The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter (12 page)

Child Protective Services advised that under such extreme circumstances the minor children could be removed, but they could not promise that Beth's siblings would be kept together, so Beth confronted her parents one last time with the threat of bringing in CPS. Her parents told her they would never speak to her again if she broke up the family, and Beth backed down.

Over the next six months nothing changed, and Beth canceled her plans to go away to school and enrolled at a local community college so that she could live at home and protect her brother and sister. But a few months after starting her freshman year, Beth dropped out of classes, started to drink heavily, and suffered from depression.

This story didn't have to have a sad ending. Children living with hoarders can't be expected to understand the nature of such an illness. And they shouldn't have to take on the responsibility for trying to remedy the situation, like Beth. Children like Beth feel ashamed, helpless, and marginalized. They grow up not learning how to clean or even tidy up. They never learn how to sort their possessions so that each goes into its own special place. They also don't learn how to set limits on the items they keep, and this lack of boundary setting can have ramifications throughout every aspect of their lives.

For anyone who takes on the task of spearheading the cleanup attempt, understanding the confusion and concern that children of hoarders have is an important aspect in formulating a plan that will have the best results and keep the family intact.

No one wants to be the busybody neighbor. But in the case of Rick, the information hoarding professor, it took a complaint by a neighbor to the city officials to get him into the system and to get him help.

Social services are there to help people, not to punish them. Sure, other government bodies may fine a hoarder or take more drastic measures. But without that initial call, Rick's situation might have gone on for much longer, and with much more serious consequences. Even then, it was almost a year from that first phone call until the cleaning crew arrived at Rick's house.

Rick's neighbor didn't call the city constantly, and he didn't start a war with Rick. Rick was a nice guy; he probably wouldn't have lashed out, but some hoarders take great pride in antagonizing their annoyed neighbors. Sometimes that's the only power, and interaction with others, that a hoarder has. I have worked with hoarders who knew the local ordinances and laws better than the authorities did, and they delighted in pushing the limits.

Those who live near hoarders are stuck with smells, eyesores, and declining property value. Selling a home near a hoarder is doubly challenging. Unfortunately, there aren't many options in this situation. Knowing that the hoarder has a mental disorder doesn't really help minimize the problem.

A neighbor is rarely the person to spearhead an intervention, and legally speaking it's better to avoid any negative communications with a hoarder. The best approach is to contact city or county officials. And be aware that solutions won't happen quickly or smoothly, especially if the hoarding is advanced enough for neighbors to notice.

But for those who are tackling the issue, being aware of the history of interaction with neighbors—and, for that matter, with city or county officials—is essential. (We'll talk more about intervention by the authorities later on.)

Setting mutually agreed upon goals and managing expectations helped keep Roger and his family on track. (We'll talk more about setting goals collaboratively with a hoarder in the “Talking with Hoarders” section that follows.) Roger's sisters started off with the hope that he would end up in a clean house, living a normal life, pretty much as they did. But they quickly realized that Roger had such deep-seated issues that they had to adjust their expectations. Roger struggled in social interaction. At first we thought he might have Asperger's: His sisters said that while he had trouble making direct eye contact and carrying on a normal conversation, those symptoms had worsened after their parents had died. But as he bonded with our crew and his confidence grew, we realized that probably wasn't the case. Still, his sisters began to consider that Roger might never be able to recover completely from hoarding. Although he was a young man, his hoarding, and the deep-seated issues that had been driving it, meant that he might not be able to live completely alone and might never have a spotless house.

For a late-stage hoarder, “recovery” may only be a tidy room or two, with no more new items coming into the house. Such a hoarder may enjoy a safe, comfortable life but will probably never be completely clutter-free. Setting realistic expectations for both the helpers and for the hoarder is critical. In Roger's case it was important for everyone to adjust their expectations since the initial goal was to prepare the house for sale and move Roger to another home. His sisters stopped focusing on the ideal of Roger living alone, in a clean house, with a full-time job, even though Roger wanted to live alone and wanted to find meaningful work. They all came to accept that he could probably live alone with someone checking on him daily, and that he might find work through a program that included on-the-job training. They all agreed on achievable goals for Roger—not what most people would call “normal,” but much better than the life he was living with his hoarding.

Jackson, the early-stage Blondie hoarder, along with his partner, Mike, had simple goals—to clean and repair Jackson's house, sell it, and help him learn some methods for limiting his hoarding. The overall goal was for the two to spend the rest of their lives together, and both were committed to doing whatever it took to make that happen. In this case, Jackson's outlook for recovery was very positive. He had strong support from Mike, and he had powerful motivation to change because he wanted the better future that was available to him.

Early-stage hoarders, like Jackson or Ellen and Brad, the couple we first met in Chapter 1, are more likely to achieve the goals of a clean house and a relatively normal life than more advanced hoarders. Hoarders like Roger and Margaret have either spent so much time in clutter or are carrying so much emotional or psychological baggage that it is usually not realistic to expect much more than a relatively safe environment in which they can live and enjoy some level of social improvement.

Success or failure will be defined by whether or not everyone meets those expectations, but even then a family's definition of success may change throughout the planning and cleaning process.

All goals (except in an intervention) should be about the hoarder. If a family's goal is to get that eyesore of a house clean so it doesn't embarrass them anymore, then clearly that's more about them and not about the hoarder. To get the hoarder on board, the goals need to be ones that that individual can buy into, like having a working kitchen, or being able to invite people into the house, or complying with health and safety standards that have been imposed by the authorities.

