The social worker determined that Wendy and Sam were capable of living independently, and since they were adamant about staying in the house, she took steps to help them with a cleanup.
The social worker was also instrumental in getting Wendy and Sam the medical attention that they both needed. Sorting out the prescription drugs was a major issue. From old aspirin to expired heavy-duty narcotics, Wendy had hoarded old medications, which she took on her own judgment whenever she felt ill. She also kept empty bottles so that she would have a record of her medication history. The social worker got a doctor to visit and explain that medicines lose their effectiveness after time, and that her doctors would all have her medication records on file, so she could throw away the old bottles.
During the cleanup, the social worker checked in every day or two to make sure that Sam and Wendy were holding up during the difficult process. If new problems had cropped up, she would have been the go-to person to coordinate additional resources and support.
With the help of the social worker, the cleanup crew was able to get Wendy and Sam’s immediate cooperation. Social workers not only have the confidence and respect of their clients but give an air of urgency to the situation. And, trained as they are, they know the best and most effective ways to get help.
▶ Child and Adult Protective Services
Child and Adult Protective Services are social workers who specialize in aiding children or seniors who are living in hazardous conditions. They can rally the same level of resources and support as a general social worker, but are more focused on children or seniors in need. It’s important to remember that these, or any, social workers are there for the person in need, which means they may not always do what family members think is best. They are focused on the hoarder or the people directly affected by the hoarding.
▶ City, County, or State Officials
The Building Inspector
Hoarders won’t be the ones to call in a building inspector to condemn their own houses. But ironically, once city or county officials get involved, a battery of municipal programs kicks in to help the homeowner. The city or county doesn’t want to own houses, they want to help homeowners fix them up and keep them.
Rick, the retired professor who hoarded paperwork, was living in a firetrap filled with twenty-five years’ worth of papers, and the room he called his library had also been damaged by a years-old water leak. Rick’s sister called the county because she was concerned about Rick’s living conditions. The city inspectors condemned the house not only because it was a firetrap but also because they found high levels of black mold.
After blocking off the room with the hazardous mold, which would be handled by a special crew, the inspectors checked in every other day during the cleaning to make sure no new hazards were uncovered. In hoarder houses, the clutter covers up a multitude of sins, including structural damage that’s not even visible until piles of stuff are removed from the house.
When a city or county official visits a house to evaluate the condition, the official writes a report with a list of things that have to be fixed and issues a warning. The homeowner is supposed to attend to those items on the list by the official’s next visit, usually thirty days later.
Because die-hard hoarders don’t usually comply—or do so halfheartedly—the next inspector invariably issues another warning. This may go on for some months, and if the homeowner makes any effort at all, then the inspector will postpone action, give the hoarder a provisional pass, and allow the homeowner to stay in the house, with the promise that the work will be done. For the house to actually be condemned, the inspector has to have made many visits over a long time period. But even once a house is officially condemned, things don’t necessarily start moving quickly.
A property that has actually been condemned is on the building inspector’s radar as long as that same homeowner is in the house, even once it’s cleaned up. If the hoarder leaves something in the driveway, a neighbor’s phone call will usually trigger a quick visit. Even without anyone filing reports, the inspectors will be visiting that house a few times a year just to make sure it’s staying clean and habitable.
Pest or Animal Control
Michelle had a hoarding problem that had become so bad that Child Protective Services had removed her two middle school–aged children and city authorities had determined that the house had to be cleaned immediately. In every room of the house newspapers were stacked about seven feet high, making access throughout the place difficult. But the real problem was the mice that were living in the clutter. The pest control man said that with close to three thousand mice, it was the worst he had ever seen. Our cleaning crew eventually filled two fifty-gallon trash bags with dead mice.
Michelle had been living in those conditions for years, and like many hoarders she was not a healthy woman. She was rail-thin, with her clothes sagging off her narrow shoulders. She coughed a lot, and her skin was dull and flaky. I don’t know if any of her health issues were caused by the mice, but it’s not a healthy environment for anyone.
Vermin like mice, rats, and cockroaches are common in hoarder houses, and a house like Michelle’s needs to be treated before cleaning can begin. These creatures carry viruses dangerous to humans, including hantavirus and Lyme disease. Some viruses are passed not by direct contact but just through rodent droppings and saliva. A mouse infestation like Michelle’s also increases the risk of children developing asthma.
If there are a lot of pets in a house, animal control people may be a necessary part of the team to make sure the dogs, cats, birds, snakes, or other pets are taken to a shelter where they have food and space. There, they can be evaluated for health problems and given medical care. If the hoarder can’t care for the pets after the cleanup, then animal control has the resources to find them good homes.
The Police
There are many circumstances before and during a cleanup that might involve the police. When we were working with Marcie, the shopaholic whose husband turned out to be abusive, things came to a head when the husband took a swing at me. It seems that he didn’t take too kindly to his wife’s realization that part of her hoarding problem may have stemmed from his abusive behavior. After that, we decided that if we were to return to the house, we’d need some police oversight. As it turned out, he beat us to the punch: Marcie’s husband took out a restraining order preventing us from coming back to the house.
