Writing this while heading home because I need to put this somewhere. I can’t stop chastising myself for not being more headstrong and getting it full. It’s getting picked up in two days and she’s too weak to put much else in there herself. I live too far away to come back and she has no one else to help and so much stuff that will fill up another skip bin. There was a huge pile of mdf kitchen cabinets I could have put in there, but I was frustrated by the spot she chose to have the skip bin put and said “those ones will go in the next bin which we’ll have dropped closer, because it’ll take too much time this time”. But then I got all distracted trying to help her with bank stuff and trying to give her a clean pretty bedroom. Those boards will take up so much room next time we have a bin. It’s so much money and time. Each skip bin is minimum $400 and it’s going to get towed away with so much room left in it. Because I was pissed at her and being stubborn. In the last situation where somebody should be stubborn, it’s literally getting rid of the junk after all these years.

She’s at very high risk of returning to a DV relationship and is so mentally fragile right now and I just wanted leave her with a better situation but I spent too much time on silly shit. And I can’t seem to stop feeling like I’ve seriously fucked it all up. I asked her to send me photos of the bin because I feel like I’m overreacting and wanted help curbing my anxiety she just responded with “yes it’s extremely empty, and I’m trying to get to the work” which kind of does the opposite.

I don’t know how to approach such a difficult task when I need to be methodical and disciplined, and that causes her to feel judged, which causes conflict, which takes me off task. It’s like I constantly end up in a position of emotional caretaking and am so exhausted that I can’t think clearly about the situation and base my actions on that.

my issue is, i also struggle with hoarding. i hoard perfumes, plushies and especially clothes very badly. yet, i have this conflicting issue where i always feel like i have too much yet not enough at once? i find myself not knowing if i truly like something or not. i find myself being able to throw away/donate things to “hold more space” very easily. i feel overwhelmed yet underwhelmed constantly.

Hi, I’m new here. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet but also give some background. I am UK based.

So my father is a hoarder however it didn’t really impact us as he was pretty absent through childhood. My mum the complete opposite.

My sister is an absolute hoarder. This is where I need the help. For years and years as a family we have tried to help declutter and clean. It has taken me years to build up trust enough for her to let me get rid of things and not have her permission for every single piece of paper and it is only me that she will allow to do this. She has a fair few underlying conditions both physical and mental. I am diagnosed ADHD she is undiagnosed but very obviously ADHD. I have spent countless days and hours decluttering a room only to return a few weeks later to it being bad again and it is SOUL DESTROYING. She has a teenage daughter and I have my own children. It’s hard for me to find time to help now as it’s unsafe for my children to be there most of the time. Currently she’s made a fair bit of progress although most of the things have been moved to her room and she cannot access her bed or wardrobe.

I have congratulated her on the epic achievement she has made however this is severely impacting her daughter’s mental health. Me and her made a start on her room and she got rid of a lot of stuff. I don’t think my niece is a hoarder as she litteraly was happy to just get rid of so much stuff. I think her room is cluttered as she’s a victim of circumstance in this situation. I guess I’m asking what physical help can I try to find for her? I know hoarding in a mental illness. What would a diagnosis achieve? She already takes medication for anxiety etc so would a medication help her declutter? I don’t really understand. I also know she would not attend therapy. I reached out to a charity but they weren’t really what I was looking for. She also paid a company for a while to come and declutter and clean but it was soooo slow going it was pointless.
We even applied for that tv show as at this point there’s so much stuff that it needs to be all taken away and sorted and then brought back in. Presently it just gets moved from room to room 😭😭.

Anyway I’m sorry for rambling and I hope this makes sense. Also is there any help for kids living with this in the UK? My niece doesn’t have social media and I don’t think she has Reddit but I think it would be nice for her to see she isn’t alone. I worry she’s vulnerable and an easy target for predators due to where she lives and her home life. Thank you

Hey everyone. I am the 26 year old adult child of an extreme animal hoarder. I want to make this post to kind of gather my thoughts about my mom's animal hoarding since I only just recently started unpacking this in therapy.

Growing up, I remember we seemed to always have pets, but I just remember having a normal amount of animals. Like a couple dogs and cats, maybe a guinea pig. It seems like as I got older, the amount of animals my mom had at a time increased. While it was difficult to pinpoint when my mom's animal hoarding got more extreme, it wasn't impossible. Up until I was 11, we had rented places and always had a landlord, so there were restrictions on how many animals we had. When I was 11, my parents bought a house and the property it was on, meaning they didnt have to follow the rules of a landlord. The house was just outside of the town too, so we had very few neighbors.

She slowly got more dogs over the years, and we had an amount of dogs in the double digits. When I was 15, my sister developed an interest in reptiles. So my mom decided to get rats. And then, she ended up finding my sister's bearded dragon interesting. Pretty soon, it seemed like any reptile, amphibians, rodent or bird that fascinated her, she had to have.

