Advice on putting foot down with dad?

My last resort as I type is to pack up my moms things and my own. Head back to my home and tell him - have at it. Your house do what you want. Yes, this is the only strategy you can really pull off. 1) hoarding is a mental disorder because it is *irrational* (like him saying the 30-yr old fridge in his yard represents his life). If you go ahead and start cleaning without his blessing he will become agitated and possibly enraged. He may even agree to it one day to stop you from nagging him but when you actually show up with a dumpster he will go nuts and block you. Been there, done that with someone dying of cancer who was a hoarder that I was trying to help. They will jerk you around and not care. 2) If you are not his PoA then you still won't be able to force him to move unless you physically wrangle him out. He doesn't control your Mom if she has all her mind and he isn't her PoA. She needs to agree to go with you but then don't be surprised if she pines for him and goes back. Also been there and done that with my MIL. 3) the only person you can change or control is yourself . You need to have boundaries and healthy perspective so that you don't burn to a crisp trying to rescue them from themselves when they don't want to be rescued. 4) "My dad has never been diagnosed with any cognitive impairment." Unless you are the one who took him to this test and stayed in the room to see the results, you have no idea if he's been tested or what the results actually were. If you are going by what he or your Mom has told you, I'd doubt it deeply. All his behaviors you describe point to a cognitive/memory problem. You should probably just report them to APS, and keep reporting them until he gets a court-appointed 3rd party legal guardian who *will* be able to extricate him from his home since they do it all the time. You now need to have adjusted expectations for what a solution for him acutally is. There is a solution, it's just not the one you had envisioned.

You won't consider Assisted Living, which would be a blessing to both you and to them. Such places are not torture chambers, nor does anyone there wish to cause your parents harm. You have closed your mind to the very thing that could help you and give your parents the PROFESSIONAL help they need at this time in their lives.

Your dad is more than stubborn. Truth: He's displaying symptoms of mental illness. Getting your dad to clean up and throw things out won't happen. Ever. Due to his broken state of mind, an ultimatum will not work. Understand that, and also get over the nonsense that anything you do will make your mom "cognitively better." People with dementia get cognitively worse, never better. You're leading yourself down a garden path, tra-la, tra-la, "I'll wave my magic wand and everything will be lovely and beautiful and we won't get rats." You're not being realistic.

As for not wanting to emasculate dad, good grief. The last thing you need to worry about is his puffed-up male ego when you're at a breaking point and stuck at "I can't do this," and "I won't do this," and they're unsafe living in a home where you have to scramble over carpet to get in and windows are nailed shut so they can't get out in an emergency. As if they could anyway, with dad sick and mom demented, maybe enough to set fire to the house that they can't escape.

Admit what you are facing, and make plans for them to move elsewhere. Then you can get back to your own life, which you deserve to be able to do. Good luck.

Hoarding is a mental illness that is often triggered by a major loss, and until your dad admits that he has a problem and wants to get help, there really isn't much you can say or do.
Your mom does deserve much better living conditions, and it may just boil down to her having to be placed so she can be safe and taken care of 24/7.

This jumps out at me:

“I’ve left my home to help them in their own home because they love it here and their social life is all here.”

I felt like that for quite a while. That it would be a shame for my mom to lose her social connections with neighbors and friends. But the end result has been I’ve lost my connections and community over time. You seem to be on a similar trajectory.

They deserve their home, their friends, their community—but you do not? Think about it.

No reasonable parent would want their adult child to give up so much.

My feeling is that you have a problem with balance in your life. The hoarding issue is frankly incidental. You need to step back, look carefully at your entire life, and try to see whether you can frame caregiving in a more sustainable manner.

I don’t have any magic solutions to offer. I have been caring for a parent with a severe hoarding disorder for about fourteen years. I can tell you that it only gets harder; the chaos becomes more profound, the resistance to change becomes more intractable. The trips to help “take care of things” become ever more stressful. You will discover rotten wood and drywall due to plumbing problems obscured by the excess stuff. Bills, documents, tax info will get lost in the clutter. You will even lose your own belongings in the hoard. (Ever tried to talk your way through airport security without ID, because you’ve lost your wallet in a cluttered house? Not easy.)

I try to think about hoarding within a mental health context. Specifically, I think of it much like a disease like alcoholism. Sad, biochemical, no one’s fault. But also not a problem I can solve. You need to set up some strong boundaries. Most people would agree that making yourself the “solution” to an alcoholic parent’s drinking-related problems is not healthy. The same is true for hoarding. You need to carve out a healthy distance from your father and his difficulties. He will, in all likelihood, continue to accumulate stuff and develop more severe problems over time. You need to build out your life so that he does not take you down with him.

It is also not healthy for you to be so focused on taking care of his emotional life. You should not have to swallow your anger and frustration and very legitimate safety concerns so that he does not have to feel “uncomfortable.” You are taking on a kind of emotional caregiving for him that is not healthy, since he is not capable of reciprocal empathy. Your needs and your mom’s need for a safe, clean space are every bit as important as his needs.

Every family is different. I don’t know what that healthy balance will look like for you, or how you will accomplish it. But I like that you’re thinking about how you might do things differently.

A move to AL (forced by health issues) has helped in my family. The facility management must now take some responsibility for safe living conditions, although there are limits to what they can do. (They clean out the refrigerator as that is health and safety; but no one has been able to figure out how to stop my mom from sleeping with newspapers in her bed. She is a legally autonomous individual.)

