Hoarders help?

[b5blue]

Hoarders....anyone know one? I'm looking for advice, my Mom (bless her heart) has got it bad, can't pass up a deal no matter what, she won't buy one...she buys them all, then saves them forever. Example: she gave me 3 boxes of brownie mix "for the kids to make"....they were 6 years expired! I can't get her to stop/give up her piles of stuff/crap. If I try to talk to her about it she gets really pissed and kinda mean about it, I'm not one to just keep ignoring the 800 lb. gorilla if you know what I mean. 

[MichaelRW]

There's a new program on TV called Hoarders and I happened to see an episode last night. It was on cable and I don't remember what network it was on. The program claims there are 3,000,000 hoarders in the US and there are companies that specialize in cleaning up after hoarders. Never knew that before.

[LeadfootBob]

There's more junk in the garage now than there is space to wrench on said junk, am I a hoarder? 
Probably a fairly common disease among gearheads...

[PocketThunder]

There is a house down the street from me that when they have the garage door open you cant see the floor!  or the walls either.    I cant imagine what the rest of the house looks like inside.

[Todd Wilson]

I am trying to hoard cash but I am not doing a very good job at it.


Todd

[PocketThunder]

I am trying to hoard cash but I am not doing a very good job at it.


Todd

Do you hoard PBR?  Or dont you do a good job if that either?   

[b5blue]

Well thanks, at least I'm not the nut then. She has had no less than 2 12 x 25 storage units full for the most part of 30 years and were not talking just there she "fills any space" she's in eventually. (I've very nicely let her know we won WW2 and it's gonna be OK now) I was just hoping someone here found some way to "reach" this kinda mindset. (I know we all deal with it to a degree trying to save old cars)   

[dodgecharger-fan]

I watched Hoarders last night. It looks like a tough thing to deal with.

Some of the experts they have on their include therapists/psychiatrists/etc. and professional organizational experts..
If someone can't deal with this on their own, they need to seek professional help or have it gently forced upon them.
That is if it hurts anyone other than that person. Otherwise, let them have their stuff. IMO.
If it is affecting the lives of others and you can get the person to agree that it is a problem, call in the pro help as soon as possible.
Get them help before they forget that they agreed it was a problem..

One thing that rang clear with me was the anxiety and confusion when trying to deal with getting rid of stuff.
One woman recognized that she had to do something but when it came time to do it, it was too frustrating to deal with it.
I relate to that in a big way. I just don't have the huge piles of stuff to go along with it. But I've got 50 MB hard drive if anyone needs one.  (not GB... MB)
I try to go through the boxes of stuff, get frustrated, and push it all back in and store it again.

The other story was about an older guy that collected junk on his 2 acre property. He was faced with cleaning it up or going to jail. It was tough but he made some progress and got an extension from the judge as long as he kept cleaning things up. All that stuff was his retirement plan. He still has a lot left. It just got pushed all back behind the house - out of site.

[Brock Samson]

 sometimes "Collectors" turn into "Hoarders"... especially in old age... Once retired with plenty of time on their hands and fully emeshed in their particular hobby it can become a myopic obsession. I know.

[Mike DC]

I've dealt with a little of this before in some family friends.    
 
When you're trying to break that loose of someone, financial pressure is a bitch.  And not just when it's in the present.  (It's sort of like the way that starvation diets can ultimately cause a person to put on weight even more than before.  Their body was squeezed, and it reacted by getting even more efficient at storing pounds even after the food supply is back.)  Money being tight really makes it difficult to pry people out of their situation.  

For those who aren't driven by financial pressures, I think the hoarding impulse is sometimes rooted in being mentally occupied with the past more than the present & future.  Those old items remind them of good times, and they can't mentally separate throwing away the item with throwing away the memories.

Sometimes it's just an occupation too.  They reason with themselves and others that they are "cleaning up" to eventually reach some point of improvement, but the truth is that any extra space "burns a hole in their pocket" like a kid with too much money.  They aren't messing with it as a means to an end, but rather a daily coping mechanism.  

 



The best thing I've found is to keep reminding them to look at the big picture of it all.  You can't possibly hope to talk them out of hoarding things with piece-by-piece reasoning.  Their habit makes too much logical sense when the stuff is taken one item at a time.  Only the net total makes it such a problem.  

You have to try to make them see that storing all this stuff is not free either.  It takes years of their lives.  It takes money every month.  And it takes away their freedom to do what they want with their own living space.  They need to start putting a higher value on the benefits of being free of all that crap.

