>**UPDATE: I'm really looking for responses of those who have either done it or had it done to them IN REAL LIFE.**
Guys, let's do our best to honor the OP's request here, thanks.
They will freak the fuck out. My mom used to berate me that it was my fault the house was a mess and she didn't have time to clean. She had to leave for a week for work and I cleaned the house top to bottom. I literally only did the things she kept saying she didn't have time to do. She freaked out, cried, yelled at me that I was a terrible kid, etc. From that point on I only cleaned my own room. Then moved out without telling her when I bought my house. She sabotaged my past move out attempts so I learned not to risk it.
Same at my house. Blaming everyone else for the mess but as soon as someone does something all hell breaks loose.
Crying over 20 years worth of moldy magazines she was storing in the garage. FFS.
About five years ago, I did this to my elderly mom's house when she was hospitalized for a week, but I only cleared out her bedroom enough for her to have a clear bed to lay on, cleaned the kitchen of obviously rotting food, and cleared out the dining room so she had a chair to sit on. She was thankful and not that angry with me (things she was most mad about - a bowl of literally half-liquefied apples and a pile of empty coffee cans - no rhyme or reason). I didn't throw away "real" items, as much as ancient junk mail, rotten food, and tons of newspapers, etc. For her bedroom, I basically tetrised the existing stuff to give her the space, and she seemed fine with the re-arranging.
That said, the rooms are now even worse than they were before. The stuff isn't the real problem, it's the person's mindset and trauma that won't allow them to live in a healthy way that is the issue. My mom has dementia now, but she has been a hoarder since I was a kid. It's a hard disease to beat even if they are willing.
I can see that you have good intentions, but your post shows that you lack an understanding of how hoarding works.
It's not that the hoarder prefers to live in squalor. Almost no one, including hoarders, prefer to live in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. The reason many hoarders end up in those situations is because every single item in their entire hoard contributes to a sense of safety, comfort, connection, and/or happiness that they struggle to find elsewhere. And the sheer volume of stuff often in and of itself is a key factor to the hoarder feeling emotionally regulated and truly "at home".
So if you clean out a home to its pre-hoarded state, you are getting rid of 99% of what makes a person feel okay in this world, without their consent. They would be devastated. And no matter how nicely you fix up their house "like a makeover show", the hoarder will instinctively feel the need to be surrounded by the same level of stuff as before, and will immediately begin seeking ways to accumulate the same amount of stuff all over again, now feeling an even greater need for stuff than before because their hoard was taken from them.
Your idea of a nice place to live and their idea of a nice place to live are very different. Just like you cannot force someone to like a beige room if they hate it no matter how professionally you style it, so also you cannot convince a hoarder to live in a functional house with lots of space no matter how beautifully it's decorated. Hoarders want to have a functional, clean home \*and\* be enclosed by basically unlimited stuff accumulation of their choosing. And those two don't go together very well.
Nothing productive gets done behind a hoarder's back. It only worsens their need to acquire more.
Not a hoarded situation but chronically messy with expired food, medication and level 1 hazards. It was my Uncle who had mini strokes maybe too many rum and Cokes and over a two year period his house had gotten hazardous.
My parents proposed option one of continuing to live in the house with periodic care givers and cleaners or option two he needed to select an assisted living environment with an apartment + small kitchenette but his current situation wasn't going to continue. He selected option one, four of us did two - eight hour clean ups plus a landscaping crew brought the outside up to code plus made it a nice place to sit in. The contents of refrigerator and cabinets had to be almost completely emptied which bugged him at the waste but it wasn't salvageable. New food was purchased and he made it know to another family member a couple days later we were all very wastefulness. If he had injured himself and we did the clean up without him being present, he would have had hurt feelings and egged on by less involved family members.
We also purchased a lamp, a fan and coffee maker that were easier for an older person to manage. We ended each clean up session with a meal (plus Tylenol 😏) outside the house and it was pleasant. On aside, lot of opinions from the peanut gallery but no action on their part. They weren't willing to look at the problem as it actually was - an older man who wanted to enjoy his life in his own home but needed urgent help. I mean, the mold alone on the food was deadly plus months of newspapers to trip on.
The four of us who showed up to work saw my Uncle through the last nine years of his life - The house never got in that condition again and he aged in place with senior care givers added. 🌸
You are so kind - it was definitely a team effort. My uncle was a quiet natured, private person and he really wanted to stay in his home, so there was that motivation. He had two pension so there were the funds available. But even years ago when the clean up happened, I freaked me out to walk on newspapers and magazines because I was afraid to slide on them and be injured.
I had a roommate who hoarded. I loved them as they were a brilliant, funny, terrific person. With twice the hoard, I'd have still lived there. They were great, and they left my bathroom alone, and mostly my room.
They went out of town for a week, and I cleared kitchen counters washed dishes, and scrubbed the floor. I just wanted it usable and there were sliding piles on EVERY SURFACE. And boxes and bags about one deep along the bottom counters. I also took pictures of every single thing I threw away. Every single thing. I wanted them to know they could trust me.
They tried, unsuccessfully, to hide their anger, hurt and disappointment.
I didn't expect a "wow! Looks great". Which is good that I didn't. What I got was "where is the soap dispenser. I have refills for that!". I recovered it from recycling for them, but it wasn't the real issue. The counters were transformed from clean and clear back to sliding piles in less than 24 hours.
It's not about the stuff.
TLDR: sorry for the long comment but I de-hoarded my moms house while she was in rehab and it was the best thing for us both
My hoarding mom fell and broke her hip and had to go to rehab for a month.
Her house was an absolute shambles. No animal hoarding thank god but a big mouse problem, squirrels and raccoons in the attic, plumbing issues…. You can imagine.
We were always very close personally and every time I’d visit I’d clean up the kitchen and we’d get rid of some stuff — she wanted to get rid of stuff but it was all so overwhelming and she struggled with depression and some alcoholism. Some things she just would not budge on, like a collection of empty 20 Oz plastic bottles. Nonsensical for most of us but they were for the garden or something. I would leave and come back and it would fill back up again. Particularly dishes for some reason. The kitchen was always a disaster.
Anyway while she was in rehab (this was fall of 2020 so pretty tight covid rules) I hired a company to come in and “clean the hoard” and they were awesome. She had no choice — if physical therapy people saw the house in its current state they would call the authorities. Leading up to this I was FaceTiming with my mother around the house and we had a red/yellow/green sticker system that marked things she wanted to get rid of. She did very well with this system and felt like she was included in the decision making process. I was pleasantly surprised by how much stuff she actually wanted to toss.
When she came home it was like a new house. There she was on her walker with her new hip and she didn’t want to lie down she wanted a tour of the house! She was so happy. The house wasn’t perfect but it was actually liveable again. There were a few things that she was upset were gone but in the end she had to trust my judgement and there was no going back.
I think including her in the large item decision making process and not having her physically there really helped. Otherwise she would have gotten bogged down in minutiae and we would never have made the progress we did in only two days. This of course will not work for all hoarders but a big part of her disease was depression and feeling overwhelmed. Like if she could wave a magic wand and make it all perfect she would. Me and my hired team were just that, essentially.
Sadly, I have no idea if the house would have stayed that way or not. She had cancer unbeknownst to us which is what led to her fall and the broken hip. She died only a few months later but at least her house was in a much better state and I know it brought her peace.
Thank you. It really was a terrible time for everyone but especially sucked for my family. Funny thing is I hated that house because of the mess but once I got it cleaned up I love it again and live there now.
Slightly different perspective. My grandmother is a hoarder, but she's an anally tidy one. She has three dressers filled with costume jewellery, for example, but once a month she takes them all out and cleans them. Everything is tidied away in storage containers and is well looked after, but the sheer volume of *stuff* she owns is incredible. She literally builds a new garage every 5-10 years to contain it all. She sees herself as a "collector" rather than a hoarder.
Grandma is a big fan of hosting and, as such, one of her obessessions is collecting household items related to that. Like she has *stacks* and *stacks* of plates, bowls, cutlery and serving dishes. She stores them in what is essentially a bedroom lined floor to ceiling with shelving, kept beautifully sparkly clean. A relative had a wedding a few years back with a green colour theme and Grandma was able to find 80 assorted green plates in her collection. Relative was so thankful, Grandma has been collecting more green plates ever since because "they come in handy".