Don, on the other hand presented a very different sort of situation that required police intervention. An overweight, ex-military guy who had retired from his civilian job working in security, Don had suffered a heart attack but managed to call 911. After the emergency services crew picked him up and got him to the hospital, they called county officials about the house, which was in a terrible state. A few months later, county officials called in my cleaning crew. Almost immediately we found a loaded handgun underneath a pile of clothing. Don admitted that one wasn’t the only weapon in the house, so we stopped cleaning and called the police. They discovered seventeen guns and thousands of rounds of live ammunition. We then continued our work, only to uncover more ammunition and weapons, and we had to periodically call the police back in to handle the situation.
Will’s case was equally troubling. He was a hoarder recovering from surgery who needed his house cleaned out enough to allow home health care to get in and help him. We began cleaning and almost immediately started finding pornography. That’s not unusual; we find all sorts of private things when we clean, and we are usually very discreet. Will was apparently obsessed with famous cartoon characters. He had a vast collection of mermaid drawings and other characters, all in revealing and compromising positions.
The deeper we got into the house, the more disturbing the pornography became: child pornography and snapshots of Will with girls who looked underage. This went beyond “private” into illegal, and so we were compelled to call the police. Will ended up recovering from his surgery while serving a three-year prison sentence.
▶ Professional Cleaners and Junk Removers
The worse the hoarding case, the less likely family members or friends can handle the cleanup themselves. Professional cleaning services can be involved to whatever extent necessary, from simply hauling away trash to cleaning the entire house and arranging for specialized support, including therapy. A reputable cleaning company trains its staff to handle everything from hazardous waste to valuables as well as to work appropriately with the hoarder or other helpers.
If a family feels that they can handle the work themselves, then they can still hire the cleaning service to create a plan and a list of necessary materials. Or they can work alongside the professionals. But if a house shows signs of a high level of hoarding, the unsafe conditions may require the intervention of professionals.
▶ Appraisers or Auctioneers
Jackson was unusual in that his Blondie collection and designer clothes actually had some value. He had autographed Blondie memorabilia and rare collectibles. Jackson and Mike didn’t bring in an appraiser because a quick scan of eBay showed them that the collectibles were fetching pretty good prices and a call to a consignment shop determined the value of the clothing. But under other circumstances, a visit from an appraiser or auctioneer might be a good idea.
What I see is that 99 percent of the time the collection has little or no value. But hoarders are convinced that they are sitting on a gold mine. Bringing in an impartial third party can clear this up, because it’s harder to argue with an expert. But the house has to be fairly clean before the appraiser is brought in or the appraiser may dismiss everything as “messy junk” without making the effort to really see what’s what. Since most appraisers charge by the hour, it’s cost-effective to have the “valuables” already pulled out and boxed up before the visit.
Because most collections are relatively worthless, be prepared for this additional emotional blow to the hoarder. It’s best if an appraiser comes to visit the hoarder and maybe one other sympathetic family member. Families can be tempted to say “I told you so!” to a hoarder when the hoarder learns that that extensive angel figurine collection isn’t worth any money. That can be a really hard moment for a hoarder who has a lot of money and emotion invested in the collection, and the hoarder needs someone who will understand and be kind and positive.
The auctioneer, on the other hand, may take a wide range of stuff—both valuable and not—and make arrangements to dispose of it in the most profitable way possible. The auctioneer will, more often than not, take a large batch—except real trash—and sell it off in job lots or individual pieces. It is worthwhile for auctioneers to get the most they can for everything since they are usually taking a percentage as their compensation.
6
THE CLEANUP
Aimee lived in a two-bedroom condo in New England. She had worked as a high-end fashion model when she was younger, but by age forty-eight it was impossible to see her fine bone structure or once-toned figure. Aimee looked like a stereotypical hoarder: overweight, with pasty skin and curly black hair streaked with gray. She spent her days in bed, drinking cans of nutrition shakes, giving herself insulin shots, and sliding to the edge of the mattress to go to the bathroom.
Until she started confining herself to the bed, Aimee had been a clothes hoarder whose obsession had gotten out of hand about eight years earlier. Aimee had kept the clothing from some of her modeling jobs, samples that the studios had given her as well as clothes that she had bought. She had about four hundred pairs of shoes and more than a thousand purses. Her collection was stacked in piles around narrow walkways through the house. On top of that was another foot of trash, from the point about two years earlier when Aimee gave up the hope of de-cluttering and just started tossing everything onto her piles.
The stink from the urine and feces had gotten so strong that neighbors had called the city to complain. Building inspectors visited and condemned the house, but they told Aimee she could keep it if she cleaned up and it passed reinspection within ninety days. The city hired us to work with Aimee.
