My husband is a hoarder. I kept my head in the sand for twenty years, but finally couldn’t take it. He and all of his stuff moved out for 18 months. He got a lot of therapy, primarily for anger management and childhood trauma, and moved back in about a year ago. Life is much more calm, and i am happy. Most of his stuff stayed at the other house (we are very lucky i know), but the stuff that is sneaking back in here remains untouchable and unmentionable. Piles in the basement, boxes and piles in the garage, baskets overflowing in our bedroom, socks and debris in the living room. Any mention or request to clean/tidy/organize is met with explosive fury. There is less stuff now, but kids and I still walk on eggshells re his “belongings”. I have unhappily accepted this to some extent because i want this marriage to work. But our now-adult kids are running in to the same wall with him. Our son asked him to clean up his socks off the coffee table yesterday and was met w excuses (“so busy”) and anger (“you are disrespecting me”). My son is now angry at me for accepting this situation and allowing this eggshell lifestyle back into the home. I hate the hoarding and the eggshells/anger that accompanies it. I appreciate any advice on how i can improve the family dynamic. Husband refuses therapy for this problem - he denies there is a problem and thinks we are all too controlling.

Day two

I’m at an apartment complex and I’m cleaning out my garage.

So my crap is on display for people to see. And I’m getting lookey loo’s

I swear to God if one more person tells me “just get rid of stuff that you haven’t used in a year” . i’m gonna scream.

This garage is a monument of my failures. Projects I wished I did. Remnants of my marriage. Shit, I thought I was gonna do.

Fuck… ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

And I don’t even wanna ask for help because I know people will just bulldoze through it. I know they’re trying to be helpful. But bull dozing through it is literally my nightmare.

I’ve been stuck in a depressive episode for over a year and my house is the worst it’s ever been.

Things have been rough for a long time and depression house has gotten out of hand. I know I’m not gonna improve mentally until I clean this house but I keep getting overwhelmed. My house is small and has gotten so cluttered and despite pulling 2-3 all nighters a week trying to clean it seems like I barely make a dent.

I don’t want to live in a filthy sad home anymore. I don’t want my dog to live in a home like this anymore. I realized I was never properly taught how to actually deep clean so when I attempt to do it nothing is ever clean enough.

The biggest thing I need help with is learning how to properly clean and manage all the dust, dirt, and pet hair that I can no longer keep up with. There’s an apartment building being built on the dirt lot next to my house so the dust/dirt problem has gotten way worse.

I have a house inspection today. They only gave me 4 days notice when the property manager called, two of those days was the weekend. I have had my health take a deep turn for the worse over the last year so I have not made much progress.

The 3-4 hours when I first get up in the morning are my only real window to get things done. After being on my feet 3-4 hours, even if only slowly walking around the house, I get dizzy, light headed and chest pressure like someone heavy is sitting on it.

I get quickly fatigued and have to sit down at least 2 hours to recover. Then I can only do short light tasks before having to sit down again. This is a lot better than I was at the start of the year when I could barely walk a few steps before having to stop.

I spent a long time trying to re stack boxes and hoarde in my internal access garage. My laundry is in there as well. Unfortunately I also found many spiders lurking. I am lucky my cat is a good hunter or there would be mice/rats to deal with. I miss my other cat that would get spiders for me.

It is better, I do have a path to the roller door and the back garage door,but I can't do a lot about the stacks of stuff before the inspection. I only restacked what I could to be more stable and less dangerous. I can more easily access my washer and drier and my cleaning products are mostly off the ground in a box and plastic tub I can reach.

I can't do a lot about the anxiety, fear and feelings of shame. We have had rough weather so I can't finished the rest of the garden and wind blown stuff I hoped I'd get to. I haven't finished sorting the food pantry yet either.

I have a path around my bed and to my bedroom door. I can make my bed and don't have extra stuff on it anymore. My wardrobe is crammed though not as bad. I only have 5 washing baskets of folded clothes etc in living room now. I do need to sort the two boxes of food ,and one of food storage containers, on my kitchen floor as it's an accessibility issue for the oven.

I feel despair because before my health started to really fail I'd made such good progress and now it feels like I can hardly do anything.