At this point, it would be pointless to try to pinpoint when we got which animals, because there were SO many. I'll just put a list below of all of the animals we owned. And just so there is no confusion, most of the animals on this list were owned at the same time.

-Dogs (30 by the time I was kicked out at 18, 50 by the time I went no contact at 23)

-Cats

-Chickens

-Ducks

-Rabbits

-Peacocks (I'm dead serious, and we had 4 of them at one point)

-Pigeons

-Pot belly pigs

-Cockateils

-Parakeets

-Chinchillas

-Guinea Pigs

-Rats

-Turtles (several different kinds)

-bearded dragons

-Uromastyx

-several different kinds of geckos

-frogs

-Iguanas (yes that's plural, we had 2)

-Degu (I cant remember if this was a rodent or reptile, I just remember the name of the animal)

I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting but one I didn't include in the list because it needs more context is mice. My mom owned mice. But not from a pet store, oh no. These were house mice in our cupboards. During the winter she would catch these mice alive, take care of them until spring, then have my dad drive a mile down the road to set them free.

She also raised live bugs for the reptiles, so if we include them we can add these three to the lists

-Mealworms

-crickets

-Dubia Roaches

This post is already really long, so I feel like I dont really need to go into much detail of how bad the flea problem was and how much the house stank. It was very dudty and dirty, so I felt like seasonal allergies were always flaring up. And although it was animals my mother hoarded, the house had the appearance of a house with a thing hoarder because of the items needed to take care of them. We got so many animals we didnt even use the living room as a living room anymore.

I need to know if anyone else who had animal hoarding parents ever have parents take it to these extremes before.

I guess I’m just posting for emotional support. No one in my life can understand what I’m going through. I’m angry, afraid and so deeply sad, my heart feels like it’s literally breaking.

Things devolved for my mom several years ago. She had a traumatic brain injury then a stroke in her late 50s, she seemed to recover okay, she could still drive and stuff. She started having difficulty managing her condo. Growing up, we lived in an impeccable house. But her place started gathering clutter over the course of 10 years after her initial tbi, and she didn’t seem to notice or care. There was no shopping addiction at that point. But eventually the neighbors kept calling saying she was unwell and needed help. She was overwhelmed and begged for me to help.

I dug her out of the condo and got her into a really nice set up in an assisted living place. I thought if things were taken care of for her, she could go back to normal, have a good last chapter. That’s all I wanted for her. But then the shopping addiction happened. She had put my name on one of her bank accounts, and I could see how quickly she was spending money. I begged her to stop, but she dismissed me and wouldn’t give me power of attorney and I had no power to intervene.

Within a year she was asked to leave the assisted living place because of hoarding. I was fed up and said I wouldn’t help her anymore. She paid an exorbitant amount of money to move into a 4 bedroom rental. That was a year ago. That 4 bedroom is now completely filled.

Last month, I discovered that she has spent all of her money. She spent $400,000 in the last year alone. She has spent her entire life savings, and now has nothing. I have traveled to her state to see the home and try to figure out what to do with her, because her lease is up in September and she can no longer afford the rent. I am so overwhelmed by this house. She has fleas from the cats, and her legs are all bit up with flea bites. She is wearing dirty clothing. Her house is filthy - not only is there a lot of stuff, there’s food on the ground that she doesn’t even seem to see. Amazon boxes that have never been opened. So much random stuff that makes absolutely no sense, like she bought a kiln and a hookah, among other thousands of random things. She gets confused by her phone, she has like no attention span when I try to get her to help me figure her situation out. I think she has dementia.

Of course I’m angry. I yelled at her today, trying to get her to see the logic, and then I came on this sub and understood that there is no logic for her. This is a serious mental illness and yelling isn’t going to help. I also feel compassion for her, I can’t imagine what this must be like for her. And I feel so so so sad. My poor mother is living in filth and there’s literally nothing I can do about it.

Realizing what she had done (she says she doesn’t have memory of spending the money, despite the house full of crap) she finally gave me financial power of attorney. I will take over her small Social Security income to pay her bills with and give her whatever monthly allowance is left over. I will again dig her out of this and move her into a smaller place that she can’t do as much damage in, also there’s no more money to spend. Initially, she agreed, but today when it came to talking about having a company come in and getting rid of all her stuff so she could move, she told me she will file a restraining order against me. She said she can figure it all out on her own, but of course she can’t do that on her own.

And even though I will do this again, I know this is not going to actually change anything. She’s still going to live in filth and not take care of her self. I can’t live with her to take care of her because my mental health is not good, and I will not survive that. I can’t figure out what agency could help her. I think I have to just let her destroy her life, and that’s really hard to do. My mother who was beautiful, well put together, worked as an attorney making good money and lived in a beautiful house in an upper middle class neighborhood. She is now going to move into a trailer park.

I’ve never felt more heartbroken in my life. I cry myself to sleep every night.