Before the health crisis, I had a conversation with my mom’s doctor about unsafe living conditions in the home. Like you, I was concerned about the health and safety of another vulnerable family member. That led to an in-home assessment and a referral to geriatric care services. No startling improvement, but there were other adults checking in on the home once or twice a week, and trying to manage conditions for safety. There are lots of different agencies that will do an in-home safety assessment and recommend necessary changes.

In retrospect, I think it would have been best to separate my vulnerable family member from the hoarder. That was not possible for a variety of reasons. These people cared for each other, much like your parents do, but they had needs that could not be met in the same space.

@ceebee3, in answer to your questioin, I feel privileged to be my sweet husband's wife, period. However, I've set boundaries. I won't sacrifice our home to his inappropriate peeing that has destroyed our belongings and furniture. I will get back some semblance of a social life now that he is in memory care. I wouldn't allow his wandering and putting himself in danger to disrupt my life anymore, which is now why he's in a locked memory care unit. I know that if the tables were turned, he would be taking care of me (and would have found a memory care unit for me at an earlier stage than I did for him, but that's because he hasn't developed the caregiving skills that I acquired while taking care of 3 family members before I took care of him).

I was hands-on caregiver for both parents with dementia before finding help when I couldn't do it anymore. Even with aides, I still had to manage their care. I lived 90 miles away, and that was hard. I did NOT feel privileged to be taking care of them. I enjoyed no part of the process and am still resentful that they didn't plan better for themselves, other than putting a lot of money away for their care, thank goodness. I didn't feel grateful and blessed that I could take care of them AT ALL, and part of that may be because they didn't take particularly good care of me when I was a kid. Over five years it took them to die, and it was awful to watch. During that time I was also providing full-time care of a stroke victim, had other very serious family issues that needed my attention, and wasn't well myself.

Overall, caregiving has mostly been miserable, except for my love of my husband.

No amount of talking is likely to cure the disorder of Hoarding.
I would start by a whole lot of online research.
I would also reach out to your local Council or Agency on Aging for advice.
I would also discuss with Dad's MD and with the Dept of Health and with APS when necessary.

While the Hoarding reality TV shows are certainly in most cases well above what you are dealing with, watching a few episodes will definitely give you an idea what the mental issues are involved with Hoarding. This isn't something you can or ever will be able to control unless your parents are in care. If it hasn't come to that yet, you do need to understand that it will, and be ready for that. I am so sorry.

Your father's hoarding isn't your problem and you don't have to live in it. Neither does your mother who needs 24-hour care.

Put your mother in a LTC facility and leave your father to his hoard. You go back to your life. You've been the caregiver to your parents for 13 years. That's plenty long enough. You don't owe anymore.

Hoarding is a mental health issue, and you probably won't be able to cure your dad of it at this point.

The question is, how does this impact your mother? Living in the house does not sound safe for her, being at risk of falling over the stuff, delays if paramedics need to come in, or unable to escape a fire. How does she spend her time during the day, if she doesn't have free access around her house?

You say their social life is there. Do their friends and family come over regularly, or do they go out to see them regularly? Is the hoard having a negative impact on that?

And how about your husband? Does he mind the time away from him, or having them in your home when you do bring them there, or is he okay with the situation? Not saying he should feel one way or the other, just that you should be on the same page about all this since it has a major impact on your availability to him.

Fawnby has a great description of a good memory care facility, just in case you want to reconsider that as an option for your mother. Placing her in one nearby, so your dad can still visit every day, might be an option. I suggest at least looking at a few.

Or packing her up and taking her to your home while leaving your dad in his hoard might be the solution. The advantage to that is you could just do it and see what kind of an impact it has on both of them, without making a long-term commitment. Your mother might be inconsolable, or she might brighten up and be happy in a more pleasant and functional environment. Your dad might just choose his hoard, or it might be a wake-up call for him. Would your husband be glad to have you home for the long term, or would having your mother there stress him out?

It's a very challenging situation. You're entitled to vent! You have a remarkably good attitude about it, considering how long you've been doing this. I wish you well and hope you'll keep us posted on what's happening.

I have a sibling who’s a hoarder of many years. We’ve done the clean out twice at his request. Both times the stuff reaccumulated in a short time. It’s a mental illness that’s very difficult to overcome. If you do the clean out, especially against dad’s wishes, expect him to react badly and refill the spaces quickly. You have “powdered butt syndrome” as in once someone has powdered your butt as your parent did for you, they really don’t want much of your opinion. He won’t respect this forced change. If you want to continue caring for mom around the clock, after considering if that’s best for the two of you including your own finances and well being, consider moving her with you back to your home. Leave dad to his mess. He doesn’t have “all his cognitive abilities” as memory loss and unreasonable behavior like hoarding are signs not all is well cognitively. His time for needing care is coming, likely sooner than later. Consider if you’re willing to give up your life longer for his needs. For now, mom deserves to live in a calm, clean, and stable environment

Here is a tough question for you....
Has your dad been diagnosed with dementia? You say he has some "memory issues" it might be more advanced than you think it is.
"Hoarding" can sometimes be "symptom" of dementia.
If dad is cognizant then this is more of a psychological condition and needs to be addressed as such.
Has he always been a hoarder, and you have put up with it for 13 years? What has gotten it to the point so that you can no longer tolerate it, it is getting worse?
What kind of help does dad need himself? You say you are responsible for his care.
It might be to the point where you tell him you can no longer carry on helping him and he needs to either
1. Place mom in a Memory Care facility or possibly Skilled Nursing if that is the level of care that she needs. Then you back off, you return to your home and go on with your life.
(I do hope that you have not left a family and a job to care for your parents)
2. Hire caregivers that will come in and care for them.

If dad or mom are Veterans the VA may have programs that can help.
The VA will pay family to be caregivers.