Jackson and Mike's primary goals focused on the elements of the cleaning. Together they wrote down their plan for who they'd hire to help, how long it would take to clean the house, how many days the team would work, and what days they would take off. They wrote down what Jackson would do with the clothing, collectibles, and other specific items that they'd decided to donate, sell, or toss.

Their plan even specified where the items coming out of the house would be staged while Jackson made decisions about them, or while waiting for someone to take them to a donation site or sell them. Jackson's house didn't have much trash, but the plan addressed where things would go, who would haul them to the dump, and when.

Writing down these details was helpful because Jackson and Mike could refer to them during the cleanup in case there were misunderstandings. If Jackson suddenly decided to keep all of his Versace shirts, Mike could point to the list and say, “See, we agreed to sell those.” They also shared the written plan with the cleanup crew before cleaning day so they could decide how to structure the job.

Sometimes a job is so big that it is like staging an event, and the logistics can be as overwhelming as the clutter itself. That's where a professional can help organize and carry out the cleanup.

Wendy and Sam were an elderly couple who met late in life and started living together in Wendy's Stage 3 hoarded house. Wendy was a pill hoarder, and they both had multiple medical issues requiring pills, so the plan for them included health-related assistance. Since their medical concerns were being handled poorly, they needed a private duty nurse to help figure out what to do and how to schedule ongoing health care. Physically, they required clear access into and through all the rooms in the house, and they needed to have safety equipment installed, like grab bars in the bathtub. Of course, Wendy required some kind of counseling for her hoarding to ensure long-term relief.

Daisy, another aging hoarder, needed a plan that included counseling, advice about insurance, medical treatment, and medication. As with many elderly housebound people, Daisy, Wendy, and Sam potentially required home health care, and their places needed to be clean and safe enough to allow visits from medical aides and other helpers.

Kathy and Roger let the cleanup crew handle most of the logistics of their de-cluttering. In their plan they focused more on setting life goals: where Roger would live, what his life would look like, and how to get there. The goals were specific, like putting their parents' house on the market within four months, finding a new place for Roger to live by then, and having Roger apply for at least one job within a month after moving.

Deadlines are often essential to motivate people to get things done—whether it's the hoarder or the support group. But they should be reasonable. If a hoarder feels trapped by unrealistic timelines, he or she may shut down the whole process before it really gets started. (We'll discuss more about setting start dates in Chapter 6.) Even a Stage 5 hoarder house may take a professional crew only a few days to clean out, but this kind of short deadline increases a hoarder's stress level—and the risk that he or she will sabotage the whole enterprise. The hoarder isn't prepared to think in such a short time frame for such an emotional undertaking. Thirty to sixty days is easier to accept, and if the house gets clean faster, then everyone wins.

A late-stage hoarder in particular, who has been withdrawn from the world for years, isn't going to jump right back into the stream of society just because the house is clean. Life goals take time and patience to achieve. Advanced hoarders need help getting back into society, which may mean creating a structured setting in which they can learn to socialize again, such as volunteering their time and talents for a limited amount of time each week. Or encourage the hoarder to host a coffee at the house two months after the cleanup. The simple act of sending out the invitations reconnects the hoarder with lost friends, and commits the hoarder to following through with the event.

The hoarder is a critical part of the goal-setting process, but those conversations can be tricky. Often a late-stage hoarder insists on living alone, but the family questions whether or not that's safe or even possible.

Sometimes, running the numbers can help make the decision. Look at what it will cost to fix up the house and make it safe. Often that's a huge amount. A family can put that in front of the hoarder, asking if the hoarder would rather spend money on that, or on a comfortable retirement home. The hoarder should make the decision. Usually there's not even a discussion because the cost to repair the home is more money than the hoarder has.

Both Roger's sister and Jackson's partner understood that in the beginning they had to set goals cautiously. Mike knew that Jackson's house could be clean in a few days, but he gave Jackson three months. Kathy set modest expectations for what Roger's life would look like after his cleanup. If a goal isn't achievable, then it becomes another failure for a hoarder (and the cleaning team and family). Instead, the cleanup needs to be their first success on the road to a new life.

Jackson, like most hoarders, didn't reach out for help himself. More often it's a concerned family member, friend, or social worker who calls a therapist or cleanup expert. When that happens, the hoarder generally isn't ready yet to start the process, and things play out with ultimatums, secret cleanups, ambushes, or interventions.

The best chance of creating a collaborative effort is to engage the hoarder early on. It's important that the right contact person (or people) talk to the hoarder. Since some kind of discussion may have already taken place, it's likely that the person closest to the hoarder has a sense of how open the hoarder is to talking about it. If those early conversations don't go well, then someone else might have to come into the picture.

It rarely works if a family member talks about how the hoarding affects others. Hoarders just tune out the chatter about how embarrassed others are, or how the hoarding affects property values. They already know that, but it's not enough to make them take steps to deal with it. Just as with fighting an addiction, the desire to change has to come from within.

In hundreds of hoarding jobs, I've never had one where a family member said, “Hey, I'm worried about you,” and the hoarder responded, “You're right. Let's clean up!” There is always more than one conversation. The early ones may not go well, and the hoarder is probably going to respond with a lot of denial. It's important to just keep coming at it with the same message of love, concern, and offers to help.