I would consider my father and his wife to be hoarders as well. Their home looks just like that, and always has as long as they've been together.



The biggest culprit seems to be his wife.



In addition to the entire house being nearly impassable, they have two or three medium sized storage units crammed full of random shit.



Having tried unsuccessfully to change their ways, clean up, etc., I've just given up. They accumulate shit faster than I can possibly dispose of it.

Seems like you should be able to find something in that mess to build a fur suit from.  Look for the blessing in disguise.

Been there. Be glad you got out alive.

My Dad was a hoarder...was rough sometimes. I know exactly what you mean about the bizarre thought processes toward keeping / wanting things. At one point he had three storage units full of junk because his house was full. He knew it was a problem and let my Sister and me help with getting rid of things. It took a long time, but he had made a lot of progress with it before he passed last year.

 

Why the hell are you cleaning if she doesn't want you to? Why are you still in contact with a mother who would punch you in the face? This shit isnt your business. Leave these crazy people alone. If you have to have contact for some sentimental reason, meet them outside the house.

If their lifestyles are causing you problems, it's your fault. You're choosing to involve yourself in this shit.

This shit is WAY more common than people realize.

I think my grandmother was a hoarder. I KNOW my mother is an animal hoarder. Fucking looney tunes and I cut off all contact, my life has been so much better since.

That sucks man.  



I was at a house that had 30 years of crap like that piled up...   including empty food containers, newspapers, and the way it smelled, every bladder evacuation.     Old lady appeared to have fallen over a stack of newspapers and died that morning.      I was assured the room I was in was clean compared to the rest of the home, since you could still see some wall.    The family cleaned it out about 10 years before and the woman flipped her lid.   I was honestly curious about the rest of the house but I couldn't stand the smell, and I couldn't fit down the hallways with my duty belt since the junk was piled so tightly.



I didn't see how the place could be cleaned up without burning it all down.

I'd always claimed I'd never clean up, just burn everything to the ground.

 

That place is clean compared to the hoarder house that I just walked out of...

and I freakin' hate cats....  I could not imagine walking into that house bro...

- Clint

Wow.  I thought my wife was bad.

I finally had enough this weekend and called a guy to come get
a while bunch of shit and scrap she insisted on keeping.  She
got pissed, but took it better than I thought she would.  Next weekend,
I'm having a yard sale.

Sorry man.

My folks are well on their way as well. I give my mom crap about it but she laughs it off. She's got some sort of lung problem/cough that's been going on for months. No doubt the animal hair, dander and dust aren't helping but you cn't convince them of that or at least mke them care enough to clean up.

My dad has this room where he spends all of his time when he isn't at work. It's stacked to the ceiling with junk. Out dated electronics, compuiter parts, old video games, garage sale finds. All stuff that he's convinced he will use some time.

They got a big dumpster last summer. I went over to find a few little odds and ends thrown away but no real progress. I grabbed a bunch of my junk they've been holding onto for years and chucked it. I didn't even realize they had that stuff. I grabbed this old ratty disgusting creepy baby doll and tried to throw it. My mom started sobbing and said she's had it since she was 2. How can she throw away something that she's had for 50 years? I pointed out that she's left it out in the garage unprotected all this time. And that I would chuck it the second she dies anyway. She finally laughed and let me do it. I really don't know what the answers are. We are the opposite at our house. We have no problem getting rid of junk. I only hoard guns, ammo and knives.
I really avoid going over there.

Im a hoarder to.  I hoard ammo, guns, and magazines

I have 15 glock 33 rd mags, and no glock

What's the deal with crazy people and cats? It seems the ability to make someone allergic to cats would be a valuable psychological tool.

You need to adjust the white balance on your camera.

hoarder checking in but slowly working on it.
My motivation comes in spurts.
I'll clean and dump shit for a week straight and stop for months at a time.
I should just rent a dumpster and be done with it.
eta: I have boxes from things like electronics that I dumped years ago
I however do not do the animal hoarding thing

Our neighbors had a garage that was that bad or worse, and a few rooms in the house were that bad too.  Fortunately some of their house was kept in decent condition.  I did a lot of baby-sitting and taking care of animals (cats, dogs, horses and ponies) when I was younger.  Their large 2-car garage was COMPLETELY unnavigable unless you were willing to do a lot of climbing, piled about 6-8' high with everything imaginable.  It also smelled TERRIBLE, and there was cat poop and urine everywhere (they had about 25 cats, half of which were feral).  They also had ferrets for a while, and let them poop in corners and didn't clean it up for months.  Many years later they got a little better about it, fortunately, mainly after the wife divorced her loser, abusive husband and married a decent guy.