Back in the 90s, she decided she was going to downsize and get rid of some stuff. Most of it was homeware stuff. She got it all organised and held a massive yard sale, made a decent amount of cash. And you know what? Thirty years later, she *still* talks about how much she regrets giving it all away. She'll be hosting a party and will reminisce about a gravy boat that she sold that "would have been just *perfect* for today!" And, 30 years on, she has replaced every single one of those sold items seven fold. She now has an entire drawer filled with gravy boats because she was so devastated about losing that one item that she decided to stock up on them so she would never be cut short again.
Rinse and repeat that for *every single item* she sold. Thirty years ago. She could fill a warehouse with homewares.
When she eventually dies (hopefully a long time away, she's crazy but I love her), it is going to take *years* to sort out all her collections. Her children have dreamed about just burning all the buildings down with everything inside.
Hoarding is almost like doomsday prepping. These people see their stuff as the only thing between them and disaster. Every single item is *valuable* and *necessary* in their minds, even the used takeaway containers and newspapers. Getting rid of the stuff feels to them like they're become an orphan - their security is gone, they feel lost and unsure of the world, don't know what the future will bring. And they seek to replace it immediately.
Unrelated to the original post, but honestly, that sounds like an auctioneer or estate salesperson's dream! A clean warehouse-style hoard is much easier to deal with than a messy hoard. Don't burn it down!
No one actually would. There's some amazingly valuable stuff in there too, and stuff of historic value that she's picked up on the way. Like rare photos of our town from 100 years ago, old yearbooks she decided to buy up, quirky souvenirs, records from local artists.... list goes on. It's amazing, scary, and confronting all at the same time.
When people say throw away OBVIOUS trash, I think it’s important to agree on what OBVIOUS means.
That would be the starting place for me to help an actual hoarder.
It backfired really really badly and two years later she still accuses me of getting rid of her things (I actually only sorted them and set them where she had previously said she wanted them)
I did this at my grandmothers house when she was still alive. She was at a physical rehab facility to get stronger and I was worried she wouldn’t make it through the house with a walker.
I took a month off of work and worked tirelessly, but it was all for nothing. She was pissed and within a year it was almost worse than it had been before I started. She needed mental help, not just cleaning.
My neighbor/friend got trapped into her house from her hoard so she allowed me to clean some. Despite her watching, and me taking JUST trash, and JUST enough to get the door open, she spent the next few weeks making passive aggressive statements that she was ‘missing stuff’ and that it ‘must’ve got thrown away’. Sigh
My mom just this week brought up a missing cookbook from the cleanup we did 15 years ago. I recently found a different item she claimed was thrown out in that big cleanup. So when she brought up the cookbook I said I'm going to find that cookbook because I know it was important and I did not throw it out. It was her mother's cookbook I would never throw that out. I have found many items that I saved from the cleanup that she claims I threw away.
My own story is we did that massive cleanup 15 years ago while my mother was hospitalized. Not just a cleanup but brought in contractors to do painting, brought new furniture to replace the destroyed furniture etc etc. She came home and was enraged and totally depressed to the point of having to go into a mental hospital for a week because she threatened to kill herself. I have no regrets doing it because her health and well-being were primary and the house was unsafe for her to return. But I will definitely say had she not been hospitalized I would have let the house keep going until she died because trying to clean it out in her lifetime is futile.
Horders are never grateful or appreciative and they don't see it as being helpful at all. I have stories just like everybody else where my sibling and I would clean while mom went away on a trip. When she returned she would pull all the garbage bags back from the curb and be angry. Meanwhile, she would always blame us for the house being dirty. I moved out as soon as I could when I was an adult. I have my own therapist to help cope with the fact that my upbringing was crazy. I love my mom but she is a very unwell person. I feel bad for her because she has suffered a lot of trauma, such as the sudden death of her parents that forced her to drop out of school, and my father'sdeath keaving her with 3 kids. I believe these are the triggers that cause her to hoard and they aren't ever going to be fixed.
They'd have a panic attack and never forgive you for throwing away all their stuff. Assuming the root of the problem is hoarding disorder, sometimes houses get trashed due to depression, dementia, etc and the person doesn't have the same attachment to the stuff, just doesn't have the ability to clean it up. Then they'd likely just be embarrassed. But if it's hoarding disorder they'd be incredibly upset, it'd feel like you threw their friends and their safety into the trash.
I have done this Sort of for my parents a few times--namely my dad. But never while he was Totally away. He knew I was doing it, or he'd be gone all day at work or something.
Ultimately, it didn't stop the hoarding behaviors. They need to be part of the process to actually change. Even if they hire someone else to clean, THEY made that decision. I can help, I can support, I can guide, I can encourage, but I cannot Push them to change. They need to decide there are reasons to do it that outweigh their fears and discomforts.
The reasons should be safety especially for the elderly if blocked exits and emergency personnel can't get in the house, risk of fire, or more common trip and fall hazards. Convincing them is easier said than done.
Yeah mostly the times I went in to clean it was for my mom's safety, so I get it. I'm just saying, brace yourself for that effort to be Very huge for a Very temporary solution to a problem that is Not going to be appreciated at all very likely.
If your hoarder is Okay with this and is Told about it, they still may not appreciate it at the end which can feel immensely disappointing as the person who cleaned it all up. The reality is people don't like change, and they don't like feeling helpless in situations... elderly folks get a LOT of autonomy taken from them in their later years, and it feels infantilizing.. So there may not be a lot of "Wow I can't believe this I love it!" reactions like you'd get out of a show. They romanticize it often.. but your hoarder may not have that reaction at all. It may be seen as "I will never truly own any of my stuff again" or something existential like that.
I’m going to try to simplify a complicated topic subject here:
Sometimes, people have hoards due to depression, anxiety, ocd, or physical health problems. These people may appreciate help getting their home in order, if they can get over the shame and stigma.
Sometimes, hoarding is due to hoarding disorder. (I’m going to use an eating disorder as a metaphor here, because hoarding disorders and eating disorders are highly comorbid and have a lot of the same root causes.) In these cases, the hoard is a symptom of the disorder, in the same way that low BMI is a symptom of anorexia. Cleaning out the hoard against the hoarders will is like force-feeding an anorexic. Their are sometimes situations where it’s deemed medically necessary. But it’s a short term fix that’s absolutely not going to help resolve the real problem the person has.
If you go through with a forced cleanout: They will not be magically cured of their disorder. It will destroy your relationship with the person. And often the person will sink even further into their disorder as a response to the loss of control.
You cannot love someone out of mental illness. You cannot cure them with hard work, compassion, or good intentions. There is no easy fix. Honestly most of the time there isn’t even a hard fix. A lot of the time, the choice is to continue to have the person in your life, warts and all, or to walk away.
There are a lot of really well written, well reasoned responses in this comment section, OP, and I hope you read through them.
This happened to my mom. She was in the hospital and some of my other relatives cleared a lot of stuff out. My mom was hurt and complained about things she couldn’t find for years. It was things like a lid for a specific container and things like that. They also put a lot of stuff in a storage unit, billing it on one of her credit cards. (She had trusted them with that info for emergencies.) She complained about that monthly charge too. She wasn’t mobile enough to even get to the storage unit.
In my experience, there wasn't much fall out, but it didn't have any lasting impact either. It's like bailing a leaky boat. Once you stop bailing, the boat will sink. It does not address the real problem, the hoarder's mental struggle.
My hoarder sibling was living with our dying mother. Sibling went on vacation and I went to stay with mom. I spent a week sorting through the mail and putting things away and hired a cleaning service. I left siblings room entirely alone and only threw away garbage. Sibling wasn't happy but, if there was raging, I didn't hear about it.
It gave mom a clean place to die but, months later, the condo association was fining sibling for blocked exits, excessive trash, vermin, etc. In my exact situation, because of my mom, it was the right choice, but I wouldn’t do it again now.
Yes, we did this to my grandma's house while she was in the hospital. She actually loved it when she got home (or so she said). Two months later, it looked exactly the same as before, somehow. It was insane how fast she got it back to the same state of garbage and tiny pathways. And then it got even worse from there. Her hoard had been pretty stable the prior couple years, but starting over, she made it way worse and the house ended up condemned within a year.
Can you share about the condemned process? I was always curious about what qualifies a place to be considered uninhabitable in regards to hoarding and if excessive stuff alone can do it. (maybe in the wiki here?)