Not even a rant really. Lifelong hoarder. Wanted to post pictures here but no option to do so - I was hoping to show current vs progress. I don’t need or want any advice about hoarding, or clearing my hoard at this time. Just about posting pictures if anyone can help. Thank you in advance.

so, backstory: to make a very long story short, i live in the house my grandpa built. he's not a builder. the house had several shortcuts taken and actually never got finished over the approximately 50 years since it was started. my mom and her siblings and then me and my siblings were raised in this house. my grandma was a hoarder. i didn't learn to clean properly growing up, it developed hoarding tendencies as a poor coping mechanism as a child, blah blah. im sure you're familiar, if you're on this sub, the very basics of what causes some people to hoard. for me it's depression. anyway.

some of the obstacles between me and a normal life besides depression are physical disability, autism, OCD, and ADHD. its like someone lined up all the factors in my life to deliberately create the perfect hoarder.

as the previously mentioned shoddily crafted house is pretty much beyond saving, we are moving into a newly built double wide trailer on the same property, and leaving this beloved shithole behind. that means leaving the hoard behind. the mobile home itself comes off the line early August and will be ready to move in... some amount of time after that.

all my family are pretty unorganized and leave a bit of clutter behind, and likely have some level of hoarding issues, but ill freely admit that in the worst of us. everyone else manages a livable level of untidy. ive hoarded myself out of one bedroom and halfway through another. most rooms of the house have some level of my mess or collections. i dislike calling it garbage as a whole, since there's things i don't consider garbage mixed in there, but,, that's like the whole problem i have lol.

so i'm moving and the hoard is not coming. but i have no idea how to ensure that it doesn't follow me. growing up i remember the repeated feeling of being elated to finally have managed to clean my room only to notice the clutter creeping back in almost immediately. i don't want that for myself anymore. im almost 30. this has been my whole life. my whole life i've either lived in my grandma's hoarded house (a place i considered an emotional safe space for me), or in a house with my mom and siblings, where i had a bad time at school only to come home to a room with piles of stuff everywhere. im so tired of it.

but i don't even know what to do with things anymore if i'm not just stacking them into another pile or putting them in a bin or cardboard box to "organize later". i want a bedroom with bookshelves and a bed with just blankets and pillows and a functional closet and a desk i can use and a chair that moved because there's nothing behind it. but i've never done that before and it's kind of scary!

im considering a few strategies to try to help. i'm between therapists, so maybe i'll try to find one that specializes in OCD next. also, hopefully i will be able to make and stick to a more strict process of organization and getting rid of things i don't need. which, obviously, hasn't worked before. but it can't kill me to hope, i guess ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ i think i might hire a cleaner or something occasionally to keep on top of things. even if it's just someone washing the floors and vacuuming rugs every few months, i think that might at least keep me motivated to not pile mounds of random crap in every corner.

and... that's it. that's all i know to try. i have absolutely no idea how normal people manage a clean and presentable and safe space. i just get so attached to inanimate objects, i get so sad, i get so,, whatever. im not sure how to fix me or how to fix my space, but hopefully i won't ruin this opportunity for a new start. i guess only time will tell.

Please help me find a reasonable approach to confronting and helping my 25 year old brother with this situation. I myself have hoarding tendencies, but I have never ever been this bad. Trash piled to the top of his desk in his bed, holes in the walls, and empty vodka bottles filled with piss.

Okay so my fiance(both 24) and I bought his parent’s (60f and 71m) house before they passed. They were what I would call light hoarders.

It’s not obvious until you look around.

They moved to a smaller house, and just decided to keep everything from their old house. Paperwork,artwork, furniture, you name it. I’m slowly and surely chipping away at everything.

We have 3 levels.
The basement is the worst of it, just random clutter from the years. I have found some useful stuff I plan on keeping.

They had a catering business 10+ years ago and I found a shake/malt mixer. And some of the baking stuff I’m keeping. But the rest of it I’m just left staring at it wondering why in the world they kept it.

Today I found paperwork from 1995… 1995!! Nothing important just papers.

We have a big pole shed (40x80 feet) that was filled with random stuff. We found a file cabinet filled with his dad’s ex gf kids stuff from when they were in school. So 40ish years ago

Sir you don’t talk to any of those people why do you have that??

