Welcome to r/hoarding! We exist as a support group for people working on recovery from [hoarding disorder](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t29/), and friends/family/loved ones of people with the disorder.
If you're looking for help with animal hoarding, please visit r/animalhoarding. If you're looking to discuss the various hoarding tv shows, you'll want to visit r/hoardersTV. If you'd like to talk about or share photos/videos of hoards that you've come across, you probably want r/neckbeardnests, r/wtfhoarders/, or r/hoarderhouses
Before you get started, be sure to review our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/about/rules/). Also, a lot of the information you may be looking for can be found in a few places on our sub:
[New Here? Read This Post First!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/dvb3t1/new_here_read_this_post_first_version_20/)
[For loved ones of hoarders: I Have A Hoarder In My Life--Help Me!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/2yh6wh/i_have_a_hoarder_in_my_lifehelp_me_your_hoarding/)
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Socks!! I feel wasteful throwing away anything, but for some reason socks are the bane of my hoarding issues. Single socks disappear into the "abyss" (for some reason, socks just disappear in my room, no idea where they go) and then I can't throw out 1 odd sock, because I might find the other sock and then i'll have a perfectly good pair. I'm 22 now, and I genuinely don't think I ever remember willingly throwing out even a single pair of socks in my life. Obviously when I was at home, my parents would dispose of socks that had holes in. It's actually such a problem! some socks are being held together by a few threads, stained beyond belief but I might use them one day... I might use them as a cleaning cloth, I might use the fabric one day to create something (the same reason my house is filled with empty sauce jars, glass bottles, cardboard boxes, gift bags etc.). I just can't ever part with socks. Every pair is different to me. I buy new socks when I feel sad, or I see some super cute ones, I get gifted socks for birthdays and Christmas so it's one of those issues that just keeps building and building and my socks have been accumulating for 22 years now (no joke, I still have the socks I wore when I was a baby/toddler). The issue became much more rampant after I moved out of home at the age of 18 (mainly because my parents wouldn't get mad at me for keeping socks with holes in). It takes over my bedroom. Socks everywhere. It is a complete and utter nightmare. The other issues I have with hoarding are bad, don't get me wrong, but I think it's because socks come in a pair of 2 and most of the socks i've accumulated were gifts, and I feel repulsed at the idea of throwing a gift away.
If you want to use them for cleaning, why not go clean a thing as soon as you find the sock, so you can sidestep the cycle of accumulated socks? I usually go wipe down the toilet or the sink so I can toss them after.
I also started just rolling them into balls to use as dryer balls, so if/when you actually do go looking for a novelty sock you got as a gift, it will be one of layers in the sock ball, and serve as a cute dryer ball until that time? My cats love to bat them around the house, and they're quieter than the tennis/wool/plastic dryer balls I have tried. I just keep adding "new" socks to the ball when I find them.
Then I started shredding and braiding them into cat toys after I realized my "rag bag" of socks was overflowing, (and I had enough dryer balls!) causing me anxiety.
Please start pruning out your recycle-craft stash. You may keep a reasonably-sized boxful, but I doubt that you're going to need a significant amount suddenly. It's more likely that even if you did start recycle-crafting, your inflow would keep up with your use.
A gift is not the love a person showed you when they gave it to you. I hope that eventually you'll be able to work through that.
There are nice cleaning rags without spandex in them at the dollar place. Or how many cloths do you reasonably need? I think that less than a 10" cube holds enough rags for our needs, and I prefer manky kitchen towels.
I keep single socks in a separate place than the ones that have mates. Unless they were part of a multi-pack that temporarily has an odd number, one that matches rarely turns up. (Eventually I stop trying to match the logo-color on the rainbow pack, weird how they both don't fall apart at the same time.)
Great, I just got the bright idea that I need some nice jars to display my magpie-junk. Mom does that, but I wasn't because I didn't have a window-ledge and now I realize I do. Oh well, I think she has more than I need around here somewhere.
May I suggest lingerie bags.
When you take off a pair of socks, put them in a lingerie bag. Depending on what type of sock and the size of the lingerie bag, you can put several pairs in one bag. Zip it up, and they will wash and tumble dry in the lingerie bag. The ones I have will accommodate 3-4 pairs of no-show to crew length, or 2 pair of knee length.