At least she does not collect bottles of urine.  it could be worse.

Man, I could never deal with that mindset.

I'm extremely clean and organized.

I can't stand clutter and useless crap.

Toxoplasmosis, the cats are what makes them crazy.

FWIW, I'm allergic to cats and I still love them.

i've dealt with a few hoarders. none anywhere near as bad as the photos here though. one thing i thought significant was that they all seemed to be stuck in a land of reasonably good ideas and intentions, but were not acting on them. i remember thinking that a big portion of the problem would go away if they'd just have focus, use the stuff they bought, and work toward their "vision".

That is nothing... My MILs house had double the shit and 5 times the cats. There was literally shit stacked to the ceiling with only the very smallest path to the BR. Cat shit, fleas, dead cats...Shit finnally came to a head about 5 years ago when her Hot water heater shit the bed and basement flooded in Feb. It was the first time I had ever stepped foot insidfe the house despite me being with my wife for almost 10 years. We had discussed it a lot of times over the years but it was always just blown off. I finally just told her that I would not help her unless she let me help her.. She agreed.

I called Safeway and some other cleanup places but they all quoted 7-10 grand to do a cleanup. i'm sure it should have been done with Biohazard suits and proper disposal of the items. I ended up getting some guys out of the phonebook from Lowell Ma (shithole) that said they would do it for 3K. I expected the workers to show up with some High speed cleaning vans, Bio suits ect.. When they showed up, it was 3 guys in a rental box truck! They all get out out in t shirts and pants sneakers ect.. I'm like WTF.. Long story short, they cleaned out the entire place. 99% of all  the shit was literally junk. Dollar store crap that was not worth a damn. Much like the OPs stuff above but infested with fleas. Once cleaned out, it was pretty obvious the house was junk. Between cat uring and water damage it needed to be completely renovated. It had to be completely demod down to the studs and subfloor. Luckly she owned the house outright and she could take out a loan for the reno.

3 Years later the house is slowly on its way back to the way it was. Not nearly as bad because we told her she could only have one cat. i think she also lives in fear of me comming over and giving her shit due to all the shit (litteraly) I had to put up with the first time. Hoarding is most definilty a mental disorder. I always thought that maybe she had just gotten behind and could keep up once she was cleaned out but I don't think thats the case. I is a sickness. I have discussions with her about it sometimes and I get much of the same as the OP. What I can't get over is the flat out denial and anger when you confront with somthing in black and white..She will deny having or buying something despite it being right in front of her face...

We just try and keep her honest and go do some cleaning if it needs it..

 

My father in law was pretty bad.  I took ten loads of crap to the dump the weekend after he died.  Load = F250 with an 8'bed.  That was just a good start.

my sister handled this by visiting on trash day and keeping her mother occupied while stuffing crap that wouldn't be missed directly into the trashcan. The rest was moved onto shelving in the garage and they held garage sales for several months. After that whatever was left I think was donated. House still looks normal 5 years later.

I just remembered something else.  When I was working at the Oxford, Ohio Kroger about eight years ago, there was this old guy (probably 80 or so) who came in every week or so.  He had a regular-sized pickup truck that was completely FULL of garbage, mostly fastfood items.  They were stuffed on his dashboard, behind the seats, filling the passenger seat, stuffed between the seat and the windows, filling the pickup bed, even filling in rust holes and stuffed in the bumpers!  He also once came into the store with no underwear and an open fly (and yes, it was peeking out).  After a customer asked me to discreetly mention it to him I did so, and he said, "Yeah, my zipper's busted." and walked away.  I didn't want to deal with it, so I just went back to work.

 

That is nothing compared to what my step-grandmother did to my grandpa's house.

My house looked worse than that when I moved in.

Inherited it from my great aunt.

EPIC horder.
I've got some cool shit that she had (furniture from local museums that closed up, 40 pounds of junk silver coins, documents from the 1700s-1800s)
BUT 90% of it was trash, she lived through the great depression as a teenager, and saved EVERYTHING.
My basement (1000+ sq feet) is still stacked to the ceiling with home canned stuff....I bet there is 3000 mason jars down there. i just don't know where to start. this winter maybe.
(the actual house is now clear and remodeled)

In addition to the 2500sq foot house that was stacked wall to wall with only walkways through, I have 4 car garage (bult into a hill, 2 on top and 2 on bottom, I saw 4 car becuase thats how many doors, the building is big enough to be 8 car.) you could not even WALK into this.