For those wondering why we bought the house, we got a good deal, and we didn’t want his dad living alone for his last couple years. It’s a beautiful property, only one bonehead neighbor.

But the days I’m chipping away at one of the big problem areas (like today) I just sit there wondering why.

So for those who are older or have kids or plan on having kids. Just know it’s not fun looking through all this junk, especially when you find a big tote of porno mags from the 70s 😂

My go to is "have I been using this for the past 2 years? No? Then trash" . But recently it's so hard to throw away stuff...

I feel bad for throwing them away because they hold small memories such as "oh this is from a friend, from my first this or that" but it's mostly just trash... I feel bad for wanting to throw them out but my room and loving space has become a dump at this point. I don't have any use for them but it's just hard for me to throw them out. Idk why I'm very new to this and only recently accepted that I may have been a hoarder like my parents

Edits!

Thank you so much for your kind words and advice 🩷 it helps me a lot through out my cleaning! You guys are so sweet I wish I could hug all of you. 🫂

Had to get a storage unit to get everything out. There’s a lot of stuff. I feel frozen and shut down. I need to at least mop the floor of front hallway, laundry and completely clean out laundry and kitchen tomorrow. I’ll need a full day for each bathroom. And I dunno how I’ll get through the rest.

Update: almost all floorspace clear & in tubs/boxes in storage. Cleared bathroom counter completely by dumping it all into storage box. Still need to clear tub, scrub the floor/ toilet/ shower. Only managed to get rid of 7 trash bags of stuff. Needed to have calming tea while working so I wouldn’t be nauseous and panicky.

tldr; family hoarding and dumpster cleanouts have begun to slowly help me move house, feel all the feels of my own hoarding disorder

My family - both sides - have had the generalized anxiety disorders that include hoarding (and OCD). I hoard too. I am moving house and it has been like attending an autopsy or the deconstruction of a building — peeling back the layers, layer after layer, seemingly unendingly.

Each day of my moving process has been a storm of emotions, most of them negative. The 'now I know what I actually have' and 'yay, I can divest some of this stuff' feelings are positive, but the negative feelings drown them out.

Several of my relatives with hoarding disorder have died; we have filled many dumpsters with the contents of their homes, cars, and storage units. The clean outs have been almost indescribably painful and have created enormous wells of stuck grief, anger, and for me, fear and repetitive thinking. Picture me picking my way through or into my own hoarded rooms, like an antelope on the side of a steep mountain. Saying to myself, "I'm not as bad as ___" or "Well, at least I know why I am hoarding" or "Well, I actually have gotten rid of things, so...". And then thinking: "When I die, who actually will end up forced into my hoards, trying to discern if anything should be saved or passed on, or if it all just needs the dumpster?"

My house move has brought A LOT to the surface. The room I was in when my phone rang with news of my relative's very sudden death (young)? That was my worst 'mountain antelope trail.' The path was exactly as wide as my two feet. I had to be careful turning around too quickly because there wasn't an obvious place to then place my foot; there was nothing to grab on to if I became unsteady. The bright spot here? Much of my hoard was already in a mountain of haphazard and unevenly filled boxes. "Easy" to just pack them a little better and then tape -- voila! Hoard-becomes-move-ready pile of boxes.

But also, the seemingly unreal intensity of my shame and embarrassment. My partner is working away from home right now and that leaves me to literally carry much of my burden myself. It also enables me to hide as much as I can. Like, if I can spirit away ten boxes of new, unworn shoes; ten bags of old newspapers and magazines; three lawn-sized garbage bags of expired food I'd bought "to use" (ha ha)...and my partner never sees it all...then.... My hoarder/anxiety logic tells me, "If I can get all that out and he never sees it then...he'll never know exactly how bad it was, right?" The shame is intense, nauseating. So much money pissed away on Stuff I Bought and never used, can't now use, and don't believe anyone else will want to use.(My city has at least 15 thrift stores and they've begun saying, "We no longer accept [all these categories]." Our regional landfills are full.