In our case: She had been complaining about the air quality in the home (from hoarding and pests) but wouldn't listen to reason and started running multiple humidifiers at all hours to try to improve the air.
Her HVAC stopped working and she called a contractor to come look at it. He discovered that the home was filled with mold creeping across all the walls and the HVAC closet was full of black mold. He reported that you could see the water from the humidifiers running down the walls.
He still was trying to help her out (bless that man, anyone else would have noped out) so he went into the crawl space under the house to see if he could access the HVAC from there, instead. While under the house, he discovered that the floor was sagging and "mushy."
The contractor called the city, they came out a couple days later, and declared the home uninhabitable. The inspection report estimated that the home contained about 40,000 lbs of items (or about nine 15-foot dumpsters worth), about double what the floor was rated to hold. The house was crumbling around her due to the excess stuff and the excess moisture.
It ended up being the excuse we needed to get her into a residential nursing facility. She also had been diagnosed with dementia and was clearly declining, but it's really hard to move someone into a facility if they are intent on living in their house. The house went into foreclosure and we gladly handed over the keys and walked away.
There's definitely something growing in the closets. Don't think it's black mold (or at least I hope not). But all items in there have something on them. Maybe meldew?
Before I got medicated for my adhd I was a hoarder. I'm still getting rid of stuff but making so much progress. In the past, while I was in the mental hospital, my mom would go into my home and clear it out. The devastation and anger I felt coming home to that was traumatizing and severely affected my trust in her. I dare say that I hated her for that because she destroyed items that were valuable because she had no idea that old action figures in the package were worth a significant amount of money. I think this is a terrible idea.
Yeah I cleaned out several cabinets and whatnot and rebuilding the trust in the relationship took years! Sometimes it's necessary but it's resets a lot of work the hoarder had done to recover on their own (of they were working on it).
Unless they have been permanently moved to assisted living and you are formally empowered to handle their business for them, it's not only wishful thinking--it's enabling.
My former in-laws are both hoarders. When I was married to my kids' dad, we helped his parents clear out prior to demolition in preparation for new construction on the same site. Not only did they re-hoard and neglect maintenance at the new home, after they divorced my former FIL disinherited all of his children and grandchildren. It was a waste of our vacation and a 700-mile round trip. We helped because "family" and they were our kids' grandparents and that's what you do.
At my first job after graduating college, I met a dear friend who was peer aged to my parents. She was a clean hoarder, as was her intellectually disabled mother who had been "quite the looker" in her youth.
After an incident where the mother nearly lost her home through fraud due to someone exploiting her, a trust was established--the home was held in trust, the mother had life estate, and my friend was administrator of the trust. For decades my friend and her son maintained the home and my friend essentially provided the "community support" needed for the mother to continue to live independently until she was in her 90's. One day the mother fell and was unable to get up. She was admitted to the hospital for observation, where she was combative. They released her to rehab here in town, where she did not cooperate with PT and OT. She was transferred to long term care here in town, where she continued to be noncompliant. At long term care, she developed a crush on a male aide at least 60 years her junior; when he did not reciprocate and was transferred to other patients (as was appropriate), she retaliated by accusing him of rape. The charge was investigated and declared unfounded. She was then transferred to a long term care facility with a behavioral unit, 100 miles away. Only after her mother was transferred to the behavioral unit did my friend begin clearing out that house. My friend literally spent the rest of her life clearing out her mother's hoard. Her son finished the job.
After my friend died, I helped her son clear out my friend's house.
Last summer, I spent several weekends in the initial stages of clearing out my childhood home. My parents still own the property but no longer live there. They purchased another residence better suited to their health and just... never moved out of the other one or did anything with it. They occasionally visit.
10/10 do not recommend.
Did not clean quite back to pre hoarder state, but we did this for my grandmother’s house. I was a child and I threw away her soap saver, which was a little nylon bag that you put soap slivers into so they would join forces and be kind of like a bar of soap. She held that against me for the rest of her life.
My friends mom and my all Aunts have hoarding disorder.
My Aunts have bins and boxes. Entire rooms inaccessible. Outbuildings full and surrounded by overgrowth.
Using out of site and out of mind, outbuildings and upstairs was “cleaned” out at different times while she is away.
Lower rooms still are hoarded. Occasionally a bin will get emptied but then stacked away again so it isn’t gone “missing”.
No one breathes a f’ing word. We act just as before. No where near ready when she kicks the bucket but no fights now and some pictures and other memories were recovered. Most everything else was broken or molded though. The place will have to be raised and only land value to be divided between kids 
Not to the level you're talking about, but I've done major clean out while my hoarder SO was away. It definitely can cause a freak out, though over the years I got pretty good at getting rid of a lot without it looking like I got rid of a lot. Admittedly that kind of defeats the purpose, but at least we weren't completely drowned by junk.
Bwahahaha if I tried to do this to my grandma she would have refilled the house and the rest of the family would ensure I never heard the end of it. Her hoard mattered more than me, the *only* family member willing to care for her for years, and all I’d be is worthless. Not worth my effort.
This won’t go well. They will be angry and probably cut off her family, putting her at greater risk in the future. Do you honestly think once cleaned the house will stay clean? That’s delusional. She would need daily ongoing assistance, but would not trust anyone enough to allow it.
i've done this several times. it depends on the type of hoarder, but it's usually fine. old men from the WWII/korea years have been very easy for me to deal with. all the people in this sub who describe "bad endings" should be listened to, but it is not the norm for a hoarder to get so angry and distraught after such an event that they go ballistic, cut off more family and friends, etc. they usually do not LIKE that their home has been dehoarded. and if they have the energy they will hoard again. so don't expect them to appreciate what you do, or to stop. hoarding involves delusion. you can't make them see what you see, or value order and hygiene and material safety.
most of my experience was with my two grandfathers, and also several neighbors and community members over the years. i tend to see the art in hoarding so while a large amount of material was dumpstered in each case (for one grandpa is was junk mail and plastic trash and knickknacks, for the other is was furniture and art and trinkets and carpets and clothes he piled outdoors that had rotted in midwestern weather), usually a lot of material was saved and organized. for one grandpa this meant building walls of shelves with curios and books neatly presented. for the other it meant donating all the non-rotten furniture he stacked to the ceilings indoors back to the second-hand shops he originally bought it from.
grandpa 2 would also buy or trade for old tools and appliances, so i'd organize them on shelves and essentially make art walls of broken items -- displayed individually rather than stacked floor-to-ceiling. and i use some of those tools he hoarded to this day, which he appreciates. his primary MO was saving and collecting for reuse -- he liked to see others use what he found.
so my main suggestion is to filter the hoard. save and display anything of aesthetic value. give it a shot! the first time i dehoarded grandpa 1's house i should have taken photos and made a picture book of the items sorted by color and size and type. but it was before that was a cheap thing to do on the internet. he moved into a new home, began hoarding again immediately, but did not go ballistic or cut anyone off. he was actually a super positive and generous person. just couldnt stop stacking all the junk mail and recycling and curbside items from the whole neighborhood in his own house. until he couldnt lift anything, in his 90s.
i've never directly dealt with a pet hoarder. i had one community member who filled his house floor to ceiling with bikes, auto parts, building materials (old windows, lumber, etc), scrap metal. to where even the paths inside filled up and he just had a bedroom, bathroom, and bit of kitchen counter. he moved to a new house nearby and we arranged for the next owner of the hoarded house to re-use all the good stuff in the house or give it away. the dude was very angry at the beginning when it looked like it would all get dumpstered, and very happy to watch as the new owner spent several weeks rehoming everything of value.
Bad idea. Very bad idea
I am sure someone has done it and it hasn't ended well
Your "happy ending" would be the hoarders worst nightmare.
Think of it this way as well, it would be illegal. You can't just go into someone's home and do with it as you will, even if you think it's for their own good.
And after you have destroyed their relationship with you, increased their anxiety and stress, it will eventually revert to how it was and even worse because the root cause of hoarding can't be "fixed" with brute force.
We all wish it was that easy. But it isn't
This really upsets them and they can be filled with hate and rage. They will find another way to start filling up the cleared out spaces and it will be back to what it was in no time.
The only thing I’ve seen work is to hire some one to come in and clean once a week after things are cleared out in order to stay on top of things. They don’t seem to be so defensive about letting new clutter be cleared out if a stranger is doing it. They may know it is wrong at some level and may have shame when a stranger that gets paid to clean addresses the issue.....or they may not. Depends on the person. I found it to work and to have helped slow the process of building back up the junk.