No matter what the stage of hoarding, what the hoarder hoards, or what other mental disorders might be involved, hoarder cleanups all start with the plan. Cleanup day is when the rubber finally meets the road. The team meets outside the house to assign jobs, grab trash bags, and dig in. Each stage of hoarder has different issues, and any plan should be flexible enough to take that into account.
From my point of view, the actual cleaning may be the easiest part of this process. For a team that has done its research and put together a good group with a workable plan, cleaning will go surprisingly smoothly. It’s the mental and emotional preparation with the hoarder that’s tough, along with the hand-holding and guidance during and after the process. The cleaning itself is just a matter of sorting items into piles to keep, donate, sell, recycle, and trash.
STAGE 1: BRAD AND ELLEN
Their hoarding was so early-stage that Brad and Ellen decided to try cleaning it themselves, without a professional organizer or a cleanup service. They called me for a consultation, and after walking through the house I wrote up a plan for them that focused on their main problems: Brad’s computer stash; Ellen’s teaching supplies; food; and the children’s clothes and toys. Brad and Ellen set aside a weekend, sent their three young boys to Grandma’s, and bought a few boxes of heavy-duty trash bags.
Brad and Ellen’s garage before the cleanup. Simple Stage 1 that just needed some rules for organization.
They finished the house in two days, following the plan guidelines. Brad started with his computers. He had saved them to fix up and donate, but he realized that he didn’t have the time. Instead, he found a computer recycling company to collect them. Ellen went to work on her teaching supplies. Once she started sorting through the material, she realized that a lot of it was already out of date. Also, advances in technology meant that kids were working from computers, not construction paper. She filed away her teaching plans and some supplies, but she tossed her outdated workbooks. Getting rid of the old computers and Ellen’s teaching materials cleared a lot of shelf space for toys and books in the kids’ basement playroom. Part of this family’s goal was to begin showing the kids, all under age six, a new skill: how to stay clutter-free. And Brad and Ellen’s efforts were a major step toward that goal.
Ellen went through the boys’ clothes and gave away anything worn, stained, or out of style. She boxed up the nice clothes that were too small and took them to a consignment shop. Brad loaded his extensive music collection onto his computer and then donated his huge stack of CDs. With the rooms emptying out, the couple started working on the odds and ends cluttering up the dresser tops, chairs, and corners. In the kitchen, Ellen and Brad were surprised by how much out-of-date food they had in the refrigerator and freezer, and they threw it all away. Cans and boxes older than six months but still good were donated to a food pantry.
Ellen continued to sort out clothing, books, toys, and knickknacks to bag and take to a donation site. She was training herself to not stack piles, but to place the donation items in a box by the front door that was small enough for her to lift when it was full. Follow-through is a difficult task for any stage of hoarder, so Ellen worked on taking that box to her car as soon as it was full so she could then go directly to her preferred donation site at the end of the day.
It took Brad and Ellen a day and a half to get the rooms completely de-cluttered. Then they were able to give the house a deep cleaning. They were shocked by the amount of dust and cobwebs that they had all been living with and breathing. Seeing how much underlying dirt had accumulated made them resolve all the more to stay de-cluttered.
Their cleanup plan also included follow-up rules to which Brad and Ellen could refer when they were cleaning, or maki
ng decisions about bringing in new things. For a Stage 1 hoarder the focus is less on the actual cleaning, which goes relatively quickly. The important thing is to learn and apply new skills. Early-stage hoarders have the same attachment to possessions that more advanced hoarders do. But because Brad and Ellen had fewer items, and hadn’t been living with the behavior as long, it was easier for them to de-clutter, break bad habits, and learn better ones.
STAGE 2: JACKSON
Once a plan is in place, everyone has to agree to the start date. Jackson, the Blondie hoarder, tried to cancel his cleanup twice. The first time he said he was sick. The second time he admitted that it was nerves. We convinced him to let us come just to see the house for an assessment, and told him that he could change his mind about the cleanup at any time.
As the new start date approached, the team behind Jackson began to assemble the supplies and services that would be needed—and had other supporters on call, such as repair and renovation people, just in case. Most important, Jackson’s partner, Mike, was preparing for Jackson’s increasing level of anxiety by being patient and reassuring.
Because of the sheer volume of clutter in Jackson’s house, and because he had been hoarding longer, he needed more workers and supplies than Brad and Ellen did. With his cleanup crew of three hired workers, Jackson had extra muscle for hauling away his bags of clothing and memorabilia. He also got one-on-one time with a professional cleaner to help direct him. Jackson was willing and able to learn new habits for decision-making and sorting, but he needed reminders and redirection during the cleaning. Basically, he needed a little coaching.
Jackson’s house wasn’t dirty, just cluttered. We started in the living room—the biggest room, and the easiest since it was filled with lots of empty cardboard boxes. In any cleanup, the house gets messier before it gets tidy, and the growing mess can be alarming to the hoarder. Finishing the first day with a large, clean room is very rewarding and motivates everyone to keep going.
The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter Page 11