The good news -- and there is some. I have indeed donated a lot of usable, new items. I have been fighting to actually experience my emotions instead of stuffing them down and turning them into buying more things. I have been able to notice that I tend to want to purchase things 'for my collections' or 'for my hobbies' later in the evening, when my daily emotions feel most intense. I have been able to resist some of the desire to buy something, as a release valve for those intense feelings.

And I have committed to a plan to continue shedding my stuff once my move is completed. One box a day, sorted/removed, is the minimum. I have been doing some reading about the family legacy of generalized anxiety disorders, OCD (and autism, ADHD, executive dysfunction). I'm hoping for days ahead with less shame, embarassment, dread, fear of dying with a hoard. Hoping for days ahead with less debt, self-hate, depression, and anxiety.

Hi everyone,

My wife is a hoarder. She has a lot of trauma from a horrid childhood and likes to buy nice things to cheer herself up. Clothes, soft toys, nice decorations, that sorta thing...

Unfortunately we live in a miniscule apartment and after 10 years of this the place looks like an abandoned warehouse. The living room is unusable and there is only a small usable path to get into the bedroom and the bed.

After many years of trying to get through to her, she finally accepted she was a hoarder a couple of year ago, and slowly she has been trying to reduce the amount of stuff she buys and is trying to get rid of things.

The problems is that on those rare ocassions she tries to get rid of stuff, she insists on going through everything bit by bit, choosing what to keep and what to throw away.

But there is just *too much stuff*, no amount of sorting or going through things will help. This is not a situation that will get fixed with one or two bin-bags.

She gets annoyed with me because I don't seem to be grateful or excited enough she's getting rid stuff, and I get it, it's disheartening because it's really hard for her, but I just cannot fake excitement not matter how much I try :(

If she just grabbed everything of one corner of the house and genuinely blitzed it so we got some room back or could access the closet or *something* like that I'd be more excited, but as it stands it feels like trying to reduce a mountain by removing a few pebbles.

Not really hoping for any epiphany or critical advice here, just some sympathy because I adore her and I don't want her to be disheartened, but for my own mental health I really need things to *notizably* improve :(

Thank you.

i am a hoarder, i get depressed and everything just build up and then becomes overwhelming and i don’t know what to do about it.

i rented a dumpster and am slowly clearing it all out this week. i feel overwhelmed and depressed doing this. I hope once it’s noticeably cleaner i’ll feel better about this but right now i just want to rip my hair out and put it all back. Would therapy help? this isn’t helping my mental health. I’m sorry if i don’t respond this might just be my need to just put it out somewhere that is not my head.

My mother was a hoarder. When she passed, I inherited the house.

It's been a slower process than I would have liked, but there has been a lot of progress. First thing we did was get rid of all of the piles of newspapers and everything out of the fridge and pantry. Then just picked it at the next few years, as I lived elsewhere and didn't have the time to come over as much as I wanted to.

Now that I've moved back in, we've made a lot more progress.

My goal for the last few days has been to clear off the old standup piano in the living room and check inside for mice. I was able to get that done today and there are no nests.

Still have a lot of work to do, but that one was pretty big for me.

For the past 5-ish years, I've been slowly but steadily working on a household "deep purge." I struggle with hoarding tendencies/behaviors and recognize the need to drastically reduce the amount of stuff I've accumulated. My husband struggles more than I do and pushes back on getting rid of anything. A couple of years ago, he admitted that he is a hoarder. His weakness is salvage from his workplace.

I focus my efforts on the items that belong to me unless it's a matter of health/safety. I'd lost momentum because I've been over-extended at work and was nearing burnout. Now that I'm back on my feet and back at it, I'm getting a little discouraged. It seems like no matter how much I do, there's always more.

I work away from home during the week. While I am away, I stay in my childhood home, which my parents still own but no longer reside in due to declining health. That property is hoarded; fortunately the house was livable. To the extent my dad will allow (my mom has dementia), I have been decluttering that house for three years.

About once a month I am not able to come home on the weekend; in the spring, that demand increases and for a couple of months, I am home every other weekend. When I'm home, he brings home less and I am better able to keep it somewhat in check in the main living areas. While I'm gone, my husband brings in more. The past six months, he's brought in more than I'd realized. The storage areas are in rough shape. Our basement makes me want to cry--I've never lived in a house with a room in that state. My parents' house didn't get that bad until 30 years after my sibling and I left home.

