at home in rural Georgia with his aging parents. With short-cropped hair and a full uncut beard that showed evidence of what he’d eaten on any given day, the forty-four-year-old was a tall, thin man with few social skills or contacts but an obsession for documenting his life—what he ate, where he went, what he wore—with the camera that he carried with him always. He even photocopied every single dollar bill before he spent it, notating the serial numbers and what he purchased. After his parents died, he withdrew from society even further, talking only to his family, mainly his older sister, Kathy.
Roger and his two sisters inherited the house and property. They all agreed that Roger would stay in the house until they could get it cleaned up and ready to sell and also find a new place for Roger. However, Roger was an extreme hoarder. While he had always hoarded in his room, when his parents died, within three years his stuff had spread into the rest of the large house, and he had also stopped taking out the trash.
At first, Kathy figured Roger was reacting to his grief. And she was right—Roger had been very close to his father, and that death sent him deep into mourning. Therapy was difficult to line up because Roger lived in a rural area, two hours from the nearest counseling services. His sisters gave him time and patience, figuring he would eventually stabilize on his own. They didn’t push him, but they did keep saying, “Roger, you know we have to get this house clean.”
The rest of the family was understandably frustrated when Roger couldn’t seem to de-clutter the house, and in fact made it worse. But they kept talking to him, gently and with love, and finally they all agreed that they would pack up everything and move it out to the garage. Roger even helped. His sisters and their husbands spent four or five weekends filling up plastic bags and bins and moving them out to the garage for Roger to sort through later.
When the job was finished, Roger’s sisters and their husbands went back home, a few hours away in the city. Roger was supposed to spend the next few weeks sorting through the items in the garage. Instead, in an unexpected change of heart, he started moving stuff back into the house. Another quick intervention followed, but left again on his own, Roger reverted to his old habits—bringing bags of things into the main part of the house and adding more to the clutter.
His sisters could have freaked out and v
erbally attacked Roger, understandably. They worked hard on two nasty cleanup jobs, and Roger had even agreed to both of them. Everyone in that family was still reeling from the parents’ deaths. They were all raw and could easily have been drawn into some emotional nastiness.
Instead, his sisters focused on trying to understand what was happening with Roger. They stayed patient and maintained loving spirits for a full two years after their parents’ passing. They instinctively knew that something was wrong with Roger and that it wasn’t his fault. They talked with friends, professional organizers, and cleanup people, searching for insight into the situation. They got some good advice on the logistics of sorting and organizing Roger’s stuff, but not much help on his mental state.
After the second cleanup attempt failed, Kathy confided in her minister, and he put her in touch with me. She was so relieved to finally find someone who understood what the family had been going through, and to learn that they weren’t alone. She thought Roger’s problem was just that he was stuck in extreme grief. She had read a little bit about hoarding but hadn’t talked with anyone who had firsthand experience.
Both of Roger’s sisters realized that even as they were focused on supporting him, it was okay to talk honestly with him about the issue and their desire to help. They even told him that they were confused and frustrated when he moved his things back into the house from the garage. But they knew instinctively that pushing hard wouldn’t work. It was more effective to understand him, and then do research and put together a plan for his particular situation.
The final chapter of Roger’s story has not yet been written, but the progress that he and his family have made to achieve the best life possible for him is a testament to the patient effort of everyone involved—the immediate family, the professional cleanup crew, the family’s pastor, and, of course, Roger.
WHAT WORKS, WHAT DOESN’T
The path to a successful cleanup is filled with obstacles. Just like a hoarder’s home, finding the best way in and through the problem can be challenging. And the best intentions can often go awry.
A course like the one that Roger’s family undertook can be a success story because it progressed, albeit slowly, as a collaborative effort. But far too many other well-intentioned and caring families don’t fare so well, and the approaches they take to the problem are often misguided.
▶ The Ultimatum
“If you love me, you’ll clean up the basement/attic/house.”
“I’m leaving if you don’t clear out this mess!”
Frustrated family members frequently threaten to stop communicating with the hoarder or, worse, cut all ties. They threaten to stop bringing the grandkids over to visit, or refuse to help pay the hoarder’s bills.
Sometimes it seems like hoarders are choosing their possessions over the people they love most, which is why families are driven to these ultimatums. They want the hoarder to choose, but the hoarder can’t—and they end up alone amid their junk.
Ultimatums arise from sincere and rational thinking. When Katrina’s daughter threatened to keep the grandchildren from visiting, in the hope that she would see reason and put her house in order, what the daughter didn’t comprehend was that Katrina wasn’t thinking along rational lines. The ultimatum only created a goal in Katrina’s mind that she could not achieve on her own. In her heart of hearts Katrina wanted to have a clean home and interaction with her grandchildren, but her brain couldn’t process the idea of a cleanup like a normal person. She couldn’t visualize the steps it would take to make this happen.