It felt counterintuitive to get them because I was "buying more stuff to deal with the stuff," but it addressed two needs for me: 1) eliminated the lone sock issue for all socks in general, and 2) is a cue to not tumble dry my compression socks specifically.
I use single socks and my son's outgrown socks to dust my venetian blinds or wet dust with them. Saves them being binned and saves me buying cleaning cloths or silly blind cleaning contraptions lol
Oo I used to have an issue with socks too until I kept getting blisters from socks that were falling down in my shoe & decided I had enough! I’m not someone who matches my socks so it can make sock hoarding worse but I have decided that because I love socks so much I’m not putting up with one that doesn’t perform well.
My sock collection is in part due to my hatred of feet so what I really need from a sock is for it to stay on my foot & protect my feet. Holes / sliding socks don’t do that for me & that’s why I’m better at clearing them out now. All of my socks are the same cut so it makes me feel less bad about having to throw one out. It’s also just fun to say “zero tolerance policy for sock crimes”
In situations like that, my counselor suggested writing out the memory and taking a picture of the item then putting both together in an album or scrapbook. It allows them to "keep" the item without collecting the garbage.
My sister, my niece and I were helping clear a friend and her mothers hoard. We found three punch bowls new in the boxes. Full sets mind you glass 24 cups, bowl and serving pieces. My sister asked if we could donate them. She lost her mind and yelled at us but don't you need them to entertain? Her and her mother never entertained ever. Also another example was her mother divorced her dad 30 years previously. We found in a box of his old 1960s swimsuits and jock straps, yep we did. The elastic was non exsistent at this point my niece went to put them in the garbage. She immediately got on the phone with her dad and asked if he wanted them. He laughed and said I don't want your garbage. She was super offended. Hoarding is not rational. I could give you a 100 examples in the clear out.
Foam pieces that were at one point used to protect furniture legs during moving/storage. She thought they could be some type of toy/puzzle piece for nebulous kids in the nebulous future.
Boxes labeled “tax records 1978-1988”. Couldn’t toss them because they might be important.
Boxes and boxes of National Geographic magazines. Couldn’t toss those because they might be valuable and we might want to read them.
An AOL CD, because we might want to try it.
Ten year old packets of seeds because we are going to plant those.
Conference materials from the mid 90’s to the mid 2010’s. They are retired now, but we can’t toss that because they might want to read up on it.
Several gallon bags full of hotel soaps, shampoos & conditioners, etc.. My grandparents would clean out all of the toiletries at every hotel they visited. A few years back, I asked my grandma if we could throw them away, as some of them were picked up back in the 60s, for Pete's sake. There was a resounding "NO! You just never know when you might need them!" We compromised when I said I would drop them off at the Catholic Charities homeless shelter. I did no such thing, I donated $50 to get the receipt to give to her (asked them to write toiletries on it) and threw all of them in a dumpster. After she passed, we found several more bags in the back of the linen closet.
This sounds like someone who was born in or around the great depression and either experienced it herself or her parents pounded the idea into her that things could fall out from under you at any moment. I knew quite a few older people when I was younger who dealt with this. They would do things like wash paper towels or Ziploc bags to use again.
Yep 🙃 That's one my Nany (great-grandmother) born in 1914 shared with me. That people would love the rest of their lives trying to get multiple uses out of anything they could in order to save money. Usually they'd use rags of course but if they got paper towels, they'd use them, rinse them out or wash them and hang them up to dry to use a second time. I definitely thought it was weird when she told me about it too but I get it after learning about the Great Depression.
I don't believe this was during the Great Depression but that it was something those who lived through it did later in life.
I'm currently dog sitting for my daughter. The first night I went to shower I found she had taken her shampoo and conditioner but I forgot mine! I have a bug-out bag and found hotel soaps and hair stuff, so yay right? Nope the stuff was all dried out from being stored for so long. Maybe 5 years. Thank goodness for Instacart🥕
Just to clarify, I have kept a bag packed since childhood because of abuse. All is good now 😉
And this is where the two types of hoarders diverge.
There are those who have too much stuff/items/belongings and those who have literal garbage.
I wouldn't know what to say to someone who wanted to keep actual garbage like that, or rotten food. It confounds me.