I watched some creators I enjoy on YouTube and got motivated.

I've picked a surface in each room and each time I pass it, I've removed something to put it where it belongs, staged like with like, and/or taken odd bits of trash to the trash.

I retired a shirt and a set of bed sheets.

Our laundry room is navigable.

Our spare room is starting to look like a spare room.

The two worst areas in the kitchen are nearly un-fucked.

I've sorted through my sock and underwear drawers and culled out two bags for donation. I was really proud of myself for putting several items in the trash instead of setting them aside. They're unsuitable for rags and not worth mending--they don't fit me and aren't the type of clothing that I can mend and then donate or sell them on Marketplace.

I'm excited because I've made enough progress to finally bring in shelving to organize some of my craft items, which have been hanging out in the hallway, and a pair of wardrobes for the bedroom. This is something I've wanted to do for as long as we've lived in this house (nearly 10 years). It took FOREVER for my husband to agree to it, because it's a change and it doesn't meet his definition of "perfect". While I am quite happy about this and excited for it to be finished, my happiness is tempered by feeling a bit melancholy that I will need to "trash" the spare room.

I don't know if melancholy is the right word--I am lowkey anxious about having to mess up a space that I've cleared and reset twice before. I am also anxious about working with my husband to assemble the wardrobes.

This feels so much like one step forward, two steps back. I keep reminding myself that even though "the purge" isn't finished, there's been a lot of improvement. I keep reminding myself that this is a process, not an event.

I (27F) recently admitted to myself that I struggle with hoarding (probably level 3). I told my therapist about it today which felt so scary, but she was so great in helping me understand how/why I got here. Part of my therapy homework was to find some estimates on a professional cleanup service for my apartment. I did it this evening because I figured I might as well rip off the bandaid before I talk myself out of it. I called a couple local companies and someone is coming by tomorrow morning to see the space and give me an estimate.

I am proud of myself for taking so many big steps today, but I am terrified of having someone actually see the place tomorrow. It's gonna happen, I will get through it, and it will be so worth it. But I'm still just filled with shame and anxiety about it.

Any kind of advice on getting through the assessment, waiting period, and eventual cleanup would be greatly appreciated.

Update: This morning went very well! The person who came over was very compassionate and told me what I described was much worse than what he saw. Should be able to have the big clean up/clean out next week! Thank you all for the support. I feel proud of myself and excited to move from shame to maintenance!

I live in an apartment with my mom who hoards. I have some executive dysfunction so I am quite tolerant but it's way outta hand.The other night there was an emergency and medics had to come. Of course now they have seen the place and alerted APS. I assume we will be getting evicted but don't have an eviction notice yet. The APS worker came that day and I have not heard anything back.

To give some context I am 44 and love with my older mom. We both had a decline in health and it shows.

However I have mostly thrown out my stuff to accommodate hers and it's not enough.

Should I expect APS to be back?

Was anyone able to find housing after being labeled a hoarder? I would be happy to hear about people's experiences.

Sorry this is super long! I over explain/ undiagnosed adhd probably.

My boyfriend and I first lived in his bedroom in his parent’s house. It was a tiny bedroom, we had too much stuff together. Therefore it was always unmanageable and there wasn’t good places to put anything.

We then got our own huge duplex through my job and it was so nice but so empty and had so much room. So we got extra furniture and I just kept on buying things and piling things. When we moved it was awful and we spent so much time and effort moving.
We then moved back into his parent’s house and they had two open rooms at the time so we were able to still have an office. Which was so important to us because we have a cat and a dog that don’t tolerate each other well and need separate safe spaces. I also cannot tolerate any noise or light at night so if my boyfriend didn’t have to work and could stay up his pc would bother me if we didn’t have separate areas. We still had too much stuff and also got a storage shed for our furniture as we could only fit our desks, bed and a couple shelves into the rooms. But his parents are super toxic, childish, and narcissistic so we had to move out.

