- This topic has 11 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
A friend of mine is a true hoarder (mostly piles and stacks of interesting things rather than true garbage, but there’s some spillover into the garbage category.) He recently had a severe medical issue and was in the hospital for a week. He’s now in a physical rehab facility and will require visiting nurses once he’s home. The thing is, of course, that his home is completely unsafe for him in his medically compromised state, and the house will require heavy cleanout before he’s able to come home. Some friends and I are going to talk to him tomorrow about cleaning it out for him.
Has anyone cleaned out a hoard? I’d love to hear your stories/experiences/advice. What do I need to bring that I’m probably not even considering?
Thanks so much for your thoughts.
-
Can he afford storage? From what I’ve seen (just on tv) what they see they can’t part with. If you could honestly tell him you had it safely stored for him, that might bring him peace of mind. Also, I’d ask him what means the most to him if he’s up for that. If he can remember it, it can stay. Good luck! Get some gloves!
-
I’ve cleaned out plenty of places but never a hoarder house. I’d imagine its pretty basic: throw away the trash. If there really is valuable items, then box them up. Christine has a good suggestion about storage.
I’d be interested to hear his thoughts on cleaning his house. If he’s a real hoarder, he may not even know he has a problem.
“Hoarding behavior is often severe because hoarders do not recognize it as a problem. It is much harder for behavioral therapy to successfully treat compulsive hoarders with poor insight about their disorder. Results show that hoarders were significantly less likely to see a problem in a hoarding situation than a friend or a relative might.”
-
-
I would talk to the physical rehab facility about meeting with a social worker before going forward with cleaning the house. If the rehab facility doesn’t have a social worker they work with, talk with the hospital about meeting with one. It can be REALLY psychologically hard for a hoarder to part with their things, even when every outside person can clearly see it’s trash and a health hazard. A social worker can help you chart a path to helping your friend in a compassionate way.
As for the actual clean out, I have been to a hoarder house, and it was unreal in a way that will probably never leave me. I will never do it again. If you watch shows like “American Pickers”, they make it seem so fun, like “Ha ha, we’re just crawling all around this dirty, leaky barn and having a great time looking for fun things!” What they don’t tell you about is what a hoarder house/barn smells like. It’s 30 years of rot, dampness, mold, rodent piss. There’s a decent chance you will find something dead on the property. You may also find evidence of a drug or addiction problem. That can go hand in hand with hoarding. I stumbled upon several cases of cheap, cheap vodka hidden in different areas of the property. (And yes, I also found a dead thing amidst the stuff).
Have you been in your friend’s house before, or are you going into this situation blind? If you’ve been inside, have you seen all of the rooms or just ones that your friend was willing to let you see?
Does the plumbing work? Is there electricity? Air Conditioning? Do the windows open? Even if the place is clean but merely jammed full of stuff, it will be incredibly dusty. I’d bring a cooler of bottled water, hand sanitizer, flashlights, bug spray, and breathing masks to handle the dust.The thing that surprised me the most was the psychological impact the hoarder house had on everyone that was there. This was an estate auction I went to, so none of us had any personal connection to the homeowner or property. Every single person at that sale was upset, agitated, overwhelmed, and stressed from being on the property. Even the auctioneers were overwhelmed, and these were very, very experienced people. Being around a huge volume of stuff plus having to make endless judgment calls on all of it, (does it have value? Is it too damaged to salvage?), plus having to keep to a schedule was exhausting, physically and mentally.
I don’t know if that helps at all. I feel like I just rained down negativity, but yikes. Hoarding situations are really hard.
-
I don’t know if what I have to say will help at all but I did see this a couple of times. Also I worked in the drug addiction field for many years so I know that when it comes to addiction, intervention has worked many times to help bring the person around. Intervention can happen in many forms: sometimes it is contrived and sometimes it just happens naturally. Getting arrested, going to jail, family cutting you off, losing your job, a professional interventionist hired to take you to rehab, are some examples of intervention.
In the case of the few hoarders I have seen, two were forced to move and one had died. The forced move was effective in dealing with the hoard but upsetting for the hoarders and everyone else.
The first time I saw a hoarder’s nest was at a yard sale where she was forced to move out, she had about 5 or 6 people there helping her to get rid of stuff. She was there while the sale was going on and to her credit she was doing ok but her helpers were really working hard and fast! It was a mess! Her apartment (with garage space) was close to the beach so the mold was overwhelming. I am sure she could have done it on her own and it required an intervention with several people there to hold the lines.
Another time, an eviction situation, the house was so full you had to move stuff outside just to get to the next item. I believe the hoarder was a drug addict based on a few clues left behind. She was a smoker too so it was really stinky. From what the neighbors said, the hoarder had tried to break into the house several times after she was kicked out, and I suspect she had drugs in there she was looking for. As Liz said, it was overwhelming and very upsetting. I was there for four hours and even though I had the opportunity to return, I just couldn’t face it. But that does bring up the point again that being forced to move was the intervention.
Anyway, just my two cents and again, I don’t know if this is helpful at all but I hope it is.
-
Thanks so much for the help, everyone!
I visited my friend today (he’s in a rehabilitation facility after heart surgery.) He absolutely recognizes that he’s got a problem, that his house is a problem, and that the stuff needs to go so that he can live downstairs. There are a few things he’d like to hang on to, but for the most part, he’s ready to let go. He will not be part of the cleanout process. I think, in all honesty, he’s not a true hoarder in the sense that he can’t let go of anything, but he’s created a hoarder-like space for himself through buying and buying and buying and rarely selling and then trying to live around the clutter.
A few of us went over there today. The dust is incredible. There’s some trash and newspapers, but it’s mostly STUFF (thousands of books, hundreds of paintings) rather than GARBAGE (bottles of urine, etc.); but yes, you’re right — the dust is outrageous. I usually don’t have a problem with dust but we’ll definitely be needing masks and gloves.
The water issue was also a great question. Apparently, various things were leaking (kitchen sink, bathroom cold water) so he just cut the pipes and capped them off. The good news is that some other friends of his hooked up with a plumber and an electrician and are dealing with that side of it, because we’re not equipped for that.
We’re putting together a game plan and will be attacking things over the next few days. I’ll post about the process if anyone’s interested…!
Thank you all again.
-
-
-
I’m glad he’s ready to let go. In light of the previous leaks, I would anticipate there is some degree of mold in the house. Make sure your breathing gear can filter for mold. Once you get everything cleaned out, you might consider doing a mold treatment paint on affected surfaces to help keep your friend healthy going forward.
-
So, we spent about 4 hours there today. Made a small dent.
There are thousands of books. Hundreds of paintings and maps. A handful of smalls (really not that many). Paths through the piles of things. A lot of accumulated mail and newspapers (2 pickup truck loads of paper went to the dump today, and that was just in 1.5 rooms.) And there’s dust like you can’t believe. Actual garbage — only one or two bags. Not really that bad, so far, on the garbage front.
I pulled out a few paintings/maps to research and list for him. The books, we’re going to go through, check for signatures, and group by topic. We’ve got a squad to dig out the high value books and get them listed, and then we’ll do a yard sale at maybe $1 or $2 a book and probably make a few hundred more that way. His financial situation is dire, so we want to try squeezing money out for him where we can.
The whole place was an object lesson in buying but not listing, and in deferring decisions/action. Lots for me to learn.
-
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.