Hoarding...not just on TV

GreyQueen

Hello and welcome ellie99.

I think there's an awful lot of people in your position, or those who can see it coming. Mum's a hoarder, not insanitary or pathological, but the house and the loft is stuffed solid with stuff. Parents are 70 so can easily see the situation in a handful of years where it would be most unwise to go into the loft which is unboarded and crawl-space only over most of the area, and it'll be left to muggins here.

I love my Mum and Dad dearly but I quail at the thought of that loft. I have had fantasies of getting a succession of huge skips delivered and getting an aeroplane escape chute from somewhere. Then I'd punch a hole in the tiles and whoosh, down it would go.

Just like to mention that it is very very common for elderly people to hide cash, sometimes an awful lot of cash, in the darndest of places, so you may end up missing out if you trash stuff too quickly.

One person I know, clearing up a badly hoarded house a couple of years ago after the owner died (the only surviving relative was a severely-disabled person in a care home) and he found stacks of pre-decimal banknotes. Some eaten by mice.

ellie99

Hi greyqueen
You're right! My parents house is well stuffed too, but my mum says "we're not as bad as your aunt", which is true, but still...

I'd love to be able to see into the future, so I knew how much time I had left, then I could get rid of most of it at just the right time so my kids wouldn't have to look at it.
I'm not sure that's the way I should be looking at it :rotfl:

And...I'd not considered that there could be cash in the house, wouldn't want mum to miss out.

ellie99

I've just re-read my own post, and it sounds like I think I know in what order my whole family is going to die! I didn't mean it like that, I was making assumptions, because my aunt is so much older than my mother. From personal experience, I know none of us can even guess when our time will be up. So sorry if I sounded insensitive - I've been so worried about how I'll deal with aunts house.

Byatt

I don't think you sounded insensitive Ellie, it's natural to think there's a kind of order to dying. xx

hobbitfancier

Was reading this thread with interest, and some of those hoarding programmes too. Definitely think my mum has a problem (she's 53, I'm 23). I reckon it stems from growing up with little in her childhood. She has a wardrobe with clothes with tags on from the 80s and 90s, she's constantly buying hooks and rails to hang more handbags and things on. I've gotten into screaming matches with her for making a throw away comment on the sheer volume of stuff. She's very possessive of it - I've gone rifling through to pinch some wool jumpers and stuff and she's gotten angry over it, but they'll never be used otherwise!! I've made up bags of my own old clothes to go to the charity shop, and months later I'll find them in the hot press, tucked under dozens and dozens of t-shirts from the 80s, keep there for "round the house" wear, but realistically, theres enough to clothe about 20 people 5 times over "round the house". The spare bedroom isn't fully decorated. It has two double beds and new expensive wardrobes were fitted for the overspill from her bedroom. 2/3 of my brothers wardrobe is full of her things. The attic is full. The en suite bathroom in my parents room isn't used as its housing old make-up, laundry baskets, carpets, towels with tags on. She has a parlour/"good sitting room", that's used to store crockery that only gets used for Xmas, or has lain in cellophane for a few years. The kitchen cupboards, half of them are full of crockery and "good" appliances that we aren't allowed use, because they're "good".

Now that I list it all out, this doesn't seem normal... I deviate from her, I have a lot of stuff, but I try to clear out once a year, I hate not wearing things/using things for fear they'll get broken. It takes the fun out of having nice things.

The tragedy is I can't say anything because I'm living at home due to unemployment and it will end in a huge screaming argument about "MY MONEY MY HOUSE MY THINGS". She's always buying things for the house, but we hardly ever have visitors. She "has to save money", talks about my Dad's retirement, makes me worry about money but she's got so much useless stuff, expensive dresses (we are not well off by any means but Dad worked hard to move out of the house we lived in for 15 years and to pay off the mortgage on this one), clothes with tags on, appliances in boxes. She's always talking about how our house is messy like no other, she has a lot of anxiety about it, and places the blame on us, when I wonder is she considering the things gathering dust up there when she tells us how we never tidy or do work or take of the house (I clean up a lot but its never enough). My Dad's clothes are confined to a couple of piles in the spare room because there isn't space for them in the wardrobe (!!)

We also had a conservatory added about 3 years ago - we never use it, not even in summer. The couches have protective throws on them and there's more household stuff stored there - picture frames with no pictures, etc.