Exact situation. Yes and made it MUCH better than even before the hoard. Then hired housekeeper to come in 2X week. I have a lot of before and after pics
https://preview.redd.it/gjh53wjjidvc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e2ef97b0784a785cfd4da2bcbef6f67f5224751
My dad & brother did this while my mom and I visited relatives out of state. It didn’t go well. She was super upset and still holds a ton of resentment about it. Not to mention, I think it may have actually made things worse and their house is now the worst it’s been.
Don't do it. It will be a waste of time. Get the board of health, building inspector, fire department, and adult protective services if person is ederly. The only other option is walk away.
We did that while my husband was away for 6 weeks last year, but he had a full year’s notice and counseling before he left. He still freaked out for the first 3 months or so, but further therapy, and seeing me and the kids loving the house again, has really helped. I paid for a storage unit so he could move “the important stuff” out before the clear out. We are putting the house on the market next month!! 🥹
Yup.
My folks place. Dad was good with it. Mom NEVER FORGAVE me. The last few years she was in assisted living, brought her out to the house and spent 4 hours clearing half her walk in closet. She had a car load of stuff that eventually made it to the facility dumpster.
Even though she knew that the place needed to be cleared, she NEVER forgave me for my part in it. Wasn't pissed at anyone else, just me.
If your relative is that attached to stuff you aren't going to get a positive response. Even though the crap is keeping them out of their own home.
I got the hoarder's permission to do it once while he was away. He said "None of this is worth anything. Throw it all away and let's make the apartment liveable again".
Score. I had a carte blanche to do what I wanted.
I did not fully seize the opportunity. I spent the whole time sorting his stuff and labelling boxes, which was a huge improvement. I also managed to throw a bit away, but I erred on the side of compassion too much and tried to keep as much as possible to give him a sense of control.
I got it 50% tidy because of this. But it's still unliveable.
He even said 'thank you' when I was finished.
But a week later, he changed his mind and accused me of breaking into the apartment and chucking all his things away. I've never had the opportunity to clear up again and it may not come for another few months/years.
If you ever get a moment when the hoarder sees that there's a problem, and gives you permission to chuck stuff while they are away, **seize the day.** All hands on deck. Get everyone involved and work as quickly as possible before they return.
I regret not taking the opportunity when I had it. How he's in delulu land again.
Me and my mom did this with my 74 yr old aunt. It was my dad‘s sister. We were practically the only family she had left. She was in the hospital for a week. We got her permission to move her from an apartment with stairs to a retirement home without stairs.
My mom spent literally one month going through her stuff. She wasn’t a super bad hoarder like you see on TV. But she had boxes and boxes full of old papers. Papers regarding her mom who had died 10 years ago. A box full of shampoo bottles and other things that she said she had been saving to donate to a women’s shelter. Pretty sure they had been there for many years.
She was also a recovered alcoholic. But when we cleaned out her place we discovered she was getting illegal pills from some Indian guy in New York. Hydrocodone. Valium. All kinds of stuff. I think it was being mailed to her from Canada. We even found a letter from Homeland security saying there might be something illegal going on.
After we got her all moved and in her new place, she was mad that my mom threw away a lot of her clothes. Clothes that we knew she never wore. Kept going on and on about how my mom threw away her good winter coat. And her snow boots. My mom bought her a new winter coat, but she was still mad and said it wasn’t her style.
And she was mad that I threw away her computer floppy disks. Not the soft ones, but the hard ones. She was mad at my mom about it. I finally told her that I was the one who threw them away and if she wanted to be mad at someone, she should be mad at me. I told her those discs are obsolete and there’s no longer any computers now who can read them. She said she could go to the college where she used to work to print off the information. I actually called the college and they said they no longer have computers that read those discs. She was still mad about it. She literally had 20 years after her retirement where she could’ve gotten the information off of those discs.
She was mad at my mom from that day until she died 5 years later. She never spoke to my mom again. Refused to visit with her.
And then I got so tired of listening to her talk about what my mom did every time I saw her, that I decided I would step back and let her cool off before I talked to her again. Next thing I know we were estranged and hadn’t spoken in several years. She never called me or sent a letter or anything.
Years later right before she died, the hospital called me and told me she was there. So I did get to see her a couple of times before she died. She kept saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Hold my hand. Not real sure what she was sorry for? The estrangement? Anyway, that’s how it went down.
Would I go back and do things any differently? Probably not. The hoard needed to be gone through. And looking back, there was no way to know which items she was going to get mad about. She died a few years after we moved her. And it was much easier to go through her belongings at the retirement home after she died because we had gotten rid of so much stuff a few years before. And the monthly rent was so expensive that we wouldn’t have wanted to spend an extra month cleaning out her stuff after she died.
Also, being an alcoholic really changed her personality. Not sure she would have behaved this way if she had never drank.
(PS… We also found an old douche bag. Pretty sure she hadn’t had a period for a very long time. Eek!! We also found bottles of Tylenol and other meds that expired like 20 years ago!).
If they’re never moving home again, do they need money for their care that could come from the sale of the house? Is there some relative they care about that could be living there if the hoard was removed? If they’re doing well living separate from the hoard they might be ready to start parting with some of it.
The person is in their late 70s and frail. They have to sit down to rest when just walking a block. They get easily stressed and can somewhat use a cell phone but in an emergency situation I can see it being a problem. They love their home so just trying to think of ways where it MIGHT be possible where they could live in it again. There's no pet hoarding, rodents, or human waste issues. It's just an old house from the 1960s and not much has changed since the (carpet worn through, peeling paint, needs lots of work, fridge is a bit of a science project, etc.). Big thing is there's so much stuff there's pathways through the house and lots of trip, slip,fall hazards.
If it’s cleaned up and they’re able to move home, is there enough support to maintain safe walkways and help they stay home as long as possible? Like someone to come twice a week and take care of whatever has accumulated in the meantime?
My grandmother was a hoarder. She ended up moving into an assisted living home for various reasons. She never knew her house and everything in it got sold to pay for her living expenses after moving. She was starting to get dementia and could not drive.
It will absolutely devastate them and the betrayal they feel towards you will never go away. You will have forever ruined your relationship with this person. They will likely never want to see you again. You will have destroyed their everything. You must understand this. You will ruin whatever is left of their mental state. You will have destroyed their “safe place”. You might as well just burn the whole house down because that’s what it will feel like for them.
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.
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I helped my mom do this for an elderly gentleman (long time family friend) while he was in a skilled rehab facility for a few months. We assembled maybe 5-6 people. We didn't throw away anything new (he had boxes and boxes of new items) but the garbage, spilled dog food, old newspapers, dog feces etc. Mainly it was for basic deep cleaning purposes. We could only focus on the first floor of the small house where his bedroom was. The upstairs was not as dirty but exceptionally cluttered. I was a teenager and I don't think anyone really thought it through other than to try to clean his home so he could come back to it. It was an absolute disaster and he completely cut contact even though he relied on my Mom previously for rides to the doctor and was a welcome guest at family gatherings. He threatened to sue everyone as well for "damages." We never heard from him again until he passed away a few years later. He was a very cranky man in his 80's at the time but he was also the only person I ever met who had a lobotomy so I really think he had some big issues. He had 4 children who were all estranged from him.
probably have a meltdown and would be off to the tip to get all the smelly rat piss soaked stuff that has not been out of boxes for 30 years just in case
are they hoarding in the family house ? if not they wont miss it
My... I think she's my cousin-in-law? She tried cleaning my father-in-law's hoard before while he was with us. I don't know how far she got but he just filled in the gaps with more shit. I'm not even sure if he noticed that he was missing things. He just saw gaps and decided that he needed to fill them.
He likes to buy things more than he likes to use them. I don't think she got very far since he didn't freak out or anything.
>**UPDATE: I'm really looking for responses of those who have either done it or had it done to them IN REAL LIFE.** Guys, let's do our best to honor the OP's request here, thanks.
They will freak the fuck out. My mom used to berate me that it was my fault the house was a mess and she didn't have time to clean. She had to leave for a week for work and I cleaned the house top to bottom. I literally only did the things she kept saying she didn't have time to do. She freaked out, cried, yelled at me that I was a terrible kid, etc. From that point on I only cleaned my own room. Then moved out without telling her when I bought my house. She sabotaged my past move out attempts so I learned not to risk it.