It's not a perfect solution, but nothing else really is either.  It's a process and a bit of an addiction.  They need to recognize that it's a problem, and that their longtime methods of doing things need to change if they are ever going to get free of it.    

   

[b5blue]

Thanks! What's bugging me is it has been dragging her down for years and your right, she is set on a piece by piece solution that will never happen.

[Mike DC]

Yes, that's the problem with the piece-by-piece reasoning.  

The only way progress is made is if they're willing to throw a lot of perfectly usable stuff away.  And I mean throwing it in the trash, not just "Gimme a few weeks so I can find a good home for it."  They've gotta get out of their comfort zone with it.  



It might help if they visited a real working landfill.  Ive been to them lots of times.  One of the big things that struck me about it is that a lot of stuff would be deemed usable in the right person's hands.   The point is that it helps a person realize that they're not the only person on earth throwing away "perfectly good" stuff.  The world does it every day by the cubic acre.  One persons contribution, or one entire zip-code's contribution, is not gonna make a dent in the process.


They need to realize that they're not throwing away good money.  They're paying that "good money" because it has become the price of buying their lost space back.  They need to look at a room full of stuff and plan on throwing away whatever they can withstand to do the easiest.  Like, "Well, what's the cheapest way to buy myself another yard of room in here?" 

[Old Moparz]

My wife & I have managed to stop hoarding crap. It wasn't at all like the people on that hoarding TV show, the ones who save actual trash like empty drink cups & plastic wrappers from packages. 

Our problem started from a few reasons. When we bought our house & moved in with almost no furniture, it wasn't beneath us to snag stuff we needed from yard sales, or friends & family giving it away, or flea markets, or even the trash. We also both hate to see something get disposed of that's still good & others could use & benefit from. Something that can be recycled like a sofa or a table is hard to haul away, but we've found people that needed things somehow.

Having helped clear out my wife's Mother's house after she passed away & dragging home a lot of junk didn't help us any. Her sister moved out of NJ & went to AZ & also left stuff behind that had to be dealt with. My own Mother went from her own huge house to a small apartment, & had also closed up her business around the same time that had loads of stuff & was in a warehouse. I still have some crap in boxes in my basement & attic. 

We did change by convincing ourselves that if we weren't going to actually use something that we knew was good, we just won't take it whether we thought we'd use it down the road or not. The saving things that are still good rubbed off on our daughter. We're trying to break her of the hoarding habit too, by getting rid of old toys she's too big for. She sees my Matchbox cars & G.I.Joes from my childhood & figures she has to save her stuff too. 

My wife plans to sell or donate stuff all the time, but it sits in boxes for months & months, maybe even a year. There's been many times I had to move 10 boxes of donation things that we saved to get to 1 thing I need, & curse everytime I do it. I threaten to get a dumpster, then my wife screams back that we're going to have a yard sale & make money off it, so we can't toss it.

I think I can start to make stuff start disappearing one box at a time. 

[Mike DC]

   

My friend's mom recently cleaned out her father's stuff in a small house in Baltimore.  They ended up throwing away 60 cubic yards of stuff. 

[b5blue]

Over the years I (being a dutiful son) moved her 8 times, then stopped as it came to me I was an enabler. I tried logic like 250.00 X 12 = 2600.00 to store 500.00 worth of stuff X 10 years = 26,000.00! The let's just call Salvation Army, get a big dumpster, a box or two a week, ect.   Now I've got nothing, I avoid/ignore it by keeping my distance (but I know we are not getting any younger).

[PocketThunder]

My spouse helped her Mom clean out her Grandparents house after they passed.  Instead of having a estate sale they brought almost everything back to my inlaws house.  Then everytime we went back to visit, my spouses mom would send us back with something, like a lamp, a picture, a basket, etc... We were living in a small 3 flat in Chicago at the time and we had more friggin lamps than we had plug ins!   

[celticcutie]

Hoarders are classified under OCD (OBESESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER) which is an anxiety disorder.
"repetitive actions...to reduce the anxiety." However in my experience the only anxiety with hoarders is when they are called on it or forced/threatened to clean up. The problem lies not in that your mom collects things but she is does not have the skills to discard. These things are like a "security blanket" and help her cope with whatever  underlying issues she is trying to cope with.
There is no easy solution for this as it affects everybody in the family. There may be support groups in your community.