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Hoarding cleaning... when it's someone else's mess

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littleoc

MyPTSD Pro
Hello,

Does anyone have experience with hoarding cleanup?

My father was a hoarder, and did not allow us to clean his messes. However, he was legally removed in 2009. Since then, we've been trying to clean up the house. None of us (my two brothers, my mother, my service dog, and I -- all adults) are comfortable with the house. It's not our mess, but it keeps getting worse. I don't know about the rest of my family, but I have OCD and get more obsessive than ever when in this house. And more sensitive. The smallest cussing from my mom will set me off here. I feel like I can't escape from anything.

In 2011 my sister tried to help me clean it, but accidentally traumatized us so much that despite major improvements, the house became way worse than it ever had been. I do not want to get into what happened right now unless it's required for understanding something.

Background aside now, I've been planning to clean this house once and for all. I have six months, about -- but I also have serious stuff to do. I need to do job applications, take the GRE to get into grad school (I'm excited for this in a way!!), take my undergrad university's comprehensive exam, learn to drive, and other personal projects. No one is going to help me with this house.

I spoke to my therapist about this months ago, telling her that I plan to start in January 2018 with the goal of making this house livable and safe. She suggested I start with my room, and do a little at a time. But there's just too much stuff in here. It's awful. Most of it isn't mine -- my sister used my room for storage in 2011 and it quickly became a way to judge me as being crazy.

My personal plan had been to hire a hoarding cleanup team to clean up this house with me and and mother. That way, it could just be clean, and any mess could be manageable. Currently, everything is so messy that we can't clean one surface. The messiness bleeds into everything I do. I can't even get work done.

But my therapist has said that this would be expensive, and that she's not sure it would help long term. However, I don't feel that this is a classic case of hoarding.

If you have experience, can you please add your opinions? It's okay if not -- typing it out helps a bit to organize the problem. It's just so much...

Thanks :)
 
My suggestion...... keep only what you want/need and bring it somewhere else. Then get rid of everything else. Don’t try to sort or clean what’s there. It’s impossible. So just take what you need and want and get rid of everything else. It’s the easiest way....
 
There's so much stuff... important stuff is mixed in. For example, my and my brothers' and mother's birth certificates and social security cards are in this mess somewhere... some important stuff got buried.

The only things I have ever hoarded was food, really. I like collecting some kinds of toys, but I'm normal at that -- in other places (such as college dorms) there were not huge messes. So, yay for that :P
 
Just do one room at a time. I watched the program "Hoarders"before and the used a bin for trash one for donate and one for selling. If you haven't used it in the past 6 to 12 months pitch it! I take all my clothes I don't wear anymore to my local women's shelter. You can call Purple Heart and they will pick up whatever you have on your porch.

It will be a losing battle if your family doesn't pitch in though. Good luck!
 
My mother was a hoarder. When she was taken from her home because of having collapsed and subsequently discovered that she had end-stage pancreatic cancer, us kids were able to enter her house. Her hoarding was so bad that she slept on a small quilt in a tiny space, just big enough for her lay down on, on the living room floor. Some of the rooms were packed to the ceiling with stuff. Of all the kids, I was the only one who was available to tackle the house. My brother would come every few days and load up his trailer with junk and take it away. My suggestion would be to focus on one spot. Have no set goals. Just pick something up and decide if it is a keeper, tosser, or give-awayer! Have tons of garbage bags, latex gloves, and dust masks, if necessary. Don't take the time to deep clean until you get all the stuff out of the area. Put some headsets on and listen to an audio book or music etc to help distract you from the mess. For me, though hard and unpleasant, this time allowed me the opportunity to see family info and momentos that threw me back into times that were happy, abusive, dark, and enlightening. In a weird way, it was therapeutic for me. I was able to mourn the loss of a childhood and having a mentally ill mother. In a way, being the only one cleaning up mom's mess, gave me power and control over her and her stuff. I "took control" and for once, she could not tell me what to do and so I was able to transition from the position of a child to an adult, in a weird sort of way, since I was in my 60's at this point in life. I was also able to understand the depth of her mental illness and her loneliness, seeing that she substituted her junk and 'collections' for friends and family (She had disowned everyone). All in all, it was hard and there were many times when I would literally groan, shake my head, and have such deep sorrow for her, me and the family. Understand, that she hated me and now I was having to clean her mess. Somehow, having to do this, switched me from being her victim to being her equal. She was forced to relinquish all oversight of her world into my hands. I now had the final say in what was going to be kept or thrown away. I would suggest that you look at this as a challenge to be met and let it help you work through some personal angsts. When you have finished an area, you have won a battle and will be one step to closer to completing the job. When the job is all done, you will have reason to be proud of yourself and that is a good feeling! I promise!
 
It feels insurmountable at the moment because it's such a big task. I'm not a hoarder but I grew up in the most god awful unclean house and struggled as an adult to keep things clean and tidy despite feeling better in myself when it was done.

What I've done recently is go through everything asking myself why I'm keeping it. If the answer is anything other than because I need it (as in it has an actual purpose), it matters to me or makes life easier it goes in the bin. Remember that most of this stuff hasn't been getting used so it not being there any more is neither here nor there, if it helps think of it being permanently stored somewhere else.

Also look for quick wins. If there's a pile of stuff you can bin quickly that will make things clearer do that first so you see an impact however small. Or clean one room (bathroom can be good bevause it's small) so you have one clear space to hide in when it gets too much.

Good luck.
 
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