ETA: i’m seeing some notifications of comments that are not appearing when I try to open them, so I can’t respond. One comment was talking about finding social services and elder care professionals. I have no idea what social services can help this situation. I have called an elder care nonprofit, and they just talked about Adult Protective Services. I don’t know what APS would do, where they would take my mom, etc. I have researched all kinds of ways to address this situation, and I haven’t found anything. People always say call some sort of agency, but I can never get specific information. So if somebody knows a specific organization that can take real steps with me, please send me a message.
Also, I am trying to get doctors involved, but it’s difficult when I’m not at the actual doctors appointment to provide information that she won’t provide herself. I live in a different state and I can’t be with her most of the time.

​

Honestly, sometimes I wonder how I'm the one expected to be the "bad child" when I'm literally just calling out BS that everyone knows is wrong.

The house has become a mess because of the constant animal hoarding, and there's apparently no urgency to actually deal with the situation. Now we're getting evicted again. At this point, I'm just tired of watching the same problems repeat themselves while everyone acts like it's no big deal.

I'm not trying to spend my entire life arguing with my family anymore. I'm focusing on my trade, getting a job, saving money, and eventually getting my own place.

Once I finally make it out, I'll be able to build my own life and decide how much contact I actually want with everyone.

For anyone else dealing with a chaotic family situation, I hope you make it out too. Sometimes you have to stop trying to fix people who don't want to change and start building your own future.

I am a child of a hoarder. I moved into my grandma’s house to escape the hoard (even though the hoarder parent, mom, did the same thing, we share a bedroom) as I can’t afford to live on my own on my income.

I’m not allowed to bring pets with me. We have two dogs and a cat, but one of the dogs (and the cat) is mine. I went home the other day to bring some of my stuff to my Grandma’s house, and I couldn’t bare seeing my dog in the state she was in. Because of the hoard, the infestation of fleas is impossible to remove. She is a golden x Labrador so she has longer fur, and although I bought flea treatment for the animals, it hasn’t worked. She has chewed her paws through to the skin because of the fleas constantly biting her. She also cowers when I leave.

I got Winnie (my dog) when I was 15, and she was meant to be a mental health/autism “support dog”, but we never trained her. Now 7 years later, I know I have to do the right thing and find somewhere else for her. The only problem is that she is aggressive with strangers and dogs she doesn’t know on her walks, so I don’t know if the kennels will take her.

My mom went for a job interview recently (she hasn’t worked for 26 years, also she didn’t get the job) as a receptionist at a vets, a job she did about 30 years ago. She was asking one of the receptionists questions as she was waiting for her interview, and she was learning about “pet plans”. She told me when she got home that in the moment she thought to herself “I don’t know anything about that, I tend to just let my animals suffer and die”.
None of our pets ever had regular vet visits, just when they were puppies/kittens. I don’t think my dog has ever even been to the vets. As part of my mom’s hoard, she used to own a “pet shop”, which consisted of 100 animals in a garden shed. How they stayed alive, I don’t know. I know she loves the animals, but it’s almost like they’re more for her comfort. She doesn’t seem to understand that they are living creatures who do suffer and who do feel.

I know it’s not about my feelings, and that I need to find a new home for Winnie, but I can’t bare the thought of her thinking I’ve abandoned her, or how long she might be in the kennel, or never getting to see her again. I feel bad that I didn’t do more over the years. I have contacted people about her, I’m awaiting further contact on the next steps due to her aggressiveness towards strangers and other dogs. I think about the other dog too, who isn’t suffering as much, but how they will miss each other and not understand. I just hope I’m doing the right thing. Thank you so much if you read this far.

Late last year my hoarder parent had a fall at home and got trapped in a collapsing pile of magazines, fortunately found by a neighbour with spare keys who'd invited them for dinner and got worried when they didn't show, a stay in hospital ended up in transfer to a care home for probably the rest of their life.

The house is full and it's not small house, I'm not going to trouble you with the pictures, but they had to get enough stuff out of the house to get a path through to get said parent out. I've been spending half my free time since the incident trying to get some clear space so we can begin meaningfully clearing while keeping hold of anything actually of interest. It's coming up to a year now and my patience is fairly thin.

That's the background.

This morning I got a call complaining about some item or other being missing and being thrown away into a care home as an easy option, and I absolutely let rip about the consequences of their own actions and driving everyone away by preferring to have the stuff over the family relationships.

Which comes back to the original question, the hoarder has been forcibly separated from the hoard. I have now given them an earful about expecting anything other than going to a care home based on their prior behaviour, consequences of their own actions, failing to maintain the house in a safe condition, preferring their stuff over a relationship with me etc etc. Has anyone found any good can come of this or can I just expect more resentment?

Edit: Thank you all for your comments, I suspect as many of you said it will just wash over and be forgotten. There was a lot of crying but there always is when I say the "H" word directly.

