My sister and I have just spent a week carting bag after bag of garbage and charitable donations out of that house, in order to make it safe for my father to live in his own home.
He has spent the last four months in a physical rehabilitation facility and after depleting Medicare benefits, he must return home to the mess pictured above. He must navigate this home with a walker and/or wheelchair.
Points of interest:
Even with videotaped permission from my father (the co-owner of this property), the police would not defend our right to clear the trash. My father does not want to live in a hoarded home and it is no longer safe for him to do so. If you share ownership of property with someone who does this, start saving up to pay for a lawyer NOW, because that’s what it will take to defend your own interests.
We removed many many many bags of trash out of that house and worked for four days in relative peace, experiencing only brief in-our-face screaming fits from Mom. We worked in an upstairs bedroom that has not been usable as a bedroom for twenty years. Our plan was to make space up there for storage of the crap that is more current, more relevant and more memorable to our mother. The goal was to clear space downstairs so my father can live comfortably in three rooms on the first floor and hire outside help to assist him day-to-day (allowing my mother the remaining five bedrooms and full basement for her hoard).
If we got so much crap out of the house, you might wonder: how did the police get involved? My mother called them three times: first, when we moved three houseplants off of the kitchen table (where they were spilling dirt); second, when we “stole” food with expiration dates from 2007. She called police a third time with the update that she could not find her underwear and we had stolen that, too. The police told us that she seemed perfectly sane and they would not assist us in getting a psychiatric evaluation. When mom locked herself in the house– using rope tied around doorknobs and complaining of the stolen underwear– multiple police and fire department staff were witness and told us that they could do nothing.
Social workers tell us that our experience is not unique. We showed them pictures of the home and they were shocked, agreed that it required intervention. They called the police and fire department on our behalf and were told that we had no recourse. They told us that they are now being overwhelmed with calls from families just like mine and they can do nothing.
Programs like “Hoarders” are spreading a lie: don’t touch the hoarder’s stuff because the hoarder must make all the decisions about what to do with everything. According to the Hoarders shows (and others like it), the “right” solution is to get a team of people in to help. Such teams are not readily available for families like mine. My mother is like many hoarders: she would sooner lock everyone out of the house than invite ANYONE in to help.
For forty years, my family did not understand my mother’s illness, we only knew that moving her things or trying to clean up the house made her furious. We did not interfere with her hoard until it became truly hazardous.
Relatives from out -of-state (who are unwilling to help our mother) tell us that they have read ‘articles.’ They tell us that they have seen programs that prove our strategy was all wrong and that we are not supposed to touch our mother’s stuff. They tell us that our father (who worked long hours for forty years to buy that home) should be moved into a small apartment. They tell us that our father’s primary asset– a 2500 sq. ft. house with five bedrooms and a full basement– cannot be sold, but should be surrendered to my mother’s mess. Because she owns half of it, he has rights to none of it.
I am part of an online support group for adult Children of Hoarders. You can find Children of Hoarders on Yahoo groups or visit childrenofhoarders.com My family’s experience is more common than what you see on television; my family’s experience is more typical than the cases of slow-but-steady recovery described by professionals. We have the financial means to address this problem, the education to understand it as an illness, and we have spent five long years begging our mother to seek the professional help recommended by ‘experts.’ My mother has refused help from counselors, professional organizers, church pastors, and (most recently) a trusted friend. There are no solutions out there for families like mine.
This item comes from my mother’s hoarded home. The item lived in a plastic bag, perfectly preserved in a box for thirty years. It came from the room in the featured picture.
I invite you to bid on this auction if my story shocks you even slightly. Bid on this auction to help me justify the week that my sister and I just spent wearing respirator masks and latex gloves to protect ourselves from the heavy dust. We worked hard, trying to secure a safe place for our father to live. Right now, it feels like we failed. Thank you for reading and please forward this auction to anyone you know who might be facing similar challenges. This problem is not just a TV show.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160564911070#ht_1100wt_1141
Author added:
I suppose I sound like a lunatic in that ebay listing, but it just makes me so furious to realize how helpless so many of us are. What really pushed my buttons was when the social workers were complaining about how misleading those television shows are. THEY see how unrealistic those interventions are, they complained that the shows hold out such a false hope that they are getting tons of phone calls from families wanting help. Well, gee, wouldn’t that be nice… if they could actually DO anything.
My big beef is that if people don’t get a clue about how difficult this is and as long as those shows are spewing this nonsense about “the hoarder should make every decision” (and the experts keep insisting on this “Just get them to happily agree to therapy– THAT’s the answer”), there is no reason to fund programs for the TRULY difficult situations, change laws about self-neglect or develop better rules about what triggers a psych evaluation. I’m just disgusted…