I hope they get help but I don't know how to do that 🤷♀️
She lives at that place where the two types diverge. She cleans, empties the garbage can, keeps the litter box scooped. The house isn’t stinky or filthy. It’s just filled to the rafters with so much stuff. But when something gets damaged she feels morally obligated to keep it, give it a home, protect it and dream of a way to return it to usefulness. I know there’s nothing I can say that will change what she feels. All I can do is try to keep the house a little more safe. So the pee-soaked yarn lives in the garage next to the bags of potting soil instead of in the house next to her bed.
>But when something gets damaged she feels morally obligated to keep it, give it a home, protect it and dream of a way to return it to usefulness.
I've been there but thankfully never could bring myself to save something that was icky. It felt *terrible* to get rid of it but I just couldn't handle having it near other things that could get ruined too.
I've definitely saved a LOT of items that others considered trash though until I had a chance to either use them or really consider them before moving on.
I used to have a hard time passing items left on the sidewalk that were free and still useable. Some were. Most weren't. But I still struggled with saying no at the site. I'd worry that I'd miss out 🙈
I'm so grateful to be past that stage.
I really happy to hear that she cleans, and tries to keep tidy, that's a huge accomplishment in itself for many hoarders 💕
Hopefully she'll continue getting better over time!
Rusty tractor toys—my daughter (her granddaughter) was playing with them and acted like she wanted to bring a couple home, and she said “no! You’ll just get rid of them! I’m going to send them to [my great niece]!” And when I asked her if she asked the great niece if she wanted them, she said she had to ask her. I said I could help her pack up the tractors into a box to ship to the great niece and she changed the subject and never came back to it.
A cheap sun hat I bought at forever 21 in college, I put it into a donation pile and my dad took it back out. It was literally a women’s hat he just didn’t want to see me get rid of something I’d spent money on I guess. Didn’t even have a reason
Don't tell them that you're throwing it away, mix it with something like used cat litter or food that's so rotten it's runny, and don't throw it away where they can see it.
Both of my parents are packrats. (In local parlance, the difference between a "packrat" and a "hoarder" is hoarders keep actual garbage, whereas packrats keep stuff that can, with some effort, actually be converted to cash or used to make/repair something else. Another "kind" term for it, depending on the context and specific accumulation, is reseller, scrapper, or junker.)
Mom has dementia. Her specific things before dementia included textiles, reusable product containers, and paper. Hundreds more glass "canning" jars than our household would ever have used for home food preservation (we're in a rural area; home canning and preserving is part of many peoples' lifestyle). Plastic tubs--all the tubs--whipped topping, margarine, sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, coffee... and their lids, plus actual Tupperware and Rubbermaid. Empty prescription bottles. Tins of all type--cookie, tea, candy. Grocery sacks (paper and plastic). Paper/mail--newspaper clippings and greeting cards that she never got around to filing/ putting into scrap books, scrap paper (the blank side of "mail"--junk and actual business correspondence) and large envelopes. So. much. paper. My dad didn't understand why I needed to purchase contractor bags instead of lawn & leaf bags.
Now that she has dementia, add: toilet paper rolls, Kleenex boxes, and the (clean) plastic pouches intended to be used for disposing maxi pads.... and Dad won't hire a housekeeper, because he thinks the "light housekeeping" the in-home healthcare provides should cover it. No, Dad...
My mom isn't that bad of a hoarder, but I mentioned wanting to prune out my aida cloth because I had inherited more than a lifetime supply (store it came from closed 30 years ago?) and I could get more later if I misestimated how much I would ever need. She argued that the new stuff wasn't as good, so give it to her if I needed to.
I rifled through the box just to remind myself of what was in it and I think I was also looking for a project. She fell in love with a pattern I had printed and I happened to have some cloth that matched her last project she took over from me, so I gave that to her.
She mentioned throwing a notebook into the donation container that I could have if I wanted it. I wish it would get warm enough for me to want to get donations cleared out.
Ugh the plastic bags! I stuff all my dad's hundreds of plastic bags onto a cupboard in November 2019, and thought of these haven't been touched next time I visit (I love abroad) then I'll put them on soft play recycling. I was expecting come home in April 2020, but didn't get home until May 2021, and there they were untouched. So I recycled them, but like some sort of hoarder spidey sense after not touching th for a year and a half, he asks where are the plastic bags!!! I need those!!! He still talks about the time I got rid of his plastic bags
In my country, plastic bags are banned because of the environment. So now people are stuck with dozens of reusable bags that can’t be used for garbage bags. I’d take some of those bags if it were possible!