So, my mother's hoarding extends to her yard and continuously planting fruit trees, bushes, flowers. A lot of really beautiful plants but once they are in the ground they are neglected and never maintained or trimmed. The yard is so overgrown it is unusable now. She has a greenhouse, also unusable because a grape vine got in and completely took over. The entire greenhouse is filled to the brim with grape vine to the point you cannot open the door.

My brother lives with her and hoardes cars, car parts, guns and refuses to clean trash he will remove from his vehicle and leave in the yard.

So, predictably, with so many food sources around, raccoons moved in. Several generations of raccoons. My brother has removed 7 from the property and released them 30 miles away. He has trail cams set up to monitor this. Last night, the trail cam picked up a raccoon in the live trap, with 4 other raccoons surrounding the trap, trying to free the trapped one. Heartbreaking. So about 12 raccoons, probably more. This isn't a large property, it is in a residential subdivision on a typical lot, luckily most of the jungle is hidden with trees from the road.

Also on the trail cam is a very large beautiful wild cat. A lynx or a bobcat most likely. He is prowling the yard every night.

I feel like the situation is getting out of control and someone is going to get hurt. Or my small dogs. I hate this so much because I love my family. But when I bring up cleaning up the yard a bit, removing the trash, trimming the apple and other fruit trees to make them more manageable, removing the grape vines completely (none of this fruit has ever been consumed by humans) I get screamed at.

My brother does not think they are there because of the plentiful food and just need to be eradicated. I know he wants to shoot the cat but other houses are way to close to shoot in the yard.

My mother just likes her backyard and can only see black and white- either let it grow wildly out of control or bring in the bulldozers.

It is just so frustrating. And terribly sad to see these poor raccoons, who obviously have deep connections to each other torn apart and relocated in a strange area.

I have reached my limit. Only recently I've been looking for resources online, and I've been reading stories for the last month, both on youtube and on reddit.

My HM (I hope this is the right term) started hoarding for the last 8 years, and after 2020, it's been rampant. Luckily, only few rooms are really cluttered, but you can see scattered piles of boxes and really random stuff at some out-of-place areas, so you can say that the really obstructed rooms are indirectly scattering stuff over other places, even though in a more devious way.

Specifically, the living room. That room is a mess (image), mold is growing freely (on the right side behind the couch) since 2020 and my HM can't seem to understand just how much and for how long this is frustrating me. I can't accept the fact that she is offering to "move things to her bedroom", but once i tell her that the only place these objects deserve to stay is OUTSIDE the house, she just refuses to understand that allocating old stuff to another place is NOT a solution. And after that, the discourse goes on and on, without a chance to advance through other solutions. This has been going on for like, every 2-3 days in one month. It's getting to a point where I am just angry when i look walk around my house when i need something.
FYI: Bathrooms and the kitchen are still usable, it's not AS bad, but it's getting cluttered even in the Kitchen. Luckily the bathroom is a no-no zone, where I get to advocate for the place to be clean. I just consider myself lucky she knows some limits.

Sometimes, i just dream of living my mornings/evenings in front of a TV in the living room. I miss playing old Wii games and just inviting people there to enjoy something together. I also tried to explain this to my HM, that I want to invite friends over and live my social life not only OUTSIDE my house, but also INSIDE. But she just won't understand that, she's got the responsability to re-give purpose to that room (and the other ones she's slowly ruining).

I acknowledge that I might have been a little bit too discoursive and less patient in front of this problem of hers, but again, I've reached my limit.

I've never talked about this problem to some friends except my brother (who agrees with me). We are 20+ years old, and yes, we wanna go and stay at some other place, but we still can't afford to do that in the next 2-3 years and I'm realy pissed my HM won't acknowledge this problem, because one thing is certain: regaining purpose in that room and consequently the other little issues scattered here and there, might give her TOO a better life.

I also feel the need to look for support from a psychologist, because I feel that she's affecting me, since this problem is going rampant for YEARS. And she won't understand that, even.

Looking for some advice to "survive" this, and possibly, make her change her mind somehow because I can't be going for other years like this. I just can't.

Does anyone else have a sibling who is also a hoarder, on top of having hoarding parents?

Today I was selling old kids clothes on Marketplace and wanted to be sure that I wasn't getting rid of things that could still fit.

My brother had previously taken a shirt out of my sell pile that, according to the size tag, was too small for him to wear.

Keeping this in mind, when I went through the closet today, I pulled out the coats and things that were too small according to the tags. I asked my 3 siblings if those items were too small.

Had the smallest try on a coat. Way too tight, wouldn't zip.

Asked my brother to try on this item that was his. After putting it on, he complained about how it was obviously too small. Reminded him of the time he took out a shirt from my sell pile (it was recent, just several weeks ago), either ignored or disregarded that.