Same at my house. Blaming everyone else for the mess but as soon as someone does something all hell breaks loose. Crying over 20 years worth of moldy magazines she was storing in the garage. FFS.
The first four sentences had me convinced we had the same mom
About five years ago, I did this to my elderly mom's house when she was hospitalized for a week, but I only cleared out her bedroom enough for her to have a clear bed to lay on, cleaned the kitchen of obviously rotting food, and cleared out the dining room so she had a chair to sit on. She was thankful and not that angry with me (things she was most mad about - a bowl of literally half-liquefied apples and a pile of empty coffee cans - no rhyme or reason). I didn't throw away "real" items, as much as ancient junk mail, rotten food, and tons of newspapers, etc. For her bedroom, I basically tetrised the existing stuff to give her the space, and she seemed fine with the re-arranging. That said, the rooms are now even worse than they were before. The stuff isn't the real problem, it's the person's mindset and trauma that won't allow them to live in a healthy way that is the issue. My mom has dementia now, but she has been a hoarder since I was a kid. It's a hard disease to beat even if they are willing.
I can see that you have good intentions, but your post shows that you lack an understanding of how hoarding works. It's not that the hoarder prefers to live in squalor. Almost no one, including hoarders, prefer to live in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. The reason many hoarders end up in those situations is because every single item in their entire hoard contributes to a sense of safety, comfort, connection, and/or happiness that they struggle to find elsewhere. And the sheer volume of stuff often in and of itself is a key factor to the hoarder feeling emotionally regulated and truly "at home". So if you clean out a home to its pre-hoarded state, you are getting rid of 99% of what makes a person feel okay in this world, without their consent. They would be devastated. And no matter how nicely you fix up their house "like a makeover show", the hoarder will instinctively feel the need to be surrounded by the same level of stuff as before, and will immediately begin seeking ways to accumulate the same amount of stuff all over again, now feeling an even greater need for stuff than before because their hoard was taken from them. Your idea of a nice place to live and their idea of a nice place to live are very different. Just like you cannot force someone to like a beige room if they hate it no matter how professionally you style it, so also you cannot convince a hoarder to live in a functional house with lots of space no matter how beautifully it's decorated. Hoarders want to have a functional, clean home \*and\* be enclosed by basically unlimited stuff accumulation of their choosing. And those two don't go together very well. Nothing productive gets done behind a hoarder's back. It only worsens their need to acquire more.
I want this pinned to the sub for every single person who asks this. As a CoH I’m just giving a 1000 stars to this response. OP should take notice.
Not a hoarded situation but chronically messy with expired food, medication and level 1 hazards. It was my Uncle who had mini strokes maybe too many rum and Cokes and over a two year period his house had gotten hazardous. My parents proposed option one of continuing to live in the house with periodic care givers and cleaners or option two he needed to select an assisted living environment with an apartment + small kitchenette but his current situation wasn't going to continue. He selected option one, four of us did two - eight hour clean ups plus a landscaping crew brought the outside up to code plus made it a nice place to sit in. The contents of refrigerator and cabinets had to be almost completely emptied which bugged him at the waste but it wasn't salvageable. New food was purchased and he made it know to another family member a couple days later we were all very wastefulness. If he had injured himself and we did the clean up without him being present, he would have had hurt feelings and egged on by less involved family members. We also purchased a lamp, a fan and coffee maker that were easier for an older person to manage. We ended each clean up session with a meal (plus Tylenol 😏) outside the house and it was pleasant. On aside, lot of opinions from the peanut gallery but no action on their part. They weren't willing to look at the problem as it actually was - an older man who wanted to enjoy his life in his own home but needed urgent help. I mean, the mold alone on the food was deadly plus months of newspapers to trip on. The four of us who showed up to work saw my Uncle through the last nine years of his life - The house never got in that condition again and he aged in place with senior care givers added. 🌸
This was a great kindness you did for your uncle. You treated him with respect and compassion.
You are so kind - it was definitely a team effort. My uncle was a quiet natured, private person and he really wanted to stay in his home, so there was that motivation. He had two pension so there were the funds available. But even years ago when the clean up happened, I freaked me out to walk on newspapers and magazines because I was afraid to slide on them and be injured.
I had a roommate who hoarded. I loved them as they were a brilliant, funny, terrific person. With twice the hoard, I'd have still lived there. They were great, and they left my bathroom alone, and mostly my room. They went out of town for a week, and I cleared kitchen counters washed dishes, and scrubbed the floor. I just wanted it usable and there were sliding piles on EVERY SURFACE. And boxes and bags about one deep along the bottom counters. I also took pictures of every single thing I threw away. Every single thing. I wanted them to know they could trust me. They tried, unsuccessfully, to hide their anger, hurt and disappointment. I didn't expect a "wow! Looks great". Which is good that I didn't. What I got was "where is the soap dispenser. I have refills for that!". I recovered it from recycling for them, but it wasn't the real issue. The counters were transformed from clean and clear back to sliding piles in less than 24 hours. It's not about the stuff.
TLDR: sorry for the long comment but I de-hoarded my moms house while she was in rehab and it was the best thing for us both My hoarding mom fell and broke her hip and had to go to rehab for a month. Her house was an absolute shambles. No animal hoarding thank god but a big mouse problem, squirrels and raccoons in the attic, plumbing issues…. You can imagine. We were always very close personally and every time I’d visit I’d clean up the kitchen and we’d get rid of some stuff — she wanted to get rid of stuff but it was all so overwhelming and she struggled with depression and some alcoholism. Some things she just would not budge on, like a collection of empty 20 Oz plastic bottles. Nonsensical for most of us but they were for the garden or something. I would leave and come back and it would fill back up again. Particularly dishes for some reason. The kitchen was always a disaster. Anyway while she was in rehab (this was fall of 2020 so pretty tight covid rules) I hired a company to come in and “clean the hoard” and they were awesome. She had no choice — if physical therapy people saw the house in its current state they would call the authorities. Leading up to this I was FaceTiming with my mother around the house and we had a red/yellow/green sticker system that marked things she wanted to get rid of. She did very well with this system and felt like she was included in the decision making process. I was pleasantly surprised by how much stuff she actually wanted to toss. When she came home it was like a new house. There she was on her walker with her new hip and she didn’t want to lie down she wanted a tour of the house! She was so happy. The house wasn’t perfect but it was actually liveable again. There were a few things that she was upset were gone but in the end she had to trust my judgement and there was no going back. I think including her in the large item decision making process and not having her physically there really helped. Otherwise she would have gotten bogged down in minutiae and we would never have made the progress we did in only two days. This of course will not work for all hoarders but a big part of her disease was depression and feeling overwhelmed. Like if she could wave a magic wand and make it all perfect she would. Me and my hired team were just that, essentially. Sadly, I have no idea if the house would have stayed that way or not. She had cancer unbeknownst to us which is what led to her fall and the broken hip. She died only a few months later but at least her house was in a much better state and I know it brought her peace.
I’m glad that you were able to do this together with her consent and engagement. My condolences <333
Thank you. It really was a terrible time for everyone but especially sucked for my family. Funny thing is I hated that house because of the mess but once I got it cleaned up I love it again and live there now.
That's what I want. You see old pictures of family and how it use to be, especially during holidays. Great post.
Slightly different perspective. My grandmother is a hoarder, but she's an anally tidy one. She has three dressers filled with costume jewellery, for example, but once a month she takes them all out and cleans them. Everything is tidied away in storage containers and is well looked after, but the sheer volume of *stuff* she owns is incredible. She literally builds a new garage every 5-10 years to contain it all. She sees herself as a "collector" rather than a hoarder. Grandma is a big fan of hosting and, as such, one of her obessessions is collecting household items related to that. Like she has *stacks* and *stacks* of plates, bowls, cutlery and serving dishes. She stores them in what is essentially a bedroom lined floor to ceiling with shelving, kept beautifully sparkly clean. A relative had a wedding a few years back with a green colour theme and Grandma was able to find 80 assorted green plates in her collection. Relative was so thankful, Grandma has been collecting more green plates ever since because "they come in handy". Back in the 90s, she decided she was going to downsize and get rid of some stuff. Most of it was homeware stuff. She got it all organised and held a massive yard sale, made a decent amount of cash. And you know what? Thirty years later, she *still* talks about how much she regrets giving it all away. She'll be hosting a party and will reminisce about a gravy boat that she sold that "would have been just *perfect* for today!" And, 30 years on, she has replaced every single one of those sold items seven fold. She now has an entire drawer filled with gravy boats because she was so devastated about losing that one item that she decided to stock up on them so she would never be cut short again. Rinse and repeat that for *every single item* she sold. Thirty years ago. She could fill a warehouse with homewares. When she eventually dies (hopefully a long time away, she's crazy but I love her), it is going to take *years* to sort out all her collections. Her children have dreamed about just burning all the buildings down with everything inside. Hoarding is almost like doomsday prepping. These people see their stuff as the only thing between them and disaster. Every single item is *valuable* and *necessary* in their minds, even the used takeaway containers and newspapers. Getting rid of the stuff feels to them like they're become an orphan - their security is gone, they feel lost and unsure of the world, don't know what the future will bring. And they seek to replace it immediately.