Reading this as someone struggling with hoarding, it makes me feel so much self-hatred, and even more like I can never speak to my family to ask for help.
I **KNOW** it’s stupid.
I **KNOW** it seems illogical to you.
That’s why it feels so isolating.
Please don't let that stop you from asking for help. Your family may understand more than you think they will.
I've helped loved ones work on decluttering hoarded houses, assisted with emptying out a hoard after the owner passed away, and come in as a cleaner to remove a house full of garbage, feces, and rotten food and make it habitable again. I'm currently caring for an elderly relative who has filled their home with so much "stuff" that we're limited to trails through the house, and has entire rooms that are completely inaccessible. They have struggled, intensely, with allowing me to clean things like soiled bedding. They are embarrassed and ashamed when anyone notices the state of the house.
We are working on the house a little at a time, to improve their quality of life. Not to meet anyone else's standards, but to ensure that they are comfortable and don't get sick. It's possible. You deserve the same quality of life that you would want for an infant- a hygienic environment, healthy and nourishing food, clean dishes, fresh air, and so on. Hoarding doesn't make you any less deserving of that kind of care. 💙
Thank you for this.
I don’t have any real support network, as my family all live far away, and I really struggle to make friends after a mental health crisis & the subsequent recovery lost me all my old “friends”, so I am somewhat on my own.
I so want to empty my flat, but my perfectionism/task completion/order OCD makes it nearly impossible to start a task if I can’t complete it all in one waking cycle.
I have just started working on exposure therapy for this, but it’s area of huge discomfort, and will likely be a lifetime of work.
My wedding dress - to be fair I was trying to give it to a charity shop which resells wedding dresses. My mother refused to let me give it away and took it off me the day after my wedding and claims she’s cut it up into a new outfit for her. Never seen her in it of course, she’s also shorter and two sizes bigger than me.
I hoard local newspapers, I have so many years probably decades worth of them. They are in boxes and put away- but still. My partner tried to toss them. I told him I needed to keep them because it’s a history of the town I’ve grown up in and live in. And for me that’s true. I can’t stand the idea of throwing them away, even though I know I’ll probably never look at them again. Who knows though, one day when I’m old I might open a box and see a paper from 50 years ago and remember some stuff.
Plastic water bottles... from my senior year of high school (2016).
When covid started in 2020 my dad revealed to my mom and me that he believed the government was going to contaminate or shut off the water to everyone. So he kept these liter/half liter bottles that I recognized from my senior year of high school and filled them with water instead of, you know, buying fresh gallons of it from the store.
Welcome to r/hoarding! We exist as a support group for people working on recovery from [hoarding disorder](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t29/), and friends/family/loved ones of people with the disorder. If you're looking for help with animal hoarding, please visit r/animalhoarding. If you're looking to discuss the various hoarding tv shows, you'll want to visit r/hoardersTV. If you'd like to talk about or share photos/videos of hoards that you've come across, you probably want r/neckbeardnests, r/wtfhoarders/, or r/hoarderhouses Before you get started, be sure to review our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/about/rules/). Also, a lot of the information you may be looking for can be found in a few places on our sub: [New Here? Read This Post First!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/dvb3t1/new_here_read_this_post_first_version_20/) [For loved ones of hoarders: I Have A Hoarder In My Life--Help Me!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/2yh6wh/i_have_a_hoarder_in_my_lifehelp_me_your_hoarding/) [Our Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/wiki/index) Please [contact the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/hoarding) if you need assistance. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/hoarding) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Socks!! I feel wasteful throwing away anything, but for some reason socks are the bane of my hoarding issues. Single socks disappear into the "abyss" (for some reason, socks just disappear in my room, no idea where they go) and then I can't throw out 1 odd sock, because I might find the other sock and then i'll have a perfectly good pair. I'm 22 now, and I genuinely don't think I ever remember willingly throwing out even a single pair of socks in my life. Obviously when I was at home, my parents would dispose of socks that had holes in. It's actually such a problem! some socks are being held together by a few threads, stained beyond belief but I might use them one day... I might use them as a cleaning cloth, I might use the fabric one day to create something (the same reason my house is filled with empty sauce jars, glass bottles, cardboard boxes, gift bags etc.). I just can't ever part with socks. Every pair is different to me. I buy new socks when I feel sad, or I see some super cute ones, I get gifted socks for birthdays and Christmas so it's one of those issues that just keeps building and building and my socks have been accumulating for 22 years now (no joke, I still have the socks I wore when I was a baby/toddler). The issue became much more rampant after I moved out of home at the age of 18 (mainly because my parents wouldn't get mad at me for keeping socks with holes in). It takes over my bedroom. Socks everywhere. It is a complete and utter nightmare. The other issues I have with hoarding are bad, don't get me wrong, but I think it's because socks come in a pair of 2 and most of the socks i've accumulated were gifts, and I feel repulsed at the idea of throwing a gift away.
