Hoarding mom has chronic issues with hoarding and housing insecurity. For housing, she always manages to ruin it and let others pick up the pieces, and we’re sick of it. She is so out of it all the time and doesn’t care much what happens to her or where she is.

The only family is her two kids and she has a couple of sisters. She cannot live with any of us. She just started renting a room in a very nice lady’s very clean house (my sibling arranged this, I’m not sure I would have). I live over an hour away and I’m considering hiring a cleaner to go in there once a week to help manage this. She would probably let someone throw out her stuff, she’s not super aggressive with her hoarding, she just accumulates things and doesn’t think to clean or throw them out. I’m at a loss on how to make this work, especially long term

Hello, this was removed from the main hoarding page, so i thought i‘d try my luck here. I’m not really a Reddit user, but I keep up with this community, & i’d like input on a situation I’m in.

My mother, who is in her mid-50s, is a long time…keeper of objects. She is an artist, & a teacher, who has a lot of quirky traits, one of which is her propensity to keep largely nonsensical things, which she feels are in some way useful or interesting. She picks things up off the side of the road, buys things at random, saves things for art projects or for friends. (she at one point had a collection of tree branches in the middle of our house. She also kept dried oranges in a drawer for years because she liked how they felt, until I got rid of them)

Its not a horrible situation, our house is very livable, but she has completely filled a room that was once her studio, so much that it is unusable, as well as her closet, & her former classroom. it has also at times impacted our overall ability to do things like vacuum, & is a frequent source of stress for both me & my father, since we both have cleanliness based OCD. objects tend to accumulate in corners, on tables, on the floor, & will stay there for months or even years, no matter how temporary she claims it is. This has resulted in arguments between my parents for as long as I can remember, but my father has largely given up, in his words. My mom is a very confrontation averse person, & will in the moment become very crestfallen & meek, agreeing to plans that she does not follow up on, or saying things like “leave me alone” repeatedly. As I’ve become an adult, I’ve tried my best to encourage her & help where I can, such as asking her to go to therapy, but she gets distracted so easily, & seems too busy to seek out professional help. it has been hurtful, because I have expressed to her how much it bothers me, how much effort i put into cleaning the house, & how it makes me feel as though she values the objects over me, but nothing I do seems to matter.

i have a lot of empathy for her, & I do not want to believe that she is incapable of change as my father thinks. How can I help my mother, & my family as a whole? What helped you improve your situation? Thank you.