The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter (22 page)

After Roger moved into his new, smaller house, his sister knew that he needed some form of replacement behavior, otherwise he would just sit in his house alone and almost certainly start hoarding again. Roger himself wanted some form of meaningful work, so his sister connected him with a training program for special needs workers that would try to match him with a position in which his natural obsessive-compulsive behavior might be something of an asset. Roger learned how to take warehouse inventory, and the program helped him find a job. Kathy hoped that Roger's days would be busy, and that he might even make friends.

Candace wasn't an animal hoarder, but she loved dogs. She had adopted her two Irish Setters a few years earlier, when she was working with animal rescue. Once Candace got her house cleaned up, she decided that she wanted to volunteer again with the local rescue program. She loved animals and already had experience with the program. This would allow her to spend time with dogs without endangering them. As part of the rescue program, local coordinators often made unannounced visits to the animals' foster families. Although Candace recognized that on her own she could easily get carried away and end up adopting too many dogs—and letting her house slip back into chaos—she also knew that the possibility of unannounced visits from rescue volunteers who were evaluating her home would help her keep her hoarding in check.

Volunteering forces a hoarder to think of someone else in need. The hoarder can forget momentarily about his or her own problems and feel great about helping someone or something, a meaningful connection to the rest of the world.

As a team, we try to find out a hoarder's interests. Who was this person before the hoarding started? And who does this person want to become after the cleanup? What does the hoarder enjoy: Theater? Italian food? Old movies? The conversations that members of the team can have during the cleanup support the process because we discover what is meaningful to the hoarder, and what will keep the hoarder on track after we've gone.

During cleaning, the crew essentially has a hoarder's whole life laid out in front of them and can look for clues about what hobbies the hoarder used to enjoy. Finding an old pair of hiking boots could be a starting point for conversation. Maybe the hoarder used to hike with a pet dog. Dusting off those old boots might be the first step in discovering a viable replacement therapy—and getting the hoarder out of the house and taking some valuable exercise as well.

Of course, there is always the risk that the hoarder may choose a replacement behavior that lends itself to hoarding. For example, a new hobby like cooking might trigger a hoarder to buy more pans, tools, and cookbooks than would ever be used in a lifetime.

The hoarders I've worked with who have addictive or compulsive tendencies aren't able to shut those down completely, but many have been able to channel those tendencies into more positive behaviors. Helping a hoarder choose replacement behaviors needs to be done carefully as these behaviors can be life-changing or can lead to repeating unhealthy habits.

Ongoing psychological support will help hoarders understand what they do and help them to help themselves on the road to recovery. But, just as the one-time cleanup crew will assist the hoarder in making a fresh start, sometimes it takes a professional organizer to give the hoarder the tools and advice to stay clean.

Once Nika got her house cleaned, she needed help keeping her clothing under control. She knew that she was always going to have a lot of clothes and that she would probably keep shopping. It would have been unrealistic to expect Nika to scale back too far, but making sure she organized what she had and didn't let it expand any further was an attainable goal.

Nika hired a professional organizer who set up a closet system that was tailored to Nika's specific needs—appropriate storage for her collection of shoes and purses. She also helped Nika come up with set of guidelines for deciding what to keep and what to donate, and how often to go through and evaluate her wardrobe.

While Nika only needed a few sessions with her organizer to get her closet under control, a professional can be engaged to check in with a hoarder weekly or monthly to help keep the hoarder focused—and motivated to stick with de-cluttering.

For a hoarder, staying clean isn't really about bins and labels; it's about processing items that come into the house. A good organizer can help a hoarder develop methods for sorting mail, for staying on top of recycling, and for making sure donated items get to their destinations. The organizer teaches the hoarder life skills, and the follow-up visits reinforce those skills. An organizer is like a coach, a motivator, and, occasionally, a policeman.

The repetition of bad cleaning skills is usually what got the hoarder into trouble in the first place, so an organizer works on repetition of new, positive cleaning skills. That helps the hoarder build better behaviors over the long term.

While every hoarding situation may have its unique characteristics, I've found there are a number of keys that help all hoarders stay clean. Certainly, all of the elements that were discussed in the first part of this chapter are critical—selfknowledge, therapy, having a support network, focusing on more positive replacement behaviors, and so on—but the day-to-day job of staying uncluttered often requires some practical guidelines and innovative thinking. Most hoarders need guidance on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.

Many of the ideas and exercises that follow will fall to the helpers to carry out, but most will ultimately become the responsibility of the hoarders themselves.

Family and friends, in fact anyone on the “team” that has a continuing relationship with a hoarder, needs to understand that, like a recovering addict, a hoarder is going to struggle for the rest of his or her life. The hoarder needs to move ahead one day at a time and revel in the small successes.

When two of my workers and I showed up to take Aimee out to a celebratory lunch after her cleanup, she tried her best to look presentable. Her lipstick was all over her teeth and halfway across her face, her hair was teased into a messy pile on top of her head, and her clothes were definitely out of fashion. Did we say anything? No way. We were celebrating her big moment and enjoyed our time together with someone who only a short while earlier was leaning off the edge of her bed to use the bathroom because she was too depressed to get up and walk ten feet to the toilet.