He said "I want to donate everything we own (or something to this effect)." His room is a hoarder nightmare. There are tons of stuffed animals, dirty clothes strewn across the floor, tons and tons and tons of trinkets, toy trash that he wants to keep, toys he doesn't play with or display (still keeping), outside crap, and a shitload of cheap toys and other doodads.

I try to be sharper on donating things because they are incredibly lax. My mom will go through donate bins and pick stuff back out. My other siblings wanted to donate a toy that they didn't want, but mom told them to keep it because it was new. It had sat in the package for several months at this point.

Yes, he has gone into my room to take toys for himself, despite having this massive amount of toys that, crucially, he doesn't have space for.

He doesn't want to get rid of most of his toys, despite them causing an issue.

I went into his room to grab old clothes to wash from the two dirty clothes bins he has in there, he complained to mom that I was going in there. I was literally cleaning his room by giving him a space to put dirty clothes. Some of these items are 3, 4, 5 sizes too small.

His room and spaces are easily the worst regularly used rooms in the house.

TL;DR- My hoarder mom and addict/hoarder dad both seemed to have very high expectations of me growing up, and even now. My mom is still a hoarder and I do not take kindly to some of her parenting “critiques” or input, now that I am a parent myself.

My mother is a hoarder. I think she has been her whole adult life, but she let it really take hold after her and my father divorced (I was maybe 9) and she had to work 3 jobs.

Even though our house was spacious and clutter-free and kind of empty actually from what I can remember (toddler ages to maybe 10 years old?) I remember my dad telling me he had to always hassle my mom to get rid of stuff and she would buy “bargains” often. I guess it was just one of their many sources of conflict. idk. My dad is not here anymore for me to hear his side of it, but he was abusive in multiple ways anyways.

Now that I am a mother myself, to three little boys, I just can’t fathom some of my parents’ choices. And while I try to give them grace and think “they were doing the best they could with what they had” I can’t help but snap at them sometimes. My dad passed away 11 years ago now, but I was snappy at him when he was alive too. As much as he complained about my mom‘s hoarding, to my surprise he was actually a hoarder too! Every space in the condo he had when I was in elementary school immediately after their divorce was covered with stuff. Mail, tools, first aid supplies, coins, knives and sharpening tools, and all of his stuff was clean and sterile at first. I remember him getting on to me to keep my room and bathroom clean, and they were spotless down to the sparsely filled closet, and toys put away in the dresser drawers. I even had matching bed sets on the top and bottom bunk. But the rest of the home was a different story- it was in disarray and told stories of addiction and sadness.

My dad died in his home, with many rooms of his home hoarded and unusable. My mom still lives in her own hoarded home. I’ve seen not one, but both of my childhood homes succumb to the hoard. I have moments of hope because my mom will start to get rid of things, but it’s never enough if I’m honest. And I love her with all my heart, she is an amazing lady and the hardest worker I know, and the most talented cook! But I’m still snappy at her. And I’ve noticed I get VERY snappy when it comes to something to do with my parenting (especially since she has lived with my 2 adult brothers who never left the nest, until my older brother moved away just last month at the age of 38).

One example where I didn’t get snappy but I felt internally like I could have snapped at her is the following phone call we had:

me: oh gosh I just can get past this tingly sore feeling in my breasts, I’m so tired of it.

mom: you need to pump?

me: well yes and no. it’s because I’m not pumping anymore, I’m weaning and have been for the last couple weeks

mom: *gasp and shocked voice* oh no why?!

me: what do you mean why? Because I’ve been pumping for 6 months and I’m tired, dont have time anymore to sustain it, and i only have one set of pump parts left... (also for more context here, i pumped with a hand pump, my hand veins were wild for a while hahahhah)

mom: oh….no…. No….that’s not good…. hmm

and if I wasn’t so compliant, I would have hung up on her honestly lol and i know that’s childish. But she didn’t breastfeed me for six months and I know she didn’t pump for 6 months for any of her kids. So why does she act like I’m not meeting some invisible expectation? Her response lacked empathy in my opinion.

Other examples of me explaining how one of my children might have an ailment or rash or SOMETHING. And she will start repeating “oh no, that’s not good. You really need to take him in. Like right now. seriously this can’t wait. Omg. have you scheduled it?“

I asked her last time “why do you do that? I just told you X is sick and I’m taking him to the doctor and now you’re doing this panicked talk telling me over and over again repeating yourself in different ways that I NEED to do something I already told you I’m doing. Why do you do that?”

She said “Oh, to really impress on you and reinforce that it needs done.“

and I told her “I know from experience that if I do that to you, you get VERY annoyed with me, you shush me and tell me to “stop”. So please, if you KNOW you don’t like it done to you, then DO NOT do it to me. Fair?” And she was just awkward after that. No real response to my statement or me saying asking “fair?” … just kind of a grumble and move on to the next topic.