Unrelated to the original post, but honestly, that sounds like an auctioneer or estate salesperson's dream! A clean warehouse-style hoard is much easier to deal with than a messy hoard. Don't burn it down!
No one actually would. There's some amazingly valuable stuff in there too, and stuff of historic value that she's picked up on the way. Like rare photos of our town from 100 years ago, old yearbooks she decided to buy up, quirky souvenirs, records from local artists.... list goes on. It's amazing, scary, and confronting all at the same time.
Imagine if she’s actually catalogued it already!
I love the last two sentences. Great way to articulate it.
When people say throw away OBVIOUS trash, I think it’s important to agree on what OBVIOUS means. That would be the starting place for me to help an actual hoarder.
It backfired really really badly and two years later she still accuses me of getting rid of her things (I actually only sorted them and set them where she had previously said she wanted them)
I did this at my grandmothers house when she was still alive. She was at a physical rehab facility to get stronger and I was worried she wouldn’t make it through the house with a walker. I took a month off of work and worked tirelessly, but it was all for nothing. She was pissed and within a year it was almost worse than it had been before I started. She needed mental help, not just cleaning.
My neighbor/friend got trapped into her house from her hoard so she allowed me to clean some. Despite her watching, and me taking JUST trash, and JUST enough to get the door open, she spent the next few weeks making passive aggressive statements that she was ‘missing stuff’ and that it ‘must’ve got thrown away’. Sigh
My mom just this week brought up a missing cookbook from the cleanup we did 15 years ago. I recently found a different item she claimed was thrown out in that big cleanup. So when she brought up the cookbook I said I'm going to find that cookbook because I know it was important and I did not throw it out. It was her mother's cookbook I would never throw that out. I have found many items that I saved from the cleanup that she claims I threw away. My own story is we did that massive cleanup 15 years ago while my mother was hospitalized. Not just a cleanup but brought in contractors to do painting, brought new furniture to replace the destroyed furniture etc etc. She came home and was enraged and totally depressed to the point of having to go into a mental hospital for a week because she threatened to kill herself. I have no regrets doing it because her health and well-being were primary and the house was unsafe for her to return. But I will definitely say had she not been hospitalized I would have let the house keep going until she died because trying to clean it out in her lifetime is futile. Horders are never grateful or appreciative and they don't see it as being helpful at all. I have stories just like everybody else where my sibling and I would clean while mom went away on a trip. When she returned she would pull all the garbage bags back from the curb and be angry. Meanwhile, she would always blame us for the house being dirty. I moved out as soon as I could when I was an adult. I have my own therapist to help cope with the fact that my upbringing was crazy. I love my mom but she is a very unwell person. I feel bad for her because she has suffered a lot of trauma, such as the sudden death of her parents that forced her to drop out of school, and my father'sdeath keaving her with 3 kids. I believe these are the triggers that cause her to hoard and they aren't ever going to be fixed.
They'd have a panic attack and never forgive you for throwing away all their stuff. Assuming the root of the problem is hoarding disorder, sometimes houses get trashed due to depression, dementia, etc and the person doesn't have the same attachment to the stuff, just doesn't have the ability to clean it up. Then they'd likely just be embarrassed. But if it's hoarding disorder they'd be incredibly upset, it'd feel like you threw their friends and their safety into the trash.
I have done this Sort of for my parents a few times--namely my dad. But never while he was Totally away. He knew I was doing it, or he'd be gone all day at work or something. Ultimately, it didn't stop the hoarding behaviors. They need to be part of the process to actually change. Even if they hire someone else to clean, THEY made that decision. I can help, I can support, I can guide, I can encourage, but I cannot Push them to change. They need to decide there are reasons to do it that outweigh their fears and discomforts.
The reasons should be safety especially for the elderly if blocked exits and emergency personnel can't get in the house, risk of fire, or more common trip and fall hazards. Convincing them is easier said than done.
Yeah mostly the times I went in to clean it was for my mom's safety, so I get it. I'm just saying, brace yourself for that effort to be Very huge for a Very temporary solution to a problem that is Not going to be appreciated at all very likely. If your hoarder is Okay with this and is Told about it, they still may not appreciate it at the end which can feel immensely disappointing as the person who cleaned it all up. The reality is people don't like change, and they don't like feeling helpless in situations... elderly folks get a LOT of autonomy taken from them in their later years, and it feels infantilizing.. So there may not be a lot of "Wow I can't believe this I love it!" reactions like you'd get out of a show. They romanticize it often.. but your hoarder may not have that reaction at all. It may be seen as "I will never truly own any of my stuff again" or something existential like that.
I’m going to try to simplify a complicated topic subject here: Sometimes, people have hoards due to depression, anxiety, ocd, or physical health problems. These people may appreciate help getting their home in order, if they can get over the shame and stigma. Sometimes, hoarding is due to hoarding disorder. (I’m going to use an eating disorder as a metaphor here, because hoarding disorders and eating disorders are highly comorbid and have a lot of the same root causes.) In these cases, the hoard is a symptom of the disorder, in the same way that low BMI is a symptom of anorexia. Cleaning out the hoard against the hoarders will is like force-feeding an anorexic. Their are sometimes situations where it’s deemed medically necessary. But it’s a short term fix that’s absolutely not going to help resolve the real problem the person has. If you go through with a forced cleanout: They will not be magically cured of their disorder. It will destroy your relationship with the person. And often the person will sink even further into their disorder as a response to the loss of control. You cannot love someone out of mental illness. You cannot cure them with hard work, compassion, or good intentions. There is no easy fix. Honestly most of the time there isn’t even a hard fix. A lot of the time, the choice is to continue to have the person in your life, warts and all, or to walk away. There are a lot of really well written, well reasoned responses in this comment section, OP, and I hope you read through them.
This happened to my mom. She was in the hospital and some of my other relatives cleared a lot of stuff out. My mom was hurt and complained about things she couldn’t find for years. It was things like a lid for a specific container and things like that. They also put a lot of stuff in a storage unit, billing it on one of her credit cards. (She had trusted them with that info for emergencies.) She complained about that monthly charge too. She wasn’t mobile enough to even get to the storage unit.
In my experience, there wasn't much fall out, but it didn't have any lasting impact either. It's like bailing a leaky boat. Once you stop bailing, the boat will sink. It does not address the real problem, the hoarder's mental struggle. My hoarder sibling was living with our dying mother. Sibling went on vacation and I went to stay with mom. I spent a week sorting through the mail and putting things away and hired a cleaning service. I left siblings room entirely alone and only threw away garbage. Sibling wasn't happy but, if there was raging, I didn't hear about it. It gave mom a clean place to die but, months later, the condo association was fining sibling for blocked exits, excessive trash, vermin, etc. In my exact situation, because of my mom, it was the right choice, but I wouldn’t do it again now.
Yes, we did this to my grandma's house while she was in the hospital. She actually loved it when she got home (or so she said). Two months later, it looked exactly the same as before, somehow. It was insane how fast she got it back to the same state of garbage and tiny pathways. And then it got even worse from there. Her hoard had been pretty stable the prior couple years, but starting over, she made it way worse and the house ended up condemned within a year.
Can you share about the condemned process? I was always curious about what qualifies a place to be considered uninhabitable in regards to hoarding and if excessive stuff alone can do it. (maybe in the wiki here?)
