The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter (23 page)

For Wendy and Sam, the best rule was “everything has a home.” We made a list of their main household items and where they went—for example, pill bottles in the bathroom medicine cabinet, laundry in the hamper, and food in the kitchen cabinets. This may seem like a fundamental rule that everyone learns as a child, but many hoarders didn't pick that up either because they grew up in hoarder houses themselves, or they grew up in traumatic households where finding a meal or avoiding a beating was a daily reality. Cleaning was the least of their worries. Others may have learned but have forgotten after years of living in their own hoarder chaos.

It helps to add a guideline that like things go together. This means, for example, that clothing should be grouped: A dresser should be near the closet instead of being across the room. Bathroom supplies, like towels and extra shampoo, should be in a closet or on a shelf in or near the bathroom instead of in the kitchen pantry. A basket or drawer for incoming mail should be near the desk or table where the checkbook or computer is for paying bills. Batteries, car keys, candy, and my son's comb do not all go in the same bucket and should all go to their separate homes.

This rule works well combined with reminders posted around the home that say things like “Pill bottles don't go here—they go in the medicine cabinet.” Those notes can reinforce for hoarders where things are supposed to go, especially in the early days immediately after a cleanup when the hoarder is still learning the new layout of the house.

Lucy's main issue was similar to Jackson's: She just brought far too many craft and baking supplies into the house. After her cleanup, we made the attic her “personal space” to limit her craft items. But Lucy lived alone, so there wasn't anyone there to enforce the space rule when things started to spill into other rooms of the house.

So, in addition to the “every item has a home” rule, Lucy added “in = out,” meaning that whenever something new comes into the house—whether going into personal or shared space—something
of equal size
must leave. It doesn't matter if that item goes into the trash, to a donation site, or into recycling. It just needs to go out of the house immediately. For Lucy, this meant that she could only bring home a new bag of yarn if she had already used up the same amount of yarn or donated the same amount the day before. This means she would always have roughly the same volume of stuff in her house.

Sometimes hoarders just flat-out ignore their follow-up rules, either feeling like they are silly or claiming that they can stay clean without them. This is really a form of denial, and if a hoarder gets stuck here, there isn't much anyone can do. The only way a hoarder will stay clean is if the hoarder's desire to achieve an overall goal is stronger than the urge to hang on to things. It sometimes works to keep reminding the hoarder of this goal, and how the rules are the only way to reach it. I will sometimes push a little bit, saying something like “I'm not judging you about this stack of mail, but let's make sure we take care of it—right now.”

If a hoarder continually refuses help, then eventually there's nothing more to do. Recovering from hoarding is a lifelong struggle, and unfortunately many people just don't make it. The reality is that not all hoarders can be saved.

At that point it is still possible to stay involved in a hoarder's life, but only if the family can stop focusing on the hoarding. The only things to do then are simply to get the hoarder out of the house frequently and work on building a relationship outside of hoarding, and continue to be positive and encouraging.

Almost every hoarder I have worked with has had at least a few lapses back into old behaviors. I try to shut these down immediately. That means figuring out what the cause is and talking about that with the hoarder. The thing to remember is that recovery is a journey, one that the hoarder will be on for the rest of his or her life. Some backsliding is inevitable, but it doesn't mean the cleanup is a failure. It just means you have to be aware of what caused it, jump on making a change, and stay supportive.

Many of our hoarders go through our entire mental and physical process and do everything we ask. They work hard, they let go of beloved items, they put their families first, and the home gets cleaned. They are happy that the home is cleaned, but that can turn into an elation that's just as excessive as the depression was before.

The born-again mentality is understandable because the hoarder has been paralyzed by this disease, and the cleanup and self-awareness have helped the hoarder be happy for the first time in years. Three to four days after our cleanup crew leaves, however, the reality sets in for the hoarder that all of his or her stuff is actually gone. That's when the “hoarder hangover” kicks in.

The hoarder has lost the security that he or she felt from the stuff. Often the hoarder doesn't know where anything is and freaks out. The hoarder starts to doubt the trust that was put in the cleanup crew people, and begins thinking that possessions have been stolen. The hoarder feels foolish for believing that his or her life could be gotten back together.

This is also the point at which the hoarder comes to a painful realization: The rest of his or her life troubles can no longer be blamed on the hoarding. During the hoarding phase, the hoarder has been telling himself or herself that everything else—debt, relationships, health, job—will be dealt with once the house is clean. Now the house is clean, and those problems all come crashing down on the hoarder. The hoarder hangover starts with the hoarder wanting to know where one specific item is, but within an hour it can blow up into a pounding headache of self-doubt, anger, and insecurity.