GreyQueen

ellie99 wrote: »

I've just re-read my own post, and it sounds like I think I know in what order my whole family is going to die! I didn't mean it like that, I was making assumptions, because my aunt is so much older than my mother. From personal experience, I know none of us can even guess when our time will be up. So sorry if I sounded insensitive - I've been so worried about how I'll deal with aunts house.

I didn't read it like that at all, hun.

I guess the thing about your personal belongings is that it's only going to get harder to manage a major declutter as you get older. You'll probably be creaky and not able to lift and bend as you once did, your eyesight might not be too good anymore, maybe the car you once ran which would have made the dejunking so much easier is now gone.......

The very funny decluttering author Don Aslett makes all these points and suggests that you start at 55, to be on the safe side.

ETA ((((hobbitfancier)))) it sounds like life at Mum and Dad's is very difficult right now. I think you've hit the nail right on the head with your recognition that this isn't normal behaviour. I'm a scant few years younger than your Mum and can't imagine wanting to hoard fashions from my youth in the 1980s. She's clearly a lady with some serious issues which are impacting on your entire family.

There a lot of blogs out there by children of hoarders. If you try googling that phrase you might find something which offers some comfort. HTH.

Byatt

Hobbit, I'm 59, I have to say your mother is not a happy woman, and it's been going on for a long time. I don't know what the answer is though as she will, like anyone with an addiction, need to recognise it's not normal and also want to change. As you are living there it must be so hard to deal with, and GQ's suggestion to look at sites for children of hoarders is a good idea.

Hugs.

blossomhill_2

Hi everyone :wave: , Hi newcomers :wave: good to see you

ellie, you mention that you mother's told your aunt that you won't keep anything/go through her hoard to find the "good stuff" but it didn't make any difference as she still wants to keep it all. Well to a hoarder it is all "good stuff" - we aren't just afraid of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, there is no bathwater to us, it's all baby! Even if there is a stash of cash, that is probably no more valuable to them than the old paper serviettes

One approach might be to try to convince her that she has too much good stuff for one person and some of it should be donated/shared, then if she lets any of it get sorted "for charity" remove a mix of good and bad items

It is only once a bit of self awareness sets in, like with those of us on this thread, that we come to realise that there's only a very occasional gem among the dross, and try to identify and set aside the gem and throw the rest

On another note, I may have come up with a solution to my frustration at not being able to store stuff in the loft (squirrels) and dry garden chemicals in the shed (mice) - metal bins with chains and padlock holding the lids on - get through that Mr Squirrel!

I was brave yesterday and donated a box of stuff that hadn't sold at bootsale to a local Christmas stall - they put high prices on some of my goods "because it was a good make of china", well I hadn't managed to sell it for 50p and they couldn't sell it at the higher price either, so I felt quite relieved

hobbitfancier

Thank you Byatt and GreyQueen, I was more venting for relief if anything - it can be stifling to think of everything that stuffed into corners, unused, hoarding bad memories. She doesn't like charity shops either, as some of my childhood memories are of sitting on the floor of charity shop changing rooms as she tried on clothes while she was unemployed. She works hard, and we don't always get on/argue a lot, but I know she has issues. She will absolutely not talk about mental health, its a very taboo topic for her. I suspect her mother was hospitalised for it/she had to take care of her siblings. Its one of those things, it will never be spoken about, its not normal to be going to therapists and things like you see on American tv. She's very conservative and if she knew I told anyone about this there would be war.

I didn't realise there were blogs for children of hoarders! Will certainly look into it, thank you very much

V_Chic_Chick

"It might come in". The family motto, apparently, and an excuse for keeping some very strange stuff.

Mum is nowhere near as bad as some of the people on here - we're not at the level of keeping black sacks of rubbish, but there's just clutter everywhere. You have to pick your way carefully down the narrow paths between piles of stuff. Now that I've left home (well, it started before that, but) my bedroom has become a legitimate target for her stuff. More than once I've returned home during the uni holidays to find that my own bed has been covered in stuff and I therefore can't go to bed until she has reshuffled it appropriately. Half her bed (she's divorced) is covered in stuff too.

The major thing to keep around here, however, is books. Books that have never been read, and most likely never will be read, like the entire Children's Encyclopedia Britannica (there are no children in the family in the region and anyway, Wikipedia has long since superseded it). Old newspapers, too ("but I haven't read it yet" "but it's two years old").

At least it's only a two bed flat with no garden, so things can't physically get as bad as some of the blogs out there (like Tetanus Burger!)