Hoarding

My friend’s older brother was a top lawyer and lived alone.
He was a hoarder but was always clean, smart and very well dressed in court or when seeing clients.

He had a beautiful house but every room was packed with stuff.
My friend tried to help him but each time one room was nearly cleared it was full by the time she visited again.

She knew of nothing in their childhood that made him act like this.

It's nothing to do with intelligence. It's a mental illness, as I and others have said.

I also do not understand how often highly intelligent people end up hoarding to such state that they cannot access any rooms on their house except one and have piles and piles of newspapers and bags

Skydancer

Allsorts

I don't know how anyone lives with a hoarder, it would make me ill. Far from perfect but I can’t function in an untidy environment.

Neither can I, Allsorts. I am fairly minimalist in the house and feel better for it. I am using the One In, One Out rule now when it comes to clothes

I am the same Allsorts. But most hoarders live alone, it is often the breaking of a relationship, separation or death, that triggers the hoarding behaviour.

Allsorts

I don't know how anyone lives with a hoarder, it would make me ill. Far from perfect but I can’t function in an untidy environment.

Neither can I, Allsorts. I am fairly minimalist in the house and feel better for it. I am using the One In, One Out rule now when it comes to clothes

Thanks Monica, I'll investigate.

Allira www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/pension-problems/tracing-and-finding-lost-pensions

MayBee70

I rather like coming across eg an old pay slip from decades ago showing how little I earned, how much tax I paid etc. It worries me that future historians won’t have any original source material to go on given that everything is just on computers.I’ve even got my GCE exam papers. A careers guidance questionnaire that I filled in. I’d love to have found my mums school reports and stuff like that after she died quite suddenly and I felt that I never really knew her.

I wish I'd kept some old paperwork when we moved because npm sure I've got a missing pension, albeit small.

I rather like coming across eg an old pay slip from decades ago showing how little I earned, how much tax I paid etc. It worries me that future historians won’t have any original source material to go on given that everything is just on computers.I’ve even got my GCE exam papers. A careers guidance questionnaire that I filled in. I’d love to have found my mums school reports and stuff like that after she died quite suddenly and I felt that I never really knew her.

I remember Mr Trebus, too, silverlining. Such a sad case, but in his case you could understand where it stemmed from.

It wasn’t to the same extent, but a friend of ours was something of a hoarder. The house wasn’t unliveable, but there was stuff absolutely everywhere, piles of it.

After he died, while trying to clear out, his wife would come across e.g. six more or less identical gadgets for this or that. (This times many!)

I asked why on earth he’d got six of whatever it was - ‘Because he couldn’t find the first (among the endless piles of stuff) so he’d buy another.’ Rinse and repeat.
Among other things I remember a new rice cooker (boxed, never used) just sitting on the landing gathering dust for at least 6 years. Just one example.

Cabbie21

I am just sorting and tidying my little study at the moment and I have just found a stash of cash. Now there’s an incentive!

😘💰💰💰💰

FranP - Madmeg

This all resonates with me & as the person recognises that the whole house has to be sorted , they are the one who wants to oversee it .
IE : Yay or Nay to every bit of paper , receipt , notebook , newspaper.
Not only but also we know that there are numerous garages that are full to the brim of who knows what !
Though the general consensus is that it’s all complete rubbish , we have to also acknowledge that there ‘may be ‘ items of worth amongst the hoarding.

Anyway it’s not going to get sorted in their lifetime so maybe I should leave it to the relatives who will inherit.
All I want is for the best version of a comfortable safe environment.

That hoarding is a mental condition which maybe due to trauma rings true with my partner.

He was widowed suddenly in his 40s when his late wife went into hospital for a routine antibiotic infusion and subsequently died from hospital acquired pneumonia.

We met on a dating site 10 years ago and I tried living with him for six months but although he is not as bad a hoarder as OP’s post, as you can get into rooms.

In his bedroom you wade through clothes and other stuff to get to the bed and the other rooms are much the same.

The stairs have stuff to go upstairs taking over half of the stairway. Nothings moved for the 10 years I’ve known him on the rare occasion I go to his. Instead more is piling up as he can’t get rid of anything.

I’ve told him I can’t live with him, as he wouldn’t let us get rid of anything when I lived with him and it would be a gargantuan task for just the two of us. Instead he stays with me on alternate weekends.

I’d love to get Stacey Solomon to put his hoard in the hangar to sort him out. I’m disabled now so I can’t manage it sadly.

On one of the hoarder programmes they threw a video of The Princess Bride away which pained me as I treasure my Princess Bride video. And some videos are worth something now. I watched a favourite film from long ago on utube the other day, and it only existed because someone had video’d it when it was on tv and kept it.

Madmeg

My DH is a serial hoarder. He had no childhood traumas but was brought up in a 10-roomed house (two terraces knocked into one when his grandad died) and every room was full of "stuff". Some were so full you could not get in the door, and several were full of junk. Sadly DH is the same, and getting worse. The newspaper article is common - but he keeps the whole newspaper. He never reads them, and to my mind clearly has no intention to cos he wouldn't be able to find them amongst the rest of the junk. When his mother died he insisted on bringing a whole load of "ornaments" some of which had never seen the light of day - and I learnt that he had no idea where most of them had come from or even whether he had seen them before!