The hoarder hangover is actually good. It means the hoarder is experiencing honest emotions and is taking the process seriously. I personally believe it's a mental cleansing of all the negative feelings, just as the physical cleaning got rid of excess possessions. It's the beginning of a new phase of the hoarder's life. The hoarder phase was characterized by depression through years of living in chaos. The cleanup gave a brief high. The post-cleaning phase will hopefully be a steady rise toward a lifelong high of being clutter-free. But it will be a slow process as the hoarder deals with relinquishing bad habits, replacing behaviors, going through therapy, working with an organizer, and learning how to keep the home clean.

The hangover can last a few hours or a few days. With support and encouragement, the hoarder can usually come back to reality and keep working. I warn hoarders to expect the hangover, and tell them not to cancel any plans for the future when they are feeling anxious or low. I focus on the good that the hoarder has done.

Even hoarders who really want to stay clean, like Nika, sometimes have trouble breaking old habits. Once her house was clean and her closets reorganized, Nika was thrilled to have so much space. But she wasn't used to it. To Nika, the de-cluttered rooms looked pretty empty compared to what she was used to. Within a few weeks, she found herself ordering some clothes from a home shopping network. She figured that a few new boxes of clothes coming in wouldn't matter because now she had room for them. She told herself it didn't mean she was starting to hoard again.

But she was hoarding again. Hoarding isn't about how much stuff someone has, it's about how they process those things. Nika's hoarding was caused by her not putting limits on herself about clothes shopping, and even though she was now only ordering a few things, her behavior could quickly escalate and clutter her house up again.

It's like a former two-pack-a-day smoker saying that he or she will only have a few cigarettes on the weekend. That looks harmless compared to the huge amounts the smoker was smoking before, but of course those few cigarettes quickly escalate until the smoker is right back to the old levels. Hoarders, like addicts, need to shut down that behavior immediately if it resurfaces. A little indulgence feels so good, and so familiar, that it will quickly grow to hoarder proportions.

For Nika, this meant following the rules, without exception. Her professional organizer had a copy of Nika's rules and was checking in with her once a week. When the organizer asked about the delivery boxes in a corner, Nika said she felt that it wasn't a big deal. The organizer reminded Nika of the “in = out” rule, and that Nika had accepted that rule during the cleanup because she wanted to reach her goal of having a better relationship with her husband. Even though a couple of boxes seemed minor, they were pointing Nika toward a path that she herself admitted she didn't want to be on again.

Whatever pushed a person to start hoarding has the potential to do it again, especially if the hoarder isn't in therapy. Aimee's divorce from an abusive man had been one of her triggers, and she did seek therapy to explore that. After a year of counseling, and carefully following the rules, Aimee was a hoarder success story. She was still clean, she had a good network of girlfriends, and she had internalized a lot of new, better habits. She was happy and involved in the outside world.

Then Aimee reconnected with an old boyfriend. At first seeing this man seemed like a positive thing for her, because it meant that she was open to relationships again. Unfortunately, this boyfriend had also been abusive, and he hadn't stopped. For Aimee, this trigger prompted her to go back into her comfort behavior.

A hoarder's family and close friends are the best ones to spot a trigger. Sometimes the event itself isn't obvious, but the sudden onset of hoarding behavior is. It's pretty likely that family members got an idea during the cleaning about what the hoarder's triggers are, and they can ask a few tactful questions to see if those are flaring up again. Ask the hoarder what he or she has been up to lately, if the hoarder has any new friends, a job change, or if the hoarder has stopped volunteering at the animal shelter.

If a trigger is the culprit, then it's time for more positive reinforcement. To a hoarder like Candace, whose OCD often held her back from completing a task, I would say something such as “I'm noticing these trash bags starting to pile up again by the back door. The last time that happened you told me it was because you weren't taking your meds. Is everything okay? Let's take these bags out while we talk about it.” Hoarders are used to justifying everything, so they may assume they are being judged and get defensive. Letting hoarders know that someone cares about them, and offering to help them with the immediate task, helps them get past the defensiveness. And when hoarding behavior is triggered, even to a modest degree, it is always wise to remind hoarders of their overall goals, and how badly they want to achieve those.

 

 

Hope is a huge part of hoarding recovery. Everyone involved must believe that a hoarder can eventually be helped, or both hoarders and helpers will not have the energy to keep going when it gets tough. Most of the time it's so much easier to quit than to keep fighting. Remember that there are happy endings, and that a loving family will do anything to help. Always remember that quitting on the hoarder is yet another tragic event in the hoarder's life. Someone who wants to help a hoarder must stay focused, positive, and full of hope, because honestly, who else will?

H
ow many of your hoarders keep their houses clean?”

Every day, people ask me about my success rate, but the real question should be about the
hoarder
success rate. I can help, and so can organizers, therapists, friends, and family members, but we can only bring so much to the table. Ultimately, whether or not a hoarder recovers is really up to the hoarder.

Therapists I know report that 60 to 85 percent of hoarders backslide. But there have been no reliable studies to support those estimates, which don't even take into consideration the fact that hoarders often make a journey through recovery—falling off the wagon and then trying again, but getting closer each time.