Nika and Andre sent us photos of the Thanksgiving dinner they hosted at their house a few weeks after the cleanup. Was the dining room pristine? Of course not, but we didn't focus on the few boxes of shoes still in the corner, the worn carpet, or the peeling paint on the woodwork. We cheered them for finally inviting guests into their home.

When a hoarder first invites friends into the house, or chooses to throw away an old magazine, or tidies a two-foot-square space in the bedroom, those are all huge steps that everyone should recognize and celebrate. The goal is to build hope. There might be slipups, but positive reinforcement for even a tiny step forward encourages hoarders to realize that life can and will be better.

We leave notes around a house, in places like the bathroom mirror or inside the front door where the hoarder is sure to look every day. The notes read “You can do it!” or “You can stay clean!” This may sound corny, but hoarders tell us it makes a huge difference to be reminded that someone believes in them. The notes are a small way that we stay connected with hoarders, and they remember that we helped them clean up and that we know they can stay clean. We used to think that hoarders would eventually throw these notes out, but we have found that they keep them because they like to be reminded of how far they have come. Over time, I think the notes become small trophies throughout the home.

With hoarding, we are not just cleaning a home; we are teaching the hoarder that it is okay to love himself or herself again. We are encouraging someone who has felt worthless to feel that he or she has value and a life purpose. Positive reinforcement is about more than just giving compliments on how de-cluttered everything is. It's about noticing and reinforcing the hoarder's change in thinking and habits. It's about the hoarder moving toward new life goals and becoming a different person.

Posting notes around the house also serves another purpose: reminding people what needs to be done.

Like most hoarders I've worked with, Katrina responded really well to positive reinforcement. She was also able to do many jobs on her own. But because she lived alone, there was nobody to remind Katrina of her daily tasks, and also nobody to give her praise and encouragement when she followed through. To make up for this, we posted small signs all over her house. For example, she had a tendency to stack paperwork and books on the basement stairs, so we put a note on the banister that said, “Do not put papers here! Take them downstairs!” We also put up positive reinforcement cheers to bolster her clutter-free habits.

Some hoarders need reminders of daily tasks. So, for Lucy, the crafting hoarder, we added more specific guidelines: We put a note over the kitchen sink that reminded her to finish the dishes every evening and another taped to the kitchen table prompting her to take any purchased items out of their bags immediately and put them away (a common problem with shopping hoarders). Many hoarders have trouble taking out the trash or recycling, so a note on or over the trash bin can remind a hoarder that when the kitchen garbage has been bagged, to take it immediately all the way out to the outside can instead of leaving it by the back door. A note by the front door can remind a hoarder to carry the donation box out to the car as soon as it is full. And a note in the car can remind the hoarder to drop the box off at the church or other donation site.

Some hoarders I know use a “chore” chart, just like the one parents sometimes make for their kids, with gold stars for a job well done. This may sound a little juvenile, but if rewarding a fifty-five-year-old woman with gold stars (or even a big red check mark) encourages her to keep her home clean and gives her confidence and self-worth for the first time in twenty years, so be it. Hoarding is not normal; sometimes it takes unusual tools to help people.

Reminders and rewards are forever being debated in education and parenting circles, with some experts saying that parents should not reward a child for something that the child simply is supposed to do for the greater good of the family. I like that theory, but when you are dealing with a hoarder, the circumstances are quite different. For one thing, a hoarder often has had decades of repeated bad behavior, while a child is starting off fresh. Reminders and rewards should always be personalized to each hoarder's needs. We brought one hoarder her coffee each time we came to visit. If the house was clean, she got the latte; if the chores weren't done, I enjoyed a really nice coffee in front of a very sad woman. I only drank the coffee once because the chores were completed on every follow-up visit after that.

The challenge for Jackson was that he had moved in with Mike, and both of them were concerned that Jackson's clutter might expand and take over the house they shared. Jackson was tidy; he just kept too many things. For him, the rule of “personal space” became his anti-hoarding mantra.

To establish hoarding boundaries, each family member should get a defined space in the house. For Jackson it was his closet and his own vanity and sink in the bathroom. Brad and Ellen implemented the same rule—Brad got his desk, and Ellen got the basement bookshelf. Their three children each got a large toy bin. Each family member's personal space—where it is and how big it is—needs to be agreed upon by everyone in the household. Nobody should ever “loan” personal space to another family member, because once that happens, that space is lost forever and becomes potential cause for fighting.

Everyone should agree that there won't be any arguments about what actually goes in a person's designated space (unless it's unsanitary). It doesn't matter what is being collected, just as long as it stays in its space.

The rest of the house is shared space. For anything to stay in the shared space, the family (or maybe just the adults) must agree on the item. If they can't agree, it either goes into someone's personal space, or it goes out. This rule is all about respect and boundaries.

Setting boundaries forces hoarders to live in the here and now and take responsibility for their stuff. It also prevents other household members from blaming the hoarder for all family dysfunction. Following the rules of both shared space and personal space forces the hoarder and other family members to communicate and to work together as a team to keep the home clean.

Wendy had a lifetime of hoarding to overcome when Sam moved in with her. Once the house was cleaned, and their prescription drug bottle collection had been cleared out, the main problem was still that Wendy had never really learned how to organize a house. She just put things down wherever there was space, or wherever she happened to be standing. She didn't see problems with food being in the living room or dirty clothes in the kitchen.