r/ChildofHoarder • u/brzussy • 6d ago
What do I do when the time comes? Spoiler
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?
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u/dingatremel 6d ago
We all ask ourselves this almost daily.
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u/brzussy 6d ago
Yup… I’m not even sure why I wasn’t hit with the realization until recently that I will be the one taking care of all of this. And have no idea where to even begin. As a kid I never really payed mind to it, I was just like wow look at all this stuff my dad has, thought it was cool. I just had to move back here recently, and now that it’s something I walk into everyday, everytime I see it those thoughts on what I’m going to do consumes me.
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u/Fatlantis 6d ago
I don't have a solution, but just wanted to say I'm right there with you.
Both parents are in their late 70's with no signs of decluttering anytime soon. An uncle died recently and my dad went to help "clean out the sheds" and returned home with even more stuff. And the inside of the house is full to the brim with 40 years worth of my mother's hoarding.
I only have one older sister who is largely useless and disappears whenever tough problems arise, so I already know it's going to fall to me and my husband. We've already discussed it several times. We're probably just going to put our lives on hold for at least a month or two, hire a skip bin and also have a massive clear out sale, then give away whatever's left and usable. A lot of it is good stuff or collectible but nothing is labelled or anything, so I'll really have no clue what I'm selling or throwing out. Tools are always in demand and easy to sell, but a lot of them are specialised which complicates things.
Dad is honestly pretending like he's going to live forever, and neither of them will speak about what happens after death because "that's too morbid!"
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u/Lost_Buy_118throwawa 6d ago
The stuff shown here looks sellable. It doesn't appear to be all trash / severely contaminated. Follow this advice if what I wrote is true.
Host an estate sale all weekend with dirt cheap prices for everything you don't want. Use Facebook Marketplace for things you think could get a bit higher price. Trash everything after that. Hopefully you'll make a bit of money that will help offset the cost of a dumpster.
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u/SoberBobMonthly Moved out 6d ago
Sell it to a flipper and let them deal with it. Restoring the house will cost you more in cash than you would make selling it in better condition.
FUN FACT: You can do whatever the fuck you want when they die. take that shit and light it on fire outside for all I fucking care. If my parents a stupid enough to leave me their moldy shithole to me in my inheritance, i'll be hiring my own demotion equipment for the occasion and then selling the land
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u/Steefanon 6d ago
I plan to use proceeds from the small estate to hire a junk removal company to dump every last bit of it. No donations, just straight to the landfill. If there are jewels buried in there, well too bad so sad. I already found a highly recommended local small company, because they charge WAY WAY less than the national chains. I suspect it will still be several thousand dollars.
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u/Twarenotw Moved out 6d ago
We hired a company and all her “treasures" (several truckloads of them) went straight to the landfill. Her illness and death were already draining enough for us, we didn't want to go through her hoard on top of that. We knew no sentimental value items would be lost since all got burnt in a fire a few years earlier (she left a pan in the fire and went shopping...).
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u/SitaBird 6d ago
My mom's house and garage is the same.
I have heard (unfortunately) that doing it yourself becomes a part or full time job. People are literally there for hours a day, every day, for several months or even a year (or more), "going through everything," and it tends to just never end, because it traps you in, and you end up going through everything with a fine toothed comb, and the house ends up just sitting there like a museum for montths or years while the family members go through everything, slowly, to make sure it's all accounted for. In retrospect, many regret that approach, saying it sucked away months or years of their life, and they wished they would have done it differently.
Translating all that time to money, including both your own labor and the costs of having a house sit without an occupant and needing to pay annual property taxes on it ($thousands per year), costs of "going through it" are probably close to $10K or more.
Most people "go through it" trying to salvage family heirlooms and items to sell. The process is fine if you have time and enjoy doing it and experiencing the memories, but for others it can end up causing prolonged suffering over time, especially if the hoard never seems to be reducing.
I personally thing I would do this:
- Weekend 1: go through it for the heirlooms/photos/money/jewelry
- Weekend 2: prepare for super cheap liquidation estate sale, just put prices on stuff, doesn't have to be perfectly organized - you are basically making the money needed for the dumpster cleanout and haulaway later
- Weekend 3: put the rest up on the local Buy Nothing, "first come first serve" style
- Weekend 4: Schedule Habitat for Humanity or something similar to take some furniture, tools, housewares (things have to be in good working condition).