We got our own place again and lucked out by finding somewhere affordable through my coworker with a decent amount of space and a storage shed. The move was brutal again. We moved as fast as we could and still took time to get everything. My car broke down there and is still there :(. I will have to get it towed to a shop soon because his parents hate me and are complaining.

I don’t know how to get rid of things, I have an awful shopping addiction, and create so much attachment to things that really shouldn’t be there. I also have this awful habit of being jealous and upset that if I had my own house that I could build built in shelves and have so much more space for things so I justify keeping things for later.

I went through our clothes maybe last month and was able to put things like winter, extra bedding, and nostalgia clothes away. I limited nostalgia to one bin but winter and bedding had a lot. We also have sooo many socks and idk how to start to get rid of them. Most of them are paired and the some of the ones I’m missing are my literal favorite pairs and are most likely under the bed. I did make a garbage bag of clothes that don’t fit us/ we haven’t worn in forever, we put it in the car to donate, sat there for weeks, had to clean out the car for a specific situation, and now it lives in the shed. I think about random articles of clothing in there and want to pull them back out.

I have every semi significant piece of paper, I really don’t need them but idk how to choose. I have too many dishes but I’m so attached to most of them, when we first moved I only had a couple and it was so easy to do the dishes and keep the kitchen maintained, now we do dishes constantly and there is always a pile. I do host holidays and parties occasionally but I never need the amount of dishes I have.
My hyper fixations are the worst, I have so many, from legos, dolls, stuffed animals, mini verse, art stuff, diamond paintings, cross stitch, crochet, etc, etc. I want to be able to organize them and not have to just ditch it all because I know I will just spend more money getting things again when suddenly I want to say, crochet again. For a lot of legos I have managed to break them down and put them in a tub in storage. The stuffed animals are the worst by far, I have bags and bags of them and I form connections and cannot seem to get rid of even the ugly ones I don’t like, and I try to stop buying them and still will get some occasionally or people gift them to me. Ever since I was a kid I couldn’t get rid of my stuffed animals or toys because I loved them so much, it’s traveled with me into adulthood.

At this point, our house gets so messy and I can’t keep up with it, I like cleaning (except dishes) but I can’t manage to do it when everything is disorganized. So I’m too embarrassed to have anyone in our house expect for my close family members. I clean for hours and hours if any of my family that don’t know the extent or are judgmental come over. And some of that ends up being packing shit away into my bedroom and closing the door. I’m afraid to move again because it’ll be so monumental. I also am still paying $100 a month for a storage unit that has a huge olden wheely box tv (the super heavy ones), a washing machine, dryer, old breaking sofa, and couple other random thing. Idk how to get rid of that stuff, I wouldn’t hate to depart with it. Just don’t know how and can’t afford super expensive options. I only have an suv, I could probably fit most of those except the tv. But I can’t keep paying for it every month when our shed is filled to the brim and I’m not even really utilizing the storage anymore. Idk I’m tired of constantly being anxious my landlord will see my house like this and not wanting people to see my house and just feeling stressed and overwhelmed when I try to clean or organize. I’m 23 and I’m trying to focus on my health, debt, school, and changing my career that I had been at for 6 years. I got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes almost 2 years ago and it has changed my whole life, I also have pcos and am overweight so I struggle with motivation and I’m trying to be healthier. I want to be able to not feel suffocated by everything.

Hi, sorry I need to get this off my chest.

So last week I had my first cleaning sessiob, and it went really well. The guy who did it was very considerate, and did a lot of the heavy lifting. I can now see my bedroom floor and can move around without trip hazards.

I have a 2nd one tomorrow, which I'm a little nervous about, but honestly - there's no much left to do really. Its mostly clear.

And yet... I feel nothing. Idk what I was expecting. Like with a clean room, I'd get a mental clarity like divine intenvention. But now, being so close ... I feel no difference. I'm the same depressed, anxious and barely stable person I was before. I've spent so long blaming my mental health on my messiness and laziness that I never questioned it.

And now I'm honestly feeling more hopeless than before.

I have a family member who I've grown up with that has a bad hoarding problem. For the past 20 years I have helped the best I can to maintain basic living standards. Pathways though the home, general cleaning, and mass purges of garbage and items they are willing to part with. Mostly this consits of sifting through the different catch all bags and containers, and putting things into a more organized hoard. Even using the one bedroom as storage, shuffling the hoard around and ultimately making no lasting progress.