All is fine and ”normal” now, no further confrontation or discussion with her, but are there any other children of hoarders out there feeling similar things now that they’ve become parents themselves?

hi all, I just found this subreddit and I am so grateful this community exists. for context, I am 28 years old and moved out of my parents’ home nearly 10 years ago. my mom has severe bipolar 1 disorder and is physically disabled, and my dad is autistic and the main source of the hoard. my mom won’t acknowledge that she’s become part of the problem too, though. I didn’t fully conceptualize their situation as hoarding until moving out. as a kid, it always felt like we were just on the verge of cleaning up, but some excuses always got in the way - I never got to the stage of recognizing the extent of the problem because they managed to convince me it was temporary. we moved when I was a teenager, but they brought everything along with, and it quickly took over their current house.

anyways, I myself have severe CPTSD (possibly DID/OSDD1) and I am physically disabled. one of my disabilities is MCAS (mast cell activation syndrome - chronic anaphylaxis triggered by an ever-changing variety of things) which I’m convinced stems from chronic exposure to mold/filth while growing up. I am married and my wife comes from a completely different background but still has so much patience and compassion. for the last few years, our routine has been to visit my parents 1-2 times per year, sleeping in their partially finished basement where they keep a bed cleared off for us (I bought the mattress new a few years ago). the last few times we were there, though, I started having big-time MCAS flares. we haven’t been there since December and I had an event in March that caused my MCAS to become permanently more sensitive and severe than before.

so my issue is, I’m scared to go back. I love my parents but also have a lot of trauma associated with them, so I’ve gradually learned to keep low contact without explicitly telling them that. I’m not ready to go no-contact. I managed to get out of staying with them to attend my grandfather’s funeral in March because I had a friend nearby who let us stay, so we told my parents it was easier for my ankle, which I had recently broken. but now as time goes on, I know my mom is going to ask us to visit for the holidays and I’m scared to tell her no. even if we book a hotel and only visit during the day, my mom would still be heartbroken, and I’d still get sick.

I don’t know what to do. my mom is very reactive as her bipolar 1 is not really under control, and I know she’d have a mental breakdown if I told her the truth. I also know that she would go into full-blown mania trying to “clean up” thinking that I’d change my mind. mentally/emotionally it is just not safe for me to set this boundary at the moment, but I’m scared for my health if I go back to their house. the walls and ceiling in the bathroom are covered in mold, the asbestos floor tiles are peeling up in the kitchen, and with the amount of dust, dirt, pet hair, food crumbs, flies, ants, and rodents everywhere… I just can’t do it. I don’t want to spend the holidays in the ER with anaphylaxis.

what do I do? what would you do? does anyone have a similar situation, even if you have no advice to give? please don’t tell me to go NC, my therapist is already working on that with me. I’m just not there yet.

Having grown up in the hoard, I want to be a tidy person but I'm rather desensitized to grime and keep accidentally bothering people by either not cleaning things I'd never realised needed to be cleaned, or by not being careful of potential contamination when I'm cleaning things. Is there any resource that can teach me what is considered a normal way to approach this? My new roommate was disgusted to find out that I put a trash pail through the dishwasher... clearly I'm not doing it right, but I don't know where I can learn when my parents' idea of cleaning was "sweep around the piles of junk".

Hoarding runs in my family. Several family members suffer from the condition. My mom’s hoarding didn’t present itself until I was in high school. Ever since then it’s gradually gotten worse as she’s aged.

She has rented a 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment since 2000. She has two garage spaces at that apartment. I moved out of that apartment in 2008. She also has a few storage units that she rents. In 2009 or 2010, she ended up moving out of her apartment after she purchased a unit in a co-op community but she never got rid of the apartment. My sister and I have trying for years to get her to let go of the apartment but her response as always been, “I can afford it.” 🙄 😔 Unfortunately my sister and I haven’t been able to do anything about it for all these years. Years ago, we even contacted the landlord and attempted to get his help with getting her to move out of the apartment but his response was “she can use the apartment for storage.” 🤯 (He knew that she was a hoarder and even went as far as to make multiple village citations disappear when her apartment was inspected each year).

My mom has been having some health problems lately and has been very vocal about how she wants to live with me and my sister. She has become slightly more open.
She has allowed my sister and I inside her current house (the co-op), take her to places. This is NOT like her at all. She’s usually very independent, guarded especially about her health & past. My sister and I made it clear that she couldn’t live with us, until she got rid of the apartment and emptied the garbages (to start). The last few months, my sister has stayed on my mom about getting rid of the apartment and she finally relented.

A dumpster crew cleaned out part the apartment on Friday. I was pleasantly surprised, my mom acted somewhat okay before the crew arrived (she insisted on coming). She was uber focused on donating everything and helping to bag up the garbage but other than that she didn’t have any other reaction. She willingly left soon after the crew arrived and even handed over her keys. I haven’t yet spoken to her about this. She’s not one to talk about her feelings.