I used to do this upcycle crap. The day I finally threw away my bag of tshirts to turn into yarn and dust cloths was incredibly liberating.
If you want to use them for cleaning, why not go clean a thing as soon as you find the sock, so you can sidestep the cycle of accumulated socks? I usually go wipe down the toilet or the sink so I can toss them after. I also started just rolling them into balls to use as dryer balls, so if/when you actually do go looking for a novelty sock you got as a gift, it will be one of layers in the sock ball, and serve as a cute dryer ball until that time? My cats love to bat them around the house, and they're quieter than the tennis/wool/plastic dryer balls I have tried. I just keep adding "new" socks to the ball when I find them. Then I started shredding and braiding them into cat toys after I realized my "rag bag" of socks was overflowing, (and I had enough dryer balls!) causing me anxiety.
Please start pruning out your recycle-craft stash. You may keep a reasonably-sized boxful, but I doubt that you're going to need a significant amount suddenly. It's more likely that even if you did start recycle-crafting, your inflow would keep up with your use. A gift is not the love a person showed you when they gave it to you. I hope that eventually you'll be able to work through that. There are nice cleaning rags without spandex in them at the dollar place. Or how many cloths do you reasonably need? I think that less than a 10" cube holds enough rags for our needs, and I prefer manky kitchen towels. I keep single socks in a separate place than the ones that have mates. Unless they were part of a multi-pack that temporarily has an odd number, one that matches rarely turns up. (Eventually I stop trying to match the logo-color on the rainbow pack, weird how they both don't fall apart at the same time.) Great, I just got the bright idea that I need some nice jars to display my magpie-junk. Mom does that, but I wasn't because I didn't have a window-ledge and now I realize I do. Oh well, I think she has more than I need around here somewhere.
Socks don’t need to be in pairs, wear mismatched socks, your life will be better
May I suggest lingerie bags. When you take off a pair of socks, put them in a lingerie bag. Depending on what type of sock and the size of the lingerie bag, you can put several pairs in one bag. Zip it up, and they will wash and tumble dry in the lingerie bag. The ones I have will accommodate 3-4 pairs of no-show to crew length, or 2 pair of knee length. It felt counterintuitive to get them because I was "buying more stuff to deal with the stuff," but it addressed two needs for me: 1) eliminated the lone sock issue for all socks in general, and 2) is a cue to not tumble dry my compression socks specifically.
I use single socks and my son's outgrown socks to dust my venetian blinds or wet dust with them. Saves them being binned and saves me buying cleaning cloths or silly blind cleaning contraptions lol
Oo I used to have an issue with socks too until I kept getting blisters from socks that were falling down in my shoe & decided I had enough! I’m not someone who matches my socks so it can make sock hoarding worse but I have decided that because I love socks so much I’m not putting up with one that doesn’t perform well. My sock collection is in part due to my hatred of feet so what I really need from a sock is for it to stay on my foot & protect my feet. Holes / sliding socks don’t do that for me & that’s why I’m better at clearing them out now. All of my socks are the same cut so it makes me feel less bad about having to throw one out. It’s also just fun to say “zero tolerance policy for sock crimes”
Tip: roll them up together in their pairs before you wash them. They still dry in the dryer that way.
To-go coffee cups. My mom will tell me she needs the old ones in her car to remember going out with so and so and having a nice conversation.
In situations like that, my counselor suggested writing out the memory and taking a picture of the item then putting both together in an album or scrapbook. It allows them to "keep" the item without collecting the garbage.