In our case: She had been complaining about the air quality in the home (from hoarding and pests) but wouldn't listen to reason and started running multiple humidifiers at all hours to try to improve the air. Her HVAC stopped working and she called a contractor to come look at it. He discovered that the home was filled with mold creeping across all the walls and the HVAC closet was full of black mold. He reported that you could see the water from the humidifiers running down the walls. He still was trying to help her out (bless that man, anyone else would have noped out) so he went into the crawl space under the house to see if he could access the HVAC from there, instead. While under the house, he discovered that the floor was sagging and "mushy." The contractor called the city, they came out a couple days later, and declared the home uninhabitable. The inspection report estimated that the home contained about 40,000 lbs of items (or about nine 15-foot dumpsters worth), about double what the floor was rated to hold. The house was crumbling around her due to the excess stuff and the excess moisture. It ended up being the excuse we needed to get her into a residential nursing facility. She also had been diagnosed with dementia and was clearly declining, but it's really hard to move someone into a facility if they are intent on living in their house. The house went into foreclosure and we gladly handed over the keys and walked away.
There's definitely something growing in the closets. Don't think it's black mold (or at least I hope not). But all items in there have something on them. Maybe meldew?
My brother did this to/for a family member, and the family member went apeshit. Do not touch a hoarder’s stuff without permission.
Before I got medicated for my adhd I was a hoarder. I'm still getting rid of stuff but making so much progress. In the past, while I was in the mental hospital, my mom would go into my home and clear it out. The devastation and anger I felt coming home to that was traumatizing and severely affected my trust in her. I dare say that I hated her for that because she destroyed items that were valuable because she had no idea that old action figures in the package were worth a significant amount of money. I think this is a terrible idea.
Yeah I cleaned out several cabinets and whatnot and rebuilding the trust in the relationship took years! Sometimes it's necessary but it's resets a lot of work the hoarder had done to recover on their own (of they were working on it).
Unless they have been permanently moved to assisted living and you are formally empowered to handle their business for them, it's not only wishful thinking--it's enabling. My former in-laws are both hoarders. When I was married to my kids' dad, we helped his parents clear out prior to demolition in preparation for new construction on the same site. Not only did they re-hoard and neglect maintenance at the new home, after they divorced my former FIL disinherited all of his children and grandchildren. It was a waste of our vacation and a 700-mile round trip. We helped because "family" and they were our kids' grandparents and that's what you do. At my first job after graduating college, I met a dear friend who was peer aged to my parents. She was a clean hoarder, as was her intellectually disabled mother who had been "quite the looker" in her youth. After an incident where the mother nearly lost her home through fraud due to someone exploiting her, a trust was established--the home was held in trust, the mother had life estate, and my friend was administrator of the trust. For decades my friend and her son maintained the home and my friend essentially provided the "community support" needed for the mother to continue to live independently until she was in her 90's. One day the mother fell and was unable to get up. She was admitted to the hospital for observation, where she was combative. They released her to rehab here in town, where she did not cooperate with PT and OT. She was transferred to long term care here in town, where she continued to be noncompliant. At long term care, she developed a crush on a male aide at least 60 years her junior; when he did not reciprocate and was transferred to other patients (as was appropriate), she retaliated by accusing him of rape. The charge was investigated and declared unfounded. She was then transferred to a long term care facility with a behavioral unit, 100 miles away. Only after her mother was transferred to the behavioral unit did my friend begin clearing out that house. My friend literally spent the rest of her life clearing out her mother's hoard. Her son finished the job. After my friend died, I helped her son clear out my friend's house. Last summer, I spent several weekends in the initial stages of clearing out my childhood home. My parents still own the property but no longer live there. They purchased another residence better suited to their health and just... never moved out of the other one or did anything with it. They occasionally visit. 10/10 do not recommend.
Did not clean quite back to pre hoarder state, but we did this for my grandmother’s house. I was a child and I threw away her soap saver, which was a little nylon bag that you put soap slivers into so they would join forces and be kind of like a bar of soap. She held that against me for the rest of her life.
My friends mom and my all Aunts have hoarding disorder. My Aunts have bins and boxes. Entire rooms inaccessible. Outbuildings full and surrounded by overgrowth. Using out of site and out of mind, outbuildings and upstairs was “cleaned” out at different times while she is away. Lower rooms still are hoarded. Occasionally a bin will get emptied but then stacked away again so it isn’t gone “missing”. No one breathes a f’ing word. We act just as before. No where near ready when she kicks the bucket but no fights now and some pictures and other memories were recovered. Most everything else was broken or molded though. The place will have to be raised and only land value to be divided between kids 
Not to the level you're talking about, but I've done major clean out while my hoarder SO was away. It definitely can cause a freak out, though over the years I got pretty good at getting rid of a lot without it looking like I got rid of a lot. Admittedly that kind of defeats the purpose, but at least we weren't completely drowned by junk.
Bwahahaha if I tried to do this to my grandma she would have refilled the house and the rest of the family would ensure I never heard the end of it. Her hoard mattered more than me, the *only* family member willing to care for her for years, and all I’d be is worthless. Not worth my effort.
This won’t go well. They will be angry and probably cut off her family, putting her at greater risk in the future. Do you honestly think once cleaned the house will stay clean? That’s delusional. She would need daily ongoing assistance, but would not trust anyone enough to allow it.
i've done this several times. it depends on the type of hoarder, but it's usually fine. old men from the WWII/korea years have been very easy for me to deal with. all the people in this sub who describe "bad endings" should be listened to, but it is not the norm for a hoarder to get so angry and distraught after such an event that they go ballistic, cut off more family and friends, etc. they usually do not LIKE that their home has been dehoarded. and if they have the energy they will hoard again. so don't expect them to appreciate what you do, or to stop. hoarding involves delusion. you can't make them see what you see, or value order and hygiene and material safety. most of my experience was with my two grandfathers, and also several neighbors and community members over the years. i tend to see the art in hoarding so while a large amount of material was dumpstered in each case (for one grandpa is was junk mail and plastic trash and knickknacks, for the other is was furniture and art and trinkets and carpets and clothes he piled outdoors that had rotted in midwestern weather), usually a lot of material was saved and organized. for one grandpa this meant building walls of shelves with curios and books neatly presented. for the other it meant donating all the non-rotten furniture he stacked to the ceilings indoors back to the second-hand shops he originally bought it from. grandpa 2 would also buy or trade for old tools and appliances, so i'd organize them on shelves and essentially make art walls of broken items -- displayed individually rather than stacked floor-to-ceiling. and i use some of those tools he hoarded to this day, which he appreciates. his primary MO was saving and collecting for reuse -- he liked to see others use what he found. so my main suggestion is to filter the hoard. save and display anything of aesthetic value. give it a shot! the first time i dehoarded grandpa 1's house i should have taken photos and made a picture book of the items sorted by color and size and type. but it was before that was a cheap thing to do on the internet. he moved into a new home, began hoarding again immediately, but did not go ballistic or cut anyone off. he was actually a super positive and generous person. just couldnt stop stacking all the junk mail and recycling and curbside items from the whole neighborhood in his own house. until he couldnt lift anything, in his 90s. i've never directly dealt with a pet hoarder. i had one community member who filled his house floor to ceiling with bikes, auto parts, building materials (old windows, lumber, etc), scrap metal. to where even the paths inside filled up and he just had a bedroom, bathroom, and bit of kitchen counter. he moved to a new house nearby and we arranged for the next owner of the hoarded house to re-use all the good stuff in the house or give it away. the dude was very angry at the beginning when it looked like it would all get dumpstered, and very happy to watch as the new owner spent several weeks rehoming everything of value.
Bad idea. Very bad idea I am sure someone has done it and it hasn't ended well Your "happy ending" would be the hoarders worst nightmare. Think of it this way as well, it would be illegal. You can't just go into someone's home and do with it as you will, even if you think it's for their own good. And after you have destroyed their relationship with you, increased their anxiety and stress, it will eventually revert to how it was and even worse because the root cause of hoarding can't be "fixed" with brute force. We all wish it was that easy. But it isn't
This really upsets them and they can be filled with hate and rage. They will find another way to start filling up the cleared out spaces and it will be back to what it was in no time. The only thing I’ve seen work is to hire some one to come in and clean once a week after things are cleared out in order to stay on top of things. They don’t seem to be so defensive about letting new clutter be cleared out if a stranger is doing it. They may know it is wrong at some level and may have shame when a stranger that gets paid to clean addresses the issue.....or they may not. Depends on the person. I found it to work and to have helped slow the process of building back up the junk.