It took me months

Toxoplasmosis, it is a parasitic fungus that hosts in cats and other mammals.

It has been discovered to alter behaviour, generally by causing relaxation around cats. To the extent where rats with the disease will run towards cats, which gets them eaten, which promotes the fungus' lifecycle.

I don't think theyve ever observed changes in human behaviour to it, but I don't think they have ever looked, and it stands to reason that if they relax rats around cats, it may relax us. ALso since it is a brain infection it COULD be linked to other behavioural changes.

That's it, everybody who owns a cat, ain't allowed to vote no more!

- Clint

That'd be a shame, my cats tell me to vote against liberals and buy more guns.

Everybody needs a hobby.........

My ex-GF was a whore too.  But her house wasn't full of junk.

The house I grew up in was far worse. Just a tiny trail through the rooms and massive piles. You could not see the floor or any flat surface. Mom is OCD. She also had the checking disorder. We could be blocks from home and she would need to go back to shake the front door knob to reassure herself it was locked.

Never had a friend over as a kid. I would have been roasted at school about that. We never knew mom was actually mentally ill.

My folks slept in separate rooms for as long back as I can remember. She hated my dad for being an alcoholic but my dad did not hate her and put up with her disease. I wrote their divorce settlement.

Start today. Just be done with it. You will be glad and better off for it.

Toxoplasma gondii is a species of parasitic protozoa in the genus Toxoplasma. The definitive host of T. gondii is the cat, but the parasite can be carried by many warm-blooded animals (birds or mammals, including humans). Toxoplasmosis, the disease of which T. gondii is the causative agent, is usually minor and self-limiting but can have serious or even fatal effects on a fetus whose mother first contracts the disease during pregnancy or on an immunocompromised human or cat.

 








 

Between the hoarders and the Furries;  that is certainly one fucked up family.

I can't imagine what it would be like to live with someone like that.


I wonder how someone so crazy can keep a job and support themselves??

My mother-in-laws house is approaching the level of the one in the pictures. My wife went a few years ago and helped her muck out three of the bedrooms and they stayed clean for abut a year, then the refill started again. I refuse to stay there when we visit. She does not hassle me about it either as she can't stand it herself.

Then, about two years ago, she gets two cats, not the kind you find in a pet store mind you, but two friggin feral cats that were born under her back deck. They run when people see them, except the MIL. If we do visit, I normally have my working dog with me, and although he ignores cats, other than curious, they will try to attack him. One of these days, there's gonna be cat parts scattered all about and I am gonna be in deep guano. I don't mind cats, and they live outside, and there is only one of them, but if they are senile, or mean, or attack other animals, they are "gone".

My wife and I have been together for 30 years, and a couple of years ago, I saw our loft start to take on a collection of magazine, you know, sewing, house furniture, and stuff. I said to the wife, "Hey, this is starting to resemble your mother's house". She bitched at first, then said something like, "Shit- your right". Never happened since.

I dodged a beating there.

My parents were only semi-hoarders. They didn't go out and buy shit to hoard, they just didn't throw anything away. I found boxes of wire coat hangers (the cheap ones from the dry cleaners), newspapers and plastic grocery bags. Remember before microwave ovens, when TV dinners came in tin foil trays? I found stacks of those trays in the cabinets. Lots of old clothes, shoes, etc., all dry rotted and worthless.

A co-worker said his parents were like that too. He blamed it on growing up poor during the depression. They were afraid to throw away anything that could be of any value.

I have a 12 month/3 year rotation system for potential junk (power adaptors, cables, electronics etc). If I've not used something for 12 months then unless I can come up with a very good reason to keep it, I throw it away. If I manage to justify it for 3 years but still haven't used it, then I have to convince my wife there's a good reason to keep it. I don't think she's ever said yes yet





A good point was made earlier that a lot of people keep stuff that might be genuinely useful for a project they have in mind, they just never get around to actually working on the project. That probably covers most people but the cases mentioned in this thread certainly sound like a mental disorder is involved.



Edited to add: My Mother-in-law can't throw away food. Everything has to be eaten, or any leftovers made into food the following day. Apparantly you can eat any and every part of an animal of vegetable if you try hard enough. In fairness to her, she lived through the Siege of Leningrad and had to watch family members starve to death, so she is very sensitive to waste.




 

Well, I guess I better get out there and clean out the barn today

I had an email from my brother the other day when I said I was going to get rid of my college electric typewriter, the dot matrix printer, a monitor or two, other things, and I was asking him if there was any use for it.

