I was at my parents house yesterday helping them with a project and on a whim, I took a walk upstairs and recorded a little video for your viewing pleasure:
My parents did some remodeling last year, which consisted of four rooms (out of six) on the first floor of the house. Obviously to have the rooms re-done, they had to empty them and in the process, they literally filled multiple dumpsters with stuff. I’m not even talking about furniture – just general stuff like mixing bowls (she had about 20), those disposable Ziploc food storage containers (she had about 200), gift bags (hundreds) and stuff like that. Here’s an example: She have me a paper cutter about five years ago and we found the empty box it came in behind a cabinet. Why in the heck she would have kept the box in the first place is beyond me, but there it was.
Once the rooms that they remodeled were finished, my dad wouldn’t allow my mother to clutter them back up so she was left with that one room upstairs to hoard all her crap. She does stick some of her junk in the basement, too, but she’s disabled & can’t get down the rickety old stairs as well as she used to. If she could, I have no doubt that the basement would be filled, too.
Anyway – I talked to my father about it and we’ve decided to tackle the hoarding room in the spring. Stay tuned….
First a questions – Does your mom read your blog?
Now that’s a lot of crap……let us know when hoarder’s calls!
I think the only difference with us is that we put stuff in bins……still a lot of crap, but organized! lol!
LOL – no, she doesn’t read it. She doesn’t even know how to turn on a computer, which is probably a good thing because she’d be buying even more stuff to cram in there online.
I am an anti hoarder. I have two hoarders in the extended family and honestly, it breaks my heart. I used to have such a good relationship with both aunts and now I can’t even visit. All that to say, when I was couponing, you tend to stock up on stuff. We have a hoarding “hallway” for that stuff.
Tony mocked me about it all the time, but seriously, I just bought toilet paper for the first time in 6 months the other day, and the powerade from the summer is finally gone as well.
Good luck with tackling that room. With a true hoarder, getting rid of it just makes it come back worse. Maybe get her some therapy before hand so she can deal with the real issues being masqueraded by the stuff.
Oh wow.
But hey, you never know when you’re going to need that stuff. Personally, I’d rather just throw it out, but to each their own! Best of luck tackling that in the Spring!
Hey Robin! My kids are a little older, 7 and 10 but we have way too much stuff -
“with kids comes clutter” I have to repeat this mantra from going insane – or maybe that is the first sign of insanity! lol!
That’s disturbing.
wow… hoarding is something that just scares me — but at least her hoarding is *stuff* & not filth like you see on the tv series. (which makes me sick to my stomach because i know my family is just steps from being that extreme.)
my grandmother would be a HORRIBLE hoarder if we allowed her to be & it has cause so many family riffs. she doesn’t see herself like that & always throws out how she had nothing as a kid — which she didn’t — but she is 84 & has MORE than made up for it in the past 60 or so years.
my mom is also a compulsive over-shopper/hoarder & has an entire garage & basement full of *stuff* that she hasn’t touched in YEARS that looks eerily similiar to your mom’s *hoarding room* but WORSE! she buys SO much stuff for my kids as well & then goes into a panic when i am giving it away to whomever will take it when they outgrow it. i am the polar opposite of them both — the less the better.
people have no idea how truly hard it is to have hoarding in your family — it is SO personal & to the hoader you are invading their space & privacy.
i wish you luck because i know exactly where you are!
Love the vlog
Whoa! Good luck with that clean up!!
I’m itching just from a video!!
Oh my gosh! It’s a real life hoarder that you KNOW and LOVE! It was probably wise of your dad to confine her to just one room because you know she’d fill several of them if she could!
There’s probably so much good stuff in there that you should totally steal.
My parents are both pack-rats bordering on hoarders. It drives me nuts!
She could make a fortune on ebay!
I live in a small condo … we don’t have a lot of room to spare so I only buy it if I need it.
Oh man! My MIL is a hoarder. His parents sold the house my hunny grew up in to his bro and the basement is packed floor to ceiling with crap that she won’t let them get rid of, her brand new house that they built 2 years ago is now packed. I am an anti-hoarder as is hunny and now that the holidays are over we are going to have an intervention. She wants to babysit her grandkids but we all feel the house is too dangerous.
Hoarding is such a scary problem. It can just snow ball so quick. My youngest is a hoarder and it’s hard to control it at times.
My in-laws whole house is worse than that room. My hubby has tried to help his mom clean and she will not do it and if he throws anything away she has a fit.
I would suggest a trip to her doctor and, perhaps, a referral to a mental health professional.
When I was a paramedic, I lost a patient in a SRO hotel fire, because she was crushed underneath all her stuff.
In other instance, a mother had a baby at home. We, literally, had to ‘surf’ over the stuff to get to her and the baby. Then we couldn’t get out with her.
It took two engine companies, (eight firefighters), and lots of neighbors to move enough stuff so we could get her out… She was screaming about how she didn’t want to lose the stuff throughout…
Hoarding is not benign. Have someone from your local fire/EMS service come over and tell the hoarder how hoarding can KILL you…
My husband is a fire fighter for the Air Force – she is WELL aware of the dangers. Luckily the hoarding is limited to the one room upstairs, so it won’t get in anyones way.
P.S. – I estimate the cost of the second rescue was somewhere around $20,000 and it took two engines out of service. Fortunately, there were no other calls. If someone had needed the engines, we would have had to choose between her and calling mutual aid from the next county. – which would have greatly increased response times. Someone completely unrelated to the hoarder could have lost their house or the lives, because they had to wait for an engine coming from the next town over…
Hoarding does not just affect the hoarder…
I don’t remember being married to you. Your mom’s crap looks exactly like my ex-MIL’s crap…
OMG what are you doing in my Basement and Garage LMAO… Yikes.. My other half is a hoarder. Drives me nuts. I can toss anything out at the drop of a hat and not think twice.
That famous line you never know when you might need it never materializes as hoarders cant find where they put the items and the vicious cycle just keeps going, they just go and purchase a new whatever it is they cant find.
Good luck with that I know you might need a wee bit of luck.
When you are done come help me!! lol