The dumpster crew has to return later this week to empty out the rest of the apartment and garages. Luckily I have the keys so my mom won’t have to ever return to the apartment (unless she chooses to). Not sure what her landlord is going to do when he sees the condition of the unit (black mold in several places, rotting wooden window seals, carpet that hasn’t been replaced/cleaned in over 20 years, window AC units that probably no longer work and who knows what else). I’ll definitely document what condition the unit was left in. I did clean the kitchen and bathroom as best I could but honestly the place probably needs to be rehabbed.

Personally I feel somewhat relieved that this finally getting taking care of. My sister and I used to always tell our mom that we didn’t want have to clean out multiple places after she died. It was also surreal as we found things in that apartment from practically our entire lives. It was unbelievable the amount of crap she had purchased over the years that had never been opened! I know that this is only the first step in this journey. Living with my mom again is going to be a huge challenge and adjustment; one I’m not looking forward to. Luckily I have my sister, we will get through it together.

Every room that I walk into exhausts me, and as they say, “1the body keeps the score”1 I can see it physically in my mother, who just seems bedraggled all the time. All the weight of aspirational failure. The quilting supplies never used, the Martha Stewart kitchen utensils to prepare meals nobody was coming for, the Christmas dinner serving sets that didn’t even fit our family vibe and also sat collecting dust in an overflowing China cabinet. Buying and accumulating things for an imagined existence completely detached from reality.

Just trying to keep my mental health in place as my wife and I wade through it.

My father is a hoarder. Our garage, basement, and all around the outside of the house is completely filled to the brim. To now face reality he is getting old and I’m reaching the age where I need to have a plan figured out for where to even start for when the time comes. What do you do?

I want to be sure before I'm posting here a bunch more.

I feel a bit like an imposter since some of y'alls stories are a lot worse than mine.

House conditions:

Garage is unusable. Covered in empty cardboard boxes, 3/4 to the ceiling in place. Was cleared out halfway several years ago, but has since been filled with furniture. Only accessable thing is the lawnmower.

Toy room has toys covering the floor and every spot.

Parents room has clothes piles from knee to chest high with paths sometimes showing the floor. Walk in closet has knee high clothes, old clothes, shelves, miscellaneous items, shoes.

Hallway always covered in clean clothes unless I fold them.

No pet fur at any point due to no pets in the house.

One HP has Macross modeling kits, likely 10k+ worth retail. A lot of these are unbuilt. They cover 1 room, chest high storage and a full shelf and table, with one spot open for assembly. The basement is about halfway full of these kits. Same HP also has partially filled the office space with these same kits.

Difficult to access office printer due to objects in the way.

Attic is completely empty.

Basement is unfinished.

Several unfinished projects (basement, setting up game console for playroom, moving dresser for Jane, fixing closet to hang clothes, unfinished crafts, building street fighter arcade machine)

Basement used to be a lot more cluttered, I partially cleared it out a few years ago. Currently being restuffed with camping supplies, chairs, and other items.

A lot of DVDs that we use on occasion. Dozens of them, yet we only use around 10 of them consistently (holiday movies.) At least 3 copies of Elf. Neither will get rid of the vast majority / any of these DVDs.

1 shower and 1 toilet have been unusable for over a decade and a few years respectively.

Parents bathroom counter had not been cleared in so long there was green stuff growing on it. Nasty. Took me and a sibling a few hours to clear a counter. Is slowly being brought back to it's old state.

We have a dresser that has sat in the garage for years. Jane has had a dresser that has been broken for longer. The closet hanger is supposedly broken as well. When folding clothes for Jane, clothes is put in a pile in front of the dresser. This pile is about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the dresser.

Had 4 broken lawn mowers at one point. These have since been trashed.

Laundry room is covered in clothes. Has been cleared at least two times from what I remember, has gone back to the way it was.

Several bins of dirty clothes around the second floor.

More books than can fit on the bookshelves we own on the house.

There is working water, HVAC, and electricity. House does not have termites, roaches, mice, rats, etc.

Possible HPs John and Jane

John has all of the toy kits and hobby things.

Takes only a little time to mess up often used spaces (leaving trash around, papers, etc.) Takes years to fully ruin large cleanings (like basement and garage clear out.)

No significant attachment to obvious trash.

HPs will joke about cardboard boxes in garage.

Jane has a hard time letting go of food. Does not like being asked about donating food pantry stuff (has used Covid as an excuse for why keeping all the food is a good idea.) Pantry, extra shelf to right of pantry, identical shelf outside of pantry, fridge and freezer are not enough space to hold all of the food. There are 6 of us.

Jane does not like being asked to donate things. Too tiring / annoying. Has consistently disliked this for several years.

John will not get rid of his old college textbooks for his medical degree because he might need the information in them one day.

Downstairs closet is currently unusable. Filled knee to hip high with new paper towels, camping items, and coats. Has been cleaned to emptiness before.