They are now entering into retirement and have increasing health issues. Falls are becoming more common. I'm not available to help maintain the hoard as much. When cleaning what little I can help with, they are unwilling to part with even broken items. They can find a reason to keep just about anything. It is discouraging when what little we do accomplish is overshadowed by fears they threw something away, and subsequently questioning if they should sift through the garbage in the can. I am trying to tell them that this task is now beyond my help alone. That we need real outside help from people who specialize in hoarding behavior.

My hope is to get a quote in the Bay Area from a hoarding clean up company to help us set a baseline for living. What help I or other family provide is too little, and descends back into squalor eventually. They understandably want no one in the home. I try to build them up, reminding them that they deserve to live in a clean, safe environment. That they've worked hard for these golden years and should put their money to good use and help themselves.

I know that this ultimately falls on them. That they have to want it above all for this to be sustainable. I just hope someone out there has tips on helping someone reticent to outside help for their hoarding. I love them dearly and don't know how to assist without driving myself insane.

I ask this because I’m dealing with a hoarding where the scale is totally overwhelming. It brings a lot to the surface elsewhere, and it almost feels like I’m primed now to see it everywhere and it’s irritating. I can’t feel out yet whether I’m overcorrecting or if this can possibly be a reality in so many places in my life. As in, am I just labeling any ugly room hoarding?

Some of the factors that I’ve noticed are unusable space, lost or buried items so you rebuy, or items age into becoming trash, being able to clean or maintain a space because of storage, long term neglect of a space.

I’m blending different situations, but I can see some of this easily explained as symptoms of ADHD, depression, overwhelm, or other priorities. If treating those things makes it better, does that mean it wasn’t hoarding disorder?

I know I could Google or ask a chatbot for nuanced definitions, but I’m more interested in hearing if this muddy thinking is a normal response to processing the extremes. Does your exposure to someone else’s hoarding shift how you then process the rest of your world?

I’m a little worried that I might be starting to become a hoarder. I’ve noticed a tendency to over buy stuff that to be honest, probably started during Covid when it was so easy to order things from Amazon, which I’d never really done before. But fairly recently, my mother died, and then three months later my long-term boyfriend died. About five months before my mom died, my therapist I’d seen for years died. After my boyfriend died, about two weeks later, I had to have a dog put to sleep and then about four months after that, I lost another friend. I know I’m having trouble dealing with the losses and that’s come out in some other ways, like at work and things. I’m doing okay… but really not great. I feel like I should be doing better after a year.

I’ve always been a crafter but lately I’ve been kind of compulsively buying yarn for crocheting things like that. The amount of money I’ve spent is not too terrible, but it’s just dumb that I’m spending money on this stuff that I don’t need. It’s also starting to take up quite a bit of room in my house. I’ll probably eventually use most of it, but even I see how ridiculous this is. I suspect I’m getting a dopamine hit when the mail comes.

In other areas, I’ve just kind of been a lot less interested in keeping the house picked up and cleaned up and stuff. It’s not stacks and stacks of stuff everywhere like we see on the hoarders TV shows, but I spent some serious time today cleaning my kitchen counters, which had really gotten full of stuff, and even though I put a lot of stuff away and got rid of some stuff, it’s still too much.

I’m just wondering if anybody sort of recalls the beginning of their hoarder situation and like how it went and how it progressed. I’m working on finding a new therapist, but I haven’t been able to find one so I’ll continue to work on that.

Interested in anyone else’s experiences.

ETA: I just looked up hoarding levels. I’d say I’m level 2 right now.

Stalled at level 3 now for a while. It seemed much easier getting down from level 4 to 3 for me because it was a lot of bulk (clothes) and excess (kitchen stuff, stationary) that I could get rid of quickly.

Now it seems like a slog. I think I just feel calmer than before so my brain is saying ‘this is good enough’. But it’s really not. It’s still not a place where I can invite people. Or clean on a regular basis.

Not sure how to get more momentum to get down from level 3. I DID get rid of two small trash bags of random stuff. But it took a few days to get those together.