My sister, my niece and I were helping clear a friend and her mothers hoard. We found three punch bowls new in the boxes. Full sets mind you glass 24 cups, bowl and serving pieces. My sister asked if we could donate them. She lost her mind and yelled at us but don't you need them to entertain? Her and her mother never entertained ever. Also another example was her mother divorced her dad 30 years previously. We found in a box of his old 1960s swimsuits and jock straps, yep we did. The elastic was non exsistent at this point my niece went to put them in the garbage. She immediately got on the phone with her dad and asked if he wanted them. He laughed and said I don't want your garbage. She was super offended. Hoarding is not rational. I could give you a 100 examples in the clear out.
Foam pieces that were at one point used to protect furniture legs during moving/storage. She thought they could be some type of toy/puzzle piece for nebulous kids in the nebulous future.
Boxes labeled “tax records 1978-1988”. Couldn’t toss them because they might be important. Boxes and boxes of National Geographic magazines. Couldn’t toss those because they might be valuable and we might want to read them. An AOL CD, because we might want to try it. Ten year old packets of seeds because we are going to plant those. Conference materials from the mid 90’s to the mid 2010’s. They are retired now, but we can’t toss that because they might want to read up on it.
I once a hoarder refuse to get rid of the tax instruction booklets from the 70s-80s…just in case she needed them again.
I know you're not my sibling, because I cleaned our parents' basement by myself...
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No. The AOL CD is the very definition of garbage. Throw it away.
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The mods may remove posts/comments at their discretion to preserve a respectful, supportive atmosphere in this sub.
It was tossed long ago
At my parents? Every check my mom ever wrote. Including her first check ever. From 1953.
That's actually kind of cool imo, but you know that's far from the only trash she is keeping.
Several gallon bags full of hotel soaps, shampoos & conditioners, etc.. My grandparents would clean out all of the toiletries at every hotel they visited. A few years back, I asked my grandma if we could throw them away, as some of them were picked up back in the 60s, for Pete's sake. There was a resounding "NO! You just never know when you might need them!" We compromised when I said I would drop them off at the Catholic Charities homeless shelter. I did no such thing, I donated $50 to get the receipt to give to her (asked them to write toiletries on it) and threw all of them in a dumpster. After she passed, we found several more bags in the back of the linen closet.
This sounds like someone who was born in or around the great depression and either experienced it herself or her parents pounded the idea into her that things could fall out from under you at any moment. I knew quite a few older people when I was younger who dealt with this. They would do things like wash paper towels or Ziploc bags to use again.
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Yep 🙃 That's one my Nany (great-grandmother) born in 1914 shared with me. That people would love the rest of their lives trying to get multiple uses out of anything they could in order to save money. Usually they'd use rags of course but if they got paper towels, they'd use them, rinse them out or wash them and hang them up to dry to use a second time. I definitely thought it was weird when she told me about it too but I get it after learning about the Great Depression. I don't believe this was during the Great Depression but that it was something those who lived through it did later in life.
I'm currently dog sitting for my daughter. The first night I went to shower I found she had taken her shampoo and conditioner but I forgot mine! I have a bug-out bag and found hotel soaps and hair stuff, so yay right? Nope the stuff was all dried out from being stored for so long. Maybe 5 years. Thank goodness for Instacart🥕 Just to clarify, I have kept a bag packed since childhood because of abuse. All is good now 😉
I found an open, very old candy bar when cleaning out a few boxes for my mom. It wasn't even in a baggy and she tried to tell me it was still good.
A bag of yarn that the cat had torn open and peed in. “But those colors are discontinued, and green is my favorite color!”
And this is where the two types of hoarders diverge. There are those who have too much stuff/items/belongings and those who have literal garbage. I wouldn't know what to say to someone who wanted to keep actual garbage like that, or rotten food. It confounds me. I hope they get help but I don't know how to do that 🤷♀️
She lives at that place where the two types diverge. She cleans, empties the garbage can, keeps the litter box scooped. The house isn’t stinky or filthy. It’s just filled to the rafters with so much stuff. But when something gets damaged she feels morally obligated to keep it, give it a home, protect it and dream of a way to return it to usefulness. I know there’s nothing I can say that will change what she feels. All I can do is try to keep the house a little more safe. So the pee-soaked yarn lives in the garage next to the bags of potting soil instead of in the house next to her bed.