Once an ultimatum is thrown down, the hoarder who has been living in clutter and filth for years isn’t going to be moved, but the person presenting the ultimatum now has to follow through. The truth is that few people want to cut off their family member—no matter how bad the circumstances. If Katrina’s daughter did follow through and no longer brought the children to visit, she would only be breaking an important connection to someone she and her children love. Everyone loses.
Hoarders truly believe that they can clean up and will someday. When they can’t, and when the people they love abandon them, depression kicks in. And then they start to wonder, why bother cleaning up? In their isolation, if they think that nobody cares, they can descend quickly into an ever-tightening spiral of depression and an expanding circle of mess.
However, for families who fall into the ultimatum trap, it’s never too late to turn it around. A simple apology can work wonders. Even if a daughter doesn’t really understand her mother’s illness, she can admit that it’s not laziness or obstinacy on her mother’s part, show patience, and accept her, mess and all. All the while, she can be keeping in mind the story of Roger and his sisters, whose patience and careful planning eventually saw things to a positive outcome. Katrina’s daughter has the opportunity to show her mother that she respects her intelligence and independence by allowing her to visit her grandchildren at their home. While the visit is on the daughter’s terms, the cleanup will be on Katrina’s because she understands that her family wants her to have a better life and that, together, they will find a way to achieve that goal.
Many hoarders have significant emotional and psychological issues, but they are neither stupid nor ignorant. In fact, most hoarders are very intelligent and can see through any mental games someone tries to play. Late-stage hoarders have already played those games on themselves for years. Forget the tricks. Respect the hoarder and spell out the game plan from the beginning. Straightforward conversations and respectful dialogue may start off slowly, but they can save years of wasted effort.
▶ The Secret Cleanup
My own family is a textbook case of how not to help a hoarder. When I was a teenager, I had a great-aunt who was a hoarder, although we didn’t know that word at the time. She saved everything: newspapers, plastic bags, and paper towel tubes, to name some of what I recall seeing in her house. I am sure that she had every intention of recycling or donating stuff, but she just never got around to doing it. Every few years I would help her “clean up,” which meant moving piles around and straightening them, because she didn’t want to get rid of anything.
As the condition of my great-aunt’s house deteriorated, her habits grew more bizarre—to the point where she was leaving the door open and peanuts scattered about for neighborhood squirrels to come in and eat. The family’s concerns finally came to a head, and a secret cleanup was inevitable.
I can’t even remember how the family got her out of the house overnight, but while my great-aunt was gone, my mom, aunts, and cousins descended on the house with a vengeance.
What my mother and cousins did made sense to all of us at the time. The cleaning process was similar to what I do with my clients today—sort through and organize everything, save the valuables, throw away the trash, and clean the whole place thoroughly. But the difference is that my great-aunt wasn’t ready for anyone to go into that house. She wasn’t part of that process at all. My family kept what we thought was valuable, not what my aunt thought was valuable.
Now, clearly her paper towel tube collection or the five thousand plastic newspaper bags probably belonged in the trash. But to my great-aunt, those were important items. She had spent at least ten years saving the cardboard rolls for the children’s craft projects at church, and the plastic bags for the paper boy to reuse. She probably would have been okay with those things leaving the house if someone had agreed to take them where she intended. But the fact is that she came home and they were just gone, along with a lot of other things she was saving to use or donate. That was a big blow. Like my great-aunt, most hoarders have good intentions to give items they are saving to someone. It’s in the follow-through that they drop the ball.
Unfortunately, a few of my great-aunt’s possessions with sentimental value also went missing. She claims that they were thrown away, but we don’t know if they were ever in the home in the first place. The items may have been stuffed deep inside an old purse, book, or plastic bag somewhere that nob
ody thought to open. I’ve learned that in working with hoarders, perception is reality. It doesn’t matter if my aunt’s items were in the house or not. What is important is that she thought they were and was devastated to not be able to find them.
Although my great-aunt’s cleanup was more than fifteen years ago, I know that she hasn’t forgotten what we did, because she still talks about the day that “those women” threw all of her stuff away. I hear from a lot of families who have gone in like mine did—brooms at arms and spray cleaners blasting. Or they threaten the hoarder with some terrible consequence if the house doesn’t get clean. The stress on the hoarder in these situations is awful. This kind of intervention almost never works out and inevitably leaves families searching for help long after the hoarder has stopped talking to them and cluttered up the house again.
▶ The Ambush
The ambush is like the secret cleanup, except it takes place when the hoarder is around. And like the secret cleanup, it rarely turns out well in the long run. The fatal flaw of the ambush is that it pushes the hoarder to clean up before he or she is ready, and continues even if the hoarder wants to stop. In this kind of cleanup, the hoarder’s defenses are as high as the piles of stuff in the house. Family members are insisting that the hoarder give up the one thing that that person depends on to feel safe. It’s a lot to ask, and it’s only going to work if the hoarder agrees that this behavior is causing serious problems. Usually, the hoarder does not think there is a problem.
The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter Page 7