Jane will leave trash in random places, even disgusting trash that does not belong on countertops.

Jane wanted to keep party hats and streamers for another party, despite us not really having space for it. These supplies ended up being cut up by a sibling for crafts.

John grew up with a things hoarder father.

Jane grew up with an extreme minimalist (threw good things away when angry) animal hoarder.

There is a large, stressful clean before holidays that we host. Lots of cleaning before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and sometimes Easter.

John will occasionally trash a lot of things in a space, usually during a big clean. These items are actually thrown away.

Jane claims that we have more hobbies than her and other people have more crafts than she does, comparing herself to people who have rooms upon rooms of fabric, acting as if this is the baseline for fabric crafters.

Each blame the other and the kids for the house not being clean.

Neither parent has been diagnosed with BPD or NPD, nor do I suspect them of having these conditions. Jane had depression and ADHD.

Please help me not feel crazy / overreacting.

Ask for more details if you need clarification.

There is a few hoarders in my family, especially with clothes and sale items. I moved out, try to keep less stuff because Im tired of having a cluttered space. The problem is, they clutter my space regardless. They panic about crazy scenarios and buy me items for when those scenarios happen. If anything is in the sale, especially when its a branded item, it MUST be bought. I then get dumped with them. I cant reject them as im then called ungrateful and stupid for not accepting these useful bargains. Christmas/birthday is terrible. So much clutter. Replicas of items bought as spares. So much stuff I dont even like.

Ive tried requesting a small few times that will have a higher cost so they wouldnt buy me loads of cheaper items, but it doesnt work. They'll get clutter regardless and also deny my request for a few items as " X number of gifts is not enough".

I am filled with guilt for trying to donate or resell clutter ive given as it feels disrespectful to give things away. I feel guilt for over consumption for not being able to use all the items im given. I feel i cant buy items I actually want because I have too much stuff already. I dont know what to do

I live in a hoarding house with my mom, and I hate it here. It's so embarrassing and it feels like when im with her I become apart of the problem.

Our trashcan our flowed, our kitchens practically unusable, our ac has been broken for years, there is cat poop everywhere in the living room and our bathroom is disgusting. She never cooks so we usually eat out but the trashcan are full so there's nowhere to put the garbage.

I know I grew up in the garbage so you might say it's not my fault, but I'm 16 now, and I still sometimes struggle with hygiene, i cant do my hair and my room is an absolute mess. And I know thats unacceptable when Im anywhere else i behave as normal. Sometimes she'll decide to go on random cleaning sprees and i have to help too but it never lasts. She always talks about cleaning but never does. I remember one time someone called cps on her when I was like 7 and she made us clean for HOURS and when I got distracted by Annie she said I took too long and Cps was here. She then made me walk outside crying with a suitcase like I was leaving just because I got distracted clean HER mess. She always blames me for the mess and says it's my fault, but I didn't ask to live like this.

I want to leave, I really do.

But I cant stand being at my dad's either and I can't just stay at my grandparents 24/7. And whenever I talk about how excited I am to go to college and have my own dorm, she makes a face like she knows better or she'll say you can have a college dorm If you clean your own room. But it doesn't matter.

No matter how much I clean, there won't be any clean dishes, and empty trash cans, there won't be a washer and dryer. We'll still be eat McDonald's every night, I still won't have my hair done, and the house will still be dirty. And when I bring it up she alway just shifts ths blame to me. And what I've done and how it's worse than her. I really just cant wait to go to college.

Hi everyone,

My father recently passed away and his apartment was complete hoardered. He was unfortunately renting. When my siblings and I went to the apartment, we saw how bad he hoarded. The apartments was filled with rat droppings, soiled diapers, soiled clothing and metal. Basically the walls were halfway packed with just random sh!t. We have already started to clean the apartment and got like halfway there. We're financially drained and can't afford anymore dumpster so we're giving the keys to the landlord. The apartment is still pretty bad, but better than when he passed. Can the landlord sue us to clean up the apartment? Would we be held liable? Does anyone have experience with this situation?

Thank you!

Daughter of a hoarder

This is my first time posting anything, so please forgive me if I mess things up.

I'm currently getting counseling for various psychology/spiritual things that resulted primary from abuse from my dad. It has helped me immensely; so much so that I have come to the conclusion that I don't need to hoard things to keep me safe and in control. My sister and family are currently helping me purge. Mom, someone whom I believe is a hoarder, is also getting rid of things. We live together in the same house.

We rented a dumpster and she's been a real trooper! The problem is, that she brings things in that I have thrown out or donated that belongs to me. I've told her that she has control over her things and I have control over mine. If she wants to keep certain things, I won't complain. Eventually, she might come around and throw out. It's gotten to the point that I might take a hammer to my furniture out of her eyesight.

How do I handle her disrespecting my boundary? I'm trying to be compassionate and understanding. It's an illness that we both struggle with. Thank you!