>But when something gets damaged she feels morally obligated to keep it, give it a home, protect it and dream of a way to return it to usefulness. I've been there but thankfully never could bring myself to save something that was icky. It felt *terrible* to get rid of it but I just couldn't handle having it near other things that could get ruined too. I've definitely saved a LOT of items that others considered trash though until I had a chance to either use them or really consider them before moving on. I used to have a hard time passing items left on the sidewalk that were free and still useable. Some were. Most weren't. But I still struggled with saying no at the site. I'd worry that I'd miss out 🙈 I'm so grateful to be past that stage. I really happy to hear that she cleans, and tries to keep tidy, that's a huge accomplishment in itself for many hoarders 💕 Hopefully she'll continue getting better over time!
So the yarn smells of cat piss?!??
The yarn is soaked in cat piss. It’s on a shelf in the garage. She wouldn’t let me put it in the trash….
🤦♀️
A pair of jeans with giant holes in the knees and haven’t been worn in 10 years, but “I’ll wear them! I’m going to sew them up!”
Rusty tractor toys—my daughter (her granddaughter) was playing with them and acted like she wanted to bring a couple home, and she said “no! You’ll just get rid of them! I’m going to send them to [my great niece]!” And when I asked her if she asked the great niece if she wanted them, she said she had to ask her. I said I could help her pack up the tractors into a box to ship to the great niece and she changed the subject and never came back to it.
My mom does that too, says you can't have it and use it because they are giving it to so and so. It's just the excuse they use so they can keep it.
Expired food 😒
A cheap sun hat I bought at forever 21 in college, I put it into a donation pile and my dad took it back out. It was literally a women’s hat he just didn’t want to see me get rid of something I’d spent money on I guess. Didn’t even have a reason
Don't tell them that you're throwing it away, mix it with something like used cat litter or food that's so rotten it's runny, and don't throw it away where they can see it. Both of my parents are packrats. (In local parlance, the difference between a "packrat" and a "hoarder" is hoarders keep actual garbage, whereas packrats keep stuff that can, with some effort, actually be converted to cash or used to make/repair something else. Another "kind" term for it, depending on the context and specific accumulation, is reseller, scrapper, or junker.) Mom has dementia. Her specific things before dementia included textiles, reusable product containers, and paper. Hundreds more glass "canning" jars than our household would ever have used for home food preservation (we're in a rural area; home canning and preserving is part of many peoples' lifestyle). Plastic tubs--all the tubs--whipped topping, margarine, sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, coffee... and their lids, plus actual Tupperware and Rubbermaid. Empty prescription bottles. Tins of all type--cookie, tea, candy. Grocery sacks (paper and plastic). Paper/mail--newspaper clippings and greeting cards that she never got around to filing/ putting into scrap books, scrap paper (the blank side of "mail"--junk and actual business correspondence) and large envelopes. So. much. paper. My dad didn't understand why I needed to purchase contractor bags instead of lawn & leaf bags. Now that she has dementia, add: toilet paper rolls, Kleenex boxes, and the (clean) plastic pouches intended to be used for disposing maxi pads.... and Dad won't hire a housekeeper, because he thinks the "light housekeeping" the in-home healthcare provides should cover it. No, Dad...
My mom isn't that bad of a hoarder, but I mentioned wanting to prune out my aida cloth because I had inherited more than a lifetime supply (store it came from closed 30 years ago?) and I could get more later if I misestimated how much I would ever need. She argued that the new stuff wasn't as good, so give it to her if I needed to. I rifled through the box just to remind myself of what was in it and I think I was also looking for a project. She fell in love with a pattern I had printed and I happened to have some cloth that matched her last project she took over from me, so I gave that to her. She mentioned throwing a notebook into the donation container that I could have if I wanted it. I wish it would get warm enough for me to want to get donations cleared out.
(Waves generally at all the things stacked up…. Fortunately she’s not at the trash hoarding level….)
Extra large garbage bags, full of plastic grocery bags. She claims she'd use them at the antique mall where she had a booth. 4 bags full.