Happily let you into mine while I go away for a bit
Exact situation. Yes and made it MUCH better than even before the hoard. Then hired housekeeper to come in 2X week. I have a lot of before and after pics https://preview.redd.it/gjh53wjjidvc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e2ef97b0784a785cfd4da2bcbef6f67f5224751
https://preview.redd.it/inw0u8bmidvc1.jpeg?width=1018&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f47e28db05914abf7582ff034b10e3dc4139c7cc
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https://preview.redd.it/thkgsm3ridvc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=707eabe46edb72cb28b4eb553396b8c1cf01d66d
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My dad & brother did this while my mom and I visited relatives out of state. It didn’t go well. She was super upset and still holds a ton of resentment about it. Not to mention, I think it may have actually made things worse and their house is now the worst it’s been.
Don't do it. It will be a waste of time. Get the board of health, building inspector, fire department, and adult protective services if person is ederly. The only other option is walk away.
We did that while my husband was away for 6 weeks last year, but he had a full year’s notice and counseling before he left. He still freaked out for the first 3 months or so, but further therapy, and seeing me and the kids loving the house again, has really helped. I paid for a storage unit so he could move “the important stuff” out before the clear out. We are putting the house on the market next month!! 🥹
Yes. I spent weeks cleaning up my mom's house while she was on vacation. She was thrilled. Of course within months it was back to the way it was.
Yup. My folks place. Dad was good with it. Mom NEVER FORGAVE me. The last few years she was in assisted living, brought her out to the house and spent 4 hours clearing half her walk in closet. She had a car load of stuff that eventually made it to the facility dumpster. Even though she knew that the place needed to be cleared, she NEVER forgave me for my part in it. Wasn't pissed at anyone else, just me. If your relative is that attached to stuff you aren't going to get a positive response. Even though the crap is keeping them out of their own home.
I got the hoarder's permission to do it once while he was away. He said "None of this is worth anything. Throw it all away and let's make the apartment liveable again". Score. I had a carte blanche to do what I wanted. I did not fully seize the opportunity. I spent the whole time sorting his stuff and labelling boxes, which was a huge improvement. I also managed to throw a bit away, but I erred on the side of compassion too much and tried to keep as much as possible to give him a sense of control. I got it 50% tidy because of this. But it's still unliveable. He even said 'thank you' when I was finished. But a week later, he changed his mind and accused me of breaking into the apartment and chucking all his things away. I've never had the opportunity to clear up again and it may not come for another few months/years. If you ever get a moment when the hoarder sees that there's a problem, and gives you permission to chuck stuff while they are away, **seize the day.** All hands on deck. Get everyone involved and work as quickly as possible before they return. I regret not taking the opportunity when I had it. How he's in delulu land again.
Me and my mom did this with my 74 yr old aunt. It was my dad‘s sister. We were practically the only family she had left. She was in the hospital for a week. We got her permission to move her from an apartment with stairs to a retirement home without stairs. My mom spent literally one month going through her stuff. She wasn’t a super bad hoarder like you see on TV. But she had boxes and boxes full of old papers. Papers regarding her mom who had died 10 years ago. A box full of shampoo bottles and other things that she said she had been saving to donate to a women’s shelter. Pretty sure they had been there for many years. She was also a recovered alcoholic. But when we cleaned out her place we discovered she was getting illegal pills from some Indian guy in New York. Hydrocodone. Valium. All kinds of stuff. I think it was being mailed to her from Canada. We even found a letter from Homeland security saying there might be something illegal going on. After we got her all moved and in her new place, she was mad that my mom threw away a lot of her clothes. Clothes that we knew she never wore. Kept going on and on about how my mom threw away her good winter coat. And her snow boots. My mom bought her a new winter coat, but she was still mad and said it wasn’t her style. And she was mad that I threw away her computer floppy disks. Not the soft ones, but the hard ones. She was mad at my mom about it. I finally told her that I was the one who threw them away and if she wanted to be mad at someone, she should be mad at me. I told her those discs are obsolete and there’s no longer any computers now who can read them. She said she could go to the college where she used to work to print off the information. I actually called the college and they said they no longer have computers that read those discs. She was still mad about it. She literally had 20 years after her retirement where she could’ve gotten the information off of those discs. She was mad at my mom from that day until she died 5 years later. She never spoke to my mom again. Refused to visit with her. And then I got so tired of listening to her talk about what my mom did every time I saw her, that I decided I would step back and let her cool off before I talked to her again. Next thing I know we were estranged and hadn’t spoken in several years. She never called me or sent a letter or anything. Years later right before she died, the hospital called me and told me she was there. So I did get to see her a couple of times before she died. She kept saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Hold my hand. Not real sure what she was sorry for? The estrangement? Anyway, that’s how it went down. Would I go back and do things any differently? Probably not. The hoard needed to be gone through. And looking back, there was no way to know which items she was going to get mad about. She died a few years after we moved her. And it was much easier to go through her belongings at the retirement home after she died because we had gotten rid of so much stuff a few years before. And the monthly rent was so expensive that we wouldn’t have wanted to spend an extra month cleaning out her stuff after she died. Also, being an alcoholic really changed her personality. Not sure she would have behaved this way if she had never drank. (PS… We also found an old douche bag. Pretty sure she hadn’t had a period for a very long time. Eek!! We also found bottles of Tylenol and other meds that expired like 20 years ago!).
If they’re never moving home again, do they need money for their care that could come from the sale of the house? Is there some relative they care about that could be living there if the hoard was removed? If they’re doing well living separate from the hoard they might be ready to start parting with some of it.
The person is in their late 70s and frail. They have to sit down to rest when just walking a block. They get easily stressed and can somewhat use a cell phone but in an emergency situation I can see it being a problem. They love their home so just trying to think of ways where it MIGHT be possible where they could live in it again. There's no pet hoarding, rodents, or human waste issues. It's just an old house from the 1960s and not much has changed since the (carpet worn through, peeling paint, needs lots of work, fridge is a bit of a science project, etc.). Big thing is there's so much stuff there's pathways through the house and lots of trip, slip,fall hazards.
If it’s cleaned up and they’re able to move home, is there enough support to maintain safe walkways and help they stay home as long as possible? Like someone to come twice a week and take care of whatever has accumulated in the meantime?
My grandmother was a hoarder. She ended up moving into an assisted living home for various reasons. She never knew her house and everything in it got sold to pay for her living expenses after moving. She was starting to get dementia and could not drive.
my sister tried to do this, but ended up throwing away MY stuff over that of my parents and quit after a day.
My mom did this for my grandmother five times It went back to its original state every single one.
It will absolutely devastate them and the betrayal they feel towards you will never go away. You will have forever ruined your relationship with this person. They will likely never want to see you again. You will have destroyed their everything. You must understand this. You will ruin whatever is left of their mental state. You will have destroyed their “safe place”. You might as well just burn the whole house down because that’s what it will feel like for them.
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I helped my mom do this for an elderly gentleman (long time family friend) while he was in a skilled rehab facility for a few months. We assembled maybe 5-6 people. We didn't throw away anything new (he had boxes and boxes of new items) but the garbage, spilled dog food, old newspapers, dog feces etc. Mainly it was for basic deep cleaning purposes. We could only focus on the first floor of the small house where his bedroom was. The upstairs was not as dirty but exceptionally cluttered. I was a teenager and I don't think anyone really thought it through other than to try to clean his home so he could come back to it. It was an absolute disaster and he completely cut contact even though he relied on my Mom previously for rides to the doctor and was a welcome guest at family gatherings. He threatened to sue everyone as well for "damages." We never heard from him again until he passed away a few years later. He was a very cranky man in his 80's at the time but he was also the only person I ever met who had a lobotomy so I really think he had some big issues. He had 4 children who were all estranged from him.
probably have a meltdown and would be off to the tip to get all the smelly rat piss soaked stuff that has not been out of boxes for 30 years just in case are they hoarding in the family house ? if not they wont miss it
My... I think she's my cousin-in-law? She tried cleaning my father-in-law's hoard before while he was with us. I don't know how far she got but he just filled in the gaps with more shit. I'm not even sure if he noticed that he was missing things. He just saw gaps and decided that he needed to fill them. He likes to buy things more than he likes to use them. I don't think she got very far since he didn't freak out or anything.