We have 9 rooms here (ignoring bathrooms) and half are full of his stuff. Also a large garage (that doesn't have rubbish in cos I cleared it out, but is a terrible mess). We have separate bedrooms (for years) and you can barely find the bed. All clothes/shoes are thrown on the floor. His "study" contains at least six broken computers and he has rarely ever used a computer at home. Hundreds of books, some of them text books from his long-gone days of lecturing in random subjects, and many are not even his. His clothes cupboards contain mostly stuff either worn out or never worn at all. If we go on holiday I ask if he has some beige trousers and he says "no" so I buy a new pair, only to find ten pairs already in the wardrobe (on the floor). It is a nightmare to me, and I can do nothing about it. His room can't be cleaned, he never changes the bed, it smells.

This week he rang his oldest, closest friend who has been diagnosed with Parkinsons. We haven't seen him and his wife for about five year, and the chap suggested they come and visit us "for a change of scene". DH was about to say "yes" before he saw my face - there is no way we can invite anyone into our home. If people come to the door, we keep them there! It is grossly embarrassing and I hate him for it.

But is it a mental illness? Is it laziness? Slovenliness?

I must add that I'm not the tidiest of wives by a long chalk - but not on his scale. It's not only depressing but with the house in the state it is in, I cannot find my own things.

Just one more thing becomes a habit, which gets worse over time, so you get to a point where it is too hard to clear.
- Try just removing things one at a time without him seeing
- try buying some storage boxes so they are tidier, then lose one, and then another
- phone Stacy Solomon's programme?

I am a hooked hoarder, but I now have a rule that one thing goes every month - my book pile is going out faster than it is coming in. BUT when I see yesterday's throwaways showing up as today's treasures, I find it hard. (My 60's red anglepoise lamp....)
I do have a scanner though, so those articles are all on one tiny stick; now for the photos....

Yes I have boxes of my mother's bits. My DH is a thrower. And yes, as soon as I get rid of something he or my DD ask for it!

A friend got her DH hooked on selling on eBay! She now has to watch his feed to make sure he is not getting rid of what she wants to keep.

If something might be useful someday, why not give it away to someone else who can give it love and not neglect. Give happiness. Thats more useful than stuff. Its not abandoning the item. Its letting it fly free. All you have is your own self. The items are not you.

- Spoken from someone trying to downsize to nothing.

MayBee70

Hoarding SOS on Ch 4 is very good because it points out what things are worth selling.

One man’s junk etc 😎

If only it were that simple.

Help is always refused , it’s now the habit of a lifetime. While that’s fine & ours is not to question the whys . It’s about making a
comfy home in later years for someone you care about . Making a safe & healthy home 🏡

Hoarding SOS on Ch 4 is very good because it points out what things are worth selling.

We have a friend that hoards books, never gets rid of one

Paperback novels can go, in the main, but some books are treasures to be re-read or looked through again and again.

My recently deceased uncle was a hoarder on an epic scale sadly. The rubbish deteriorated from waist to ceiling high & it was worse than Mr Trebus. I learned not to throw anything out our risk his wrath, not even old wine bottles could be recycled. He said it overwhelmed him but he couldn't cope with throwing anything away including domestic refuse. It was definitely due to past trauma and mental illness with him. The weird thing was if we ate out he would complain if the cutlery or glasses were smeary looking.

Jaxjacky

I’m the opposite of a hoarder and periodically ‘move stuff along’ either selling it, or giving it to charity. The two year rule, if it hasn’t been used in about the last couple of years, it goes, apart from MrJ’s carrier bag of cables!
We have a friend that hoards books, never gets rid of one, food too, he’s stocked for the duration, he’s due to downsize in the near future, we’ll see how that goes.

Can I meet your friend we’d get on well !

I’m the opposite of a hoarder and periodically ‘move stuff along’ either selling it, or giving it to charity. The two year rule, if it hasn’t been used in about the last couple of years, it goes, apart from MrJ’s carrier bag of cables!
We have a friend that hoards books, never gets rid of one, food too, he’s stocked for the duration, he’s due to downsize in the near future, we’ll see how that goes.

On the hoarding programme I watched yesterday the woman just had piles of fag ends piled up in her bedroom. She swapped rooms with her son, started a new pike but he lived with the remaining ones. How that house didn’t catch fire is beyond me. My house isn’t a fire hazard ( although there is a lot of paper in the loft) but it is a trip hazard. Mainly from things I’ve moved around in an attempt to declutter!

Many years ago on 'Through The Keyhole' they showed Hannah Hauxwell's house, Claire Rayner was on the panel and she said This looks like someone who is decorating' boxes of stuff were piled high. When Hannah came out Claire asked if she was decorating, and Hannah replied 'no' it was just how she lived. The safety hazards are frightening 🫤