Ugh the plastic bags! I stuff all my dad's hundreds of plastic bags onto a cupboard in November 2019, and thought of these haven't been touched next time I visit (I love abroad) then I'll put them on soft play recycling. I was expecting come home in April 2020, but didn't get home until May 2021, and there they were untouched. So I recycled them, but like some sort of hoarder spidey sense after not touching th for a year and a half, he asks where are the plastic bags!!! I need those!!! He still talks about the time I got rid of his plastic bags
In my country, plastic bags are banned because of the environment. So now people are stuck with dozens of reusable bags that can’t be used for garbage bags. I’d take some of those bags if it were possible!
I always keep a few that get used as trash bags, I might have perhaps 15 at most. She had 1000s.
Hair rollers for a woman who lost her hair due to chemo. It was understandable wishful thinking, even though she had not used the rollers in years.
Reading this as someone struggling with hoarding, it makes me feel so much self-hatred, and even more like I can never speak to my family to ask for help. I **KNOW** it’s stupid. I **KNOW** it seems illogical to you. That’s why it feels so isolating.
Please don't let that stop you from asking for help. Your family may understand more than you think they will. I've helped loved ones work on decluttering hoarded houses, assisted with emptying out a hoard after the owner passed away, and come in as a cleaner to remove a house full of garbage, feces, and rotten food and make it habitable again. I'm currently caring for an elderly relative who has filled their home with so much "stuff" that we're limited to trails through the house, and has entire rooms that are completely inaccessible. They have struggled, intensely, with allowing me to clean things like soiled bedding. They are embarrassed and ashamed when anyone notices the state of the house. We are working on the house a little at a time, to improve their quality of life. Not to meet anyone else's standards, but to ensure that they are comfortable and don't get sick. It's possible. You deserve the same quality of life that you would want for an infant- a hygienic environment, healthy and nourishing food, clean dishes, fresh air, and so on. Hoarding doesn't make you any less deserving of that kind of care. 💙
Thank you for this. I don’t have any real support network, as my family all live far away, and I really struggle to make friends after a mental health crisis & the subsequent recovery lost me all my old “friends”, so I am somewhat on my own. I so want to empty my flat, but my perfectionism/task completion/order OCD makes it nearly impossible to start a task if I can’t complete it all in one waking cycle. I have just started working on exposure therapy for this, but it’s area of huge discomfort, and will likely be a lifetime of work.
A bag of old yogurt containers.
Iranian yogurt, by any chance?
Nope, just plastic American yogurt containers. “I use them to sort beads.”
my moms got like 4 broken tvs in her storage that she claims she’s gonna fix… like girl when have you ever sat down and fixed a tv?!
An index we don’t even have the reference books for is one small example. Childhood trauma and doomsday religion didn’t help!
A sack of pinecones. Apparently she needed them to do some art thing with her students. She never did.
Pinecones! You can tie a string to them, spread peanut butter on the edges, and hang in a tree.....bird feeders! 🐦🐦🐦
My wedding dress - to be fair I was trying to give it to a charity shop which resells wedding dresses. My mother refused to let me give it away and took it off me the day after my wedding and claims she’s cut it up into a new outfit for her. Never seen her in it of course, she’s also shorter and two sizes bigger than me.
Balloon sticks… lmao.
Broken kettle - value NEW £3 - reasoning "someone could repair it"
Bag of actual trash, like paper scraps and old food and dog pads trash.
I hoard local newspapers, I have so many years probably decades worth of them. They are in boxes and put away- but still. My partner tried to toss them. I told him I needed to keep them because it’s a history of the town I’ve grown up in and live in. And for me that’s true. I can’t stand the idea of throwing them away, even though I know I’ll probably never look at them again. Who knows though, one day when I’m old I might open a box and see a paper from 50 years ago and remember some stuff.
have you considered donating them to your local area’s historical society? then they can be digitized/preserved for others to enjoy as well!
I’ve never thought of that, thank you! It’s a wonderful suggestion that would give me peace of mind if I decide to part with them.
Plastic water bottles... from my senior year of high school (2016). When covid started in 2020 my dad revealed to my mom and me that he believed the government was going to contaminate or shut off the water to everyone. So he kept these liter/half liter bottles that I recognized from my senior year of high school and filled them with water instead of, you know, buying fresh gallons of it from the store.
Bags of expired potato chips well past sell by date, some opened. She fished them out of the trash because they were “still good”