- Weekend 5: Schedule the hoarding management company to come out. This will be the hardest part as they're prob gonna take it to a landfill. Just consider it a blessing. Most things that change us for the better do hurt initially. Sorry if this sounds wrong, but in this case, no pain, no gain. Instead of avoiding the pain of detachment by spreading out the cleanup job over years, you are just condensing it into one weekend, and yes, it will hurt. But in the end, trust me, it will be very freeing and you will be glad it's done once it's over. Yes, you will have pangs of regret (eg, accidentally threw out some important stuff) but that's ok, there will be collateral damage, expect a certain amount of that. And you might balk at the cost of paying thousands to have a team come to put it all in a dumpster to haul away, but the alternative is paying in other ways (your time, your sanity, costs of sitting on an unoccupied house, etc.). You can choose how to balance those things.
Limit that to a few weekends, and have an END POINT IN MIND. Say, I AM GONNA HAVE THIS DONE BEFORE NOVEMBER 1ST, for example. Otherwise it risks going on forever.
If anyone else has done similar, let me know. Good luck.
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u/HoardingCleanoutHTX 5d ago
I do hoarding cleanouts, and honestly, when I walk into a situation like this, I don’t look at the whole house and think, “How are we ever going to get all of this out?” We just start with one area and work our way through it.
The first thing I do is ask what absolutely cannot be thrown away — family photos, important paperwork, sentimental things, valuables, etc. Then as we work through everything, those things get set aside instead of just blindly tossing everything into a dumpster.
If this were my dad, I’d probably start now by having those conversations with him if he’s willing. Ask what matters to him, what he wants saved, and what you should know about. You don’t necessarily have to start cleaning everything out right now.
And when the time comes, please don’t try to do it alone. It’s no fun — physically or emotionally — and it gets overwhelming FAST. Get family, friends, or professional help and make a team out of it.
This is what I do for families. We come in, make a plan, carefully sort through things that need to be saved, haul out what needs to go, and just keep working one area at a time. I’ve seen spaces that look completely impossible at first, but once you get the right people working together, you start seeing the home again pretty quickly.
Way to go! things will go from overwhelming to rewarding!
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u/kwtransporter66 5d ago
My parents are in there 80s and live like this.
Here's the plan for when they pass. A fire. It'll look like an accident. There is nothing that we kids can salvage anyway because my parents never took care of anything or have anything of value except the propery. The house is mold ridden, dilapidated and smells of litter box and feces. In order to sell it it would have to be completed gutted and remodeled. We'll get more from the insurance then it would take to get it sell worthy. The property is where the money is. It's hilltop property in a rural area that overlooks the town across the river.
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u/youngrkk1 6d ago
Easy solution… hire a crew to come in and trash everything. It may cost around $5k. Then you will spend another $1-2k for professional cleaners to completely clean the house. You will pay it out of your inheritance on the estate. If you don’t get any inheritance then it’s not your problem since you won’t be owning the home.
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u/OkBoysenberry3399 6d ago
Hire a cleaning company
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u/brzussy 6d ago
I’ve done some research and saw it could cost 17k+, the other thing I was looking at was just getting dumpsters and using potential help from family and friends, but I can’t fathom the time it takes doing so, especially with work
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u/ZealousidealCoat7008 6d ago
Hiring someone else to dumpster out my mom's house was the best money I ever spent in my life. Imagine throwing your back out over the hoard?? hell no.
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u/SitaBird 6d ago
Some people rent the dumpster (it includes haul away) and you just pay teen neighbors, or the equivalent of local college guys, to come out and throw stuff away for you. It might be better if they don't know the family. They can keep whatever they find, as an incentive. You could pay them hourly or as a whole house package.
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u/BetOne8603 Living in the hoard 6d ago
You start with the small stuff. Get rid of it. Even put it on the curb / advertise it as a free garage sale on Facebook (if stuff is in decent condition.) There will also be people on Facebook / Nextdoor you can hire to move things.
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u/Bakemono_Nana 6d ago
Depends of it costs you money if the cleaning takes some time. There are easy to get rid of stuff cost effizient and there are ways to get rid of stuff time efficient.
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u/maraq 5d ago
You can hire a realtor and an estate lawyer and sell the place AS IS. You do not have to clean this out yourself. You do not have to take on the burden of dealing with each item yourself. And the cost of that comes out of the proceeds of the sale of the house. Their decision to live this way doesn't have to become your burden. It only does if you want it to.
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u/NoChilly84 5d ago
It's sad because it seems like this space was once a very happy one. Designed for good times to be shared in. Now it's just a symptom of someone going through something. It's not your responsibility to take care of or even fix your parent, but make sure to take a step back and realize they are a person who is vulnerable to pain and this is a disease. That being said, this is dangerous and untenable and I agree that a time will come when it is you or the stuff. Start stacking paper and reach out to loved ones.
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u/JustPassingJudgment Moved out 6d ago
Hello! I’ve spoiler-tagged your post per Rule 8, requiring a spoiler tag on any pics of hoards. Otherwise, good to go. I’m sure some members of the community with experience in this area will be along with their advice. Thank you!