"Who are you and what have you done with my sibling?"

Now, the younger brother always says that if they have to clean out my place, he will just light a match to it........till I pointed out that if he does, he better establish a safe standoff zone.

One thing people ought to be glad of is that they aren't around people who push off their stuff on them. They say, "Take it, I don't care what you do with it, but take it," so then it becomes their problem. One of the things I dumped off yesterday was a fish tank stand that Mom pushed off on me years ago. Dad's books about buying wine. Plastic office organization items. One of my bosses would do that with equipment, though, except for one, he didn't push it off, just offered it up. Things like the file cabinets and the kitten castle are in use, things like a fancy slide projector, I eventually got rid of.

Or inheriting the family's paper work affairs.........which, in part, is one of the causes of this mountain now. When one says they need time to put things in order after a semester and others with wants on your time say you can do that later. Then the next semester starts up, one never has a chance to go back to the other stuff until eventually, the buffering system to absorb these papers is just overwhelmed and breaks down.

There is the setimental value of things here and there. I've inherited a Sears portable b/w TV from the 60's which the last time it was used was as an antennae base in the early 90's....................................but it was the TV that my grandmother saw the moon landing on in her hospital room as she was dying from cancer.

I have two leather chairs that are heavily torn up. One is my father's chair from my childhood  and though it is just a chair, something like that is hard to give up. The other, started out as an expensive leather chair and ended up an expensive cat toy for my first kitten, clawed down to the wood. As things go, however, it is now up on the consideration block for jettison; I'm getting tired of having to turn it over every so often to put the stand bolts back in place, found one on the floor yesterday.

The basic question I ask myself is "When it comes to it, do you want to move with this?" Or......do you want to risk your health by eating what's in that can?

What goes where is always an interesting question. Junk metals and paper, including weekly tech magazines over a year old, go to recycling. Usable equipment goes to Good Will. Books will eventually be sold but books around here, come with their own reasons for existence and there are so few of them to be sold.

An occassional reality check is helpful. Do I really need all these extra CD drives or are the ones left in the old towers sufficient? If the CD can't be read, just take it as that....it probably wasn't worth much anyhow. For there is the other end of the coin, how much time am I willing to spend to get that data....and how much is my time worth.

With that said..........back to it.
________________________________________
("Didn't you know he was divorced, paying alimony?"––Felix
"With all this paper, we thought she was just lost somewhere in it."––IRS, (w,stte), "The Odd Couple")

My parents are the opposite.  They moved while I was in college and took the opportunity to throw out all my stuff.

Well said. Mom never bought anything to hoard, just kept EVERYTHING.

Hey Tekka, you need to get American Pickers to come over to their house.  Let anything go for their offer price.

Prezactly.

Walk away from it as far as you can.

I feel for you this is a tough situation –– My MIL is exactly the same and her children are not ready to deal with it yet she just went back to live with her son in Vegas and we are dealing with the lawsuit between her and her landlord here over the cleaning and the stuff she left behind (SHE is suing her landlord over the stuff she left behind !!!)  Its messed up all around ––she does not deal with reality, she will tell my wife when she's here "you should open a flower shop ––that'd be nice " ––my  Wife is an attorney with a successful practice––  I don't think my MIL is all there anymore. Also I think it has roots in depression she pretty much stays inside all the time and watches MSNBC(!!)  Now she is messing up my BILs apartment and wont let the landlord in to fix the dishwasher(??) and is screwing up his diet ––he has gout and is diabetic and is trying to get his weight under control etc and she will go to the grocery store and buy mounds of oreos and cokes then slip a plate of oreos onto his desk while he is working at home and say ––"you should have a snack"  She did the same thing when she was here and it took me six months to get the kids out of snacking all the time  mode after she left.  When she did move it took almost a full tractor trailer load to get all her stuff out of that apartment alot of it was junk like a broken table with no base from 3 houses ago ––we just discovered she has storage places in Idaho and Salt Lake City she has been paying on for years ––god knows what's in those...... anyway I think she needs some inpatient treatment  but the BILs' and my Wife are not ready for that confrontation yet. Maybe once the BILs apartment is completely covered in cat s––t they will do something but when you are talking about a parent its difficult to come to grips with. I wish you good luck being in this situation really sucks especially when both your mom and dad are the same way ––double jeopardy

Its not too bad. Both are on other sides of the country. I'm just trying to help get my moms house under control so I don't end up having to figure out how to clean out her house and his should something serious happen to both at the same time.