I am 42 years old. I have lived in over 50 places in my life. I move often so that I can’t accumulate ‘stuff’. I live a gypsy lifestyle because it is impossible to carry around too much crap.
Both of my parents are hoarders. They divorced when I was 6. I remember my mother always collecting, so I assumed it was all her problem for years. She and I haven’t spoken for years. I remember when I was about 15, going to her place for a visit. It disgusted me. There were dead animals in the yard, broken appliances, her own personal landfill, a 33 gallon garbage can overflowing in the kitchen, no counter space to work with, no where to sit, stacks of things everywhere. I stayed in the shed because I couldn’t stand the smell in the house. One day she went to the market and I went to town finding the bottom of the kitchen. It required a shovel to find the floor. For many years, I thought it was totally her problem.
My father remarried by the time I was 7. My step mother was a wonderful woman with a compulsive cleaning disorder. She managed to hide the fact that my father was also a hoarder, way worse than my mother. S-mom confined his mess to one room in the house…every house we ever lived in. I have vivid memories of at least one room in our home always being uninhabitable. In the beginning, it didn’t seem that bad as he confined his collecting to just photography equipment. I left home at 15. My younger siblings followed in quick succession, leaving only my father and his wife. He quickly took over all of our rooms with new “hobbies”. After 15 years of marriage, my wonderful stepmother could no longer take it and they divorced.
Now that my father lived alone, he was free to collect with no one to tell him no or organize what he drug home. I remember helping him move a few times. In addition to all the stuff in whatever house he was inhabiting, there was always a huge storage unit full of Rubbermaid tubs. I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. After a few years, he remarried again. I wasn’t fond of his new wife, so I didn’t come around for many years. She could manage his mess. They eventually bought a property with multiple homes on it, to share with my aging grandparents (his mom and dad). I realized just how bad things were when I had to go home for my grandmas funeral and sort through her things. She was a hoarder too.
I loved my grandmother very much. There was organization to my grandmothers junk. She grew up in the depression with 12 siblings. I understood how she could collect. Much to the dismay of my father, my brother and I sent nearly everything to the thrift store or the landfill. Who needs over 500 cool whip containers? Or the elastic off of mens underwear? What can you possibly need 3 hefty sacks of pantyhose with runs in them for? Can anyone read over 10,000 books? With an additional empty house, my fathers problem became very apparent, very quickly.
My father and his wife moved into my grandparents house; it was larger. Rather than moving the things from his own home (his wife moved hers), he bought all new things, leaving his house full of stuff. The ‘new’ house stayed fairly organized for a year or so because when he would sneak home new junk he would take it to his old home. I finally went to visit about 5 years ago. He said it would be fine to stay in the old house while I visited. Upon my arrival late at night, after driving a 10 hour day, I couldn’t even get in the door of the house. My partner and I had to spend hours moving things to get in. We spent our entire 2 week visit organizing the place, killing the spiders and rodents and hauling things to the dump while he was at work. There was still food in the refrigerator from when they had moved out years ago. We could only get in through the back door; the porch was covered with projects yet to come. His wife had exiled his mess to the third story of their home or the old place.
Two years ago, my partner and I split. Finding myself in a financial and emotional bind, I asked to come home for a few months. Once again, he offered me the old house and once again it required hours just to get in the door and months to create a habitable space. The mess on the porch was still there, exactly how we had left it years prior, but with more piled on top. I decided to tackle it one day. He spotted me moving stuff from his window and micromanaged my organization of his rusty tools, spider infested boxes of photo equipment, and boxes overrun with rodents…all of which he ‘might need someday’. I managed to stay 9 months and create one habitable, very zen space on the property before I couldn’t handle it anymore. During my time there, he took a few road trips and his wife and I tackled some of the mess in there house. His third story ‘studio’ had pathways through books, magazines, photo stuff, clothes, furniture, gold panning tools, guns and other weapons and much, much more. It was also covered with cat urine because he loved to have the animals in his space while he ‘worked’. There was so much crap in the room, he wouldn’t see all the cats when he would go out and he would accidentally lock them in for days. I took his huge truck with a 15 foot trailer to the dump twice over the course of a few weeks. We barely made a dent. I didn’t think things could get worse. Then he retired. Now the mess has expanded to the yard, the shed, and back to the old house. He bought a new temporary garage recently to keep things from getting ruined by the rain, but it doesn’t keep the rodents, spiders or snakes out. They can’t even use their new camper because it is so full of junk that when you open the door it falls on you.
We currently aren’t speaking because last month I dared to speak these words to him…”Dad, you have a problem…you are a hoarder.” He, of course got very angry and hasn’t spoken to me since. I know that one day his problem will become my mess to clean up. The irony of all of this is that he worked in the mental health profession for 30 years. That is my story thus far. I feel such a relief that I am not the only one.
