Does anyone else feel like their parent's house is driving them crazy?

Somebody used the term "high end hoarding" and I love it. I think that's very different from the type of hoarding they make TV shows about. But in a way, it's nearly as hard to deal with, since you can understand the motive for keeping a pretty thing and even share the feeling.

GA, I think there are different reasons for hoarding. I think some people hoard for sentimental reasons; others hoard to distance themselves from people (like building a fort around them); still others hoard because they are lazy or disorganized. Of course, there are many hoarders are obsessive/compulsive buyers that can't stop. I think the final type are the ones that often start after something bad happens to them.

Ultimately, serious hoarders do end up building a fort around themselves. Their family and company can't visit because there is no room to sit or sleep, and the house is too disgusting. So the hoarders become isolated in their forts. To the world they can seem like normal people. To see their homes can be a shock.

Something that is funny now. My father spent his last 20 years sitting in a chair all day. He built a fort of plastic baby-wipe boxes around his chair. I thought he probably had all the things he used in the boxes. After he died, I started to work removing the fort. The boxes were almost empty. Some of them had one or two worthless trinkets in them, but otherwise there was nothing. It was like the twilight zone when I realized it was just a fort, instead of being anything useful.

timbuktu, that was scary the way the EMTs had to get to your mother. If you're like me, it's also embarrassing.

I think we should adopt a big orange rabbit as our hoarding mascot. We have a 4' pig here that would look good next to it. We donated 4 or 5 garbage bags of stuffed animals to the abused women shelter so the kids could have them. The pig and a few bears escaped my notice, so are still here collecting dust.

As I've skimmed over the posts, I've been wondering about the relationship of American materialism to collecting if not hoarding.

I've always felt that materialism is rampant, and dominant in American culture. I'm sure it exists in other industrial and post industrial countries as well. Marketers make sure that we feel inadequate if we don't have picture perfect white teeth, beautiful smiles, molded (if not through a gym, through plastic surgery) features, expensive cars...you name it....there's an alleged positive and socially accepted influence for so much of the goods produced and sold.

"Things" are apparently seen as status symbols, indicative of a certain kind of wealth. The more visible symbols of wealth you have, the more you can (a) impress the neighbors, compete with the "Joneses", (b) feel wealthy (c) feel good about yourself.

Could this by reflected in some of the people who do end up compulsively collecting? Could it be a method by which they are trying to fill fulfilled for some inadequacy in their life, or in some perverted way to feel as if they still have status even as they segue into poverty and unhealthy living?

Just some thoughts that popped into my mind....

My mother was into china painting, has a huge kiln which is in my basement now and I am running out of excuses as to why it isn't hooked up,been making excuses for 3 yrs.The lid is so heavy she can't raise it up safely and I have refused to have anything to do with it.She has a designated 11ft by 12 ft area for her art studio, this has been a real bone of contention with us but my husband also has his tools down there,also the more room you give her it just starts to fill up with her cr*p like it is breeding or self reproducing.She goes on a once a week shopping trip with a companion and I always tell her to remember there is only so much room in the house and that 2 other people besides her live there.When she first moved here she demanded that we knock down the wall that separates her bedroom from my little office/sewing room as she wanted her bedroom as big as the one she had which was filled ,FILLED with furniture.H*ll to the NO! on that.

Scissors! I thought it was only us. I must have donated 20-30 pairs of them and we still have about that many. I've moved most of them to one drawer now.

My father also bought a lot of knives. He had mixed dementia and shopped from catalogs. I didn't know the extent of his knife buying. There were over 100 knives, most bought from Duluth and not cheap. I gave a box of them to my brother so he could figure out what to do with them. Guess I could have put them on eBay. I still run across knives.

And tools. We could have a huge tool sale here. Men would love it. My father bought tools upon tools, though he never used them. Guess I could put them on eBay, since a garage sale wouldn't get a very good price.

Are you saying it's a 5 foot orange rabbit or was that size a type? LOL! This last cleanup of my mom's current room came to a head this last hospitalization when the paramedics couldn't get into her room because of all the furniture she had to "have",All they could get in was the stretcher,so we placed the stretcher at the end of the bed , I crawled up on the bed and got her to lay crosswise on the bed, one of the paramedics crawled over her bed to the other side and he and I basically lifted/pulled her down the bed to get to the stretcher.The paramedic then had to crawl back over the bed to get out,thanfully despite mother's constant screaming this whole time(it was a musle spasm) if this had been a real emergency they wouldn't even have been able to get most of their equipment in her room.So safety helped me get over the guilt and I got her a kick *ss hospital bed ,doesn't look like one, electric with battery backup.Had to get rid of her bed , she doesn't like to admit it but the new bed has made her a little more independent as she can get in and out of the bed easier and safely,but oh the comments I got about how I just love to throw "all her stuff in the garbage".Ha, that would be impossible, they don't make dumpsters that big.

I can tell we need a special group on the board "Adult children of hoarders." I dream of my house with its big rooms, bright walls, and sparse furniture. I love a house where you can walk across the floor without kicking your toe or banging your knee on something.

Midkid, I like your paperwork file. A few weeks after my father died I bought a huge shredder and spent about a week shredding boxes of files dating back to the 1980s. Every bit of bank, medical, utility, and financial information was saved. The boxes occupied the entire dining room. My mother wasn't too happy with my shredding, but she liked having her dining room back.

One thing that I did like when she was taking the Remeron is that my mother got motivated to shred all of her bank statements -- about 20 years worth of them that included monthly statements for about 10 CDs, in addition to her savings and checking accounts. She worked on it for 3 days, but got it done. That was nice. The only trouble came when getting her to stop shredding things. She liked shredding so much that she was looking for stuff to put in the machine -- cardboard, bags, anything. I had to rescue my shredder before she killed it. It was the Remeron that did that a bit obsessive. It's funny now thinking back on it, not so funny at the time. Anyway... it was nice to see her get into the spirit of cleaning things up. Too bad the Remeron was too much for her, since it gave her some energy.

I often wonder how much of this behavior we are seeing in our parents who went through the Depression and had very little? I know Mother holds on to the weirdest things, which make no sense to me (I too, keep a Spartan house!!) and the clutter and bags and piles of stuff--does it makes them feel more secure? She has about 30 pairs of scissors, when 2 or 3 would certainly suffice--and the clothes! Luckily, she would part with her sets of china to some of the daughters (not me, my house was not deemed "nice enough") but I wouldn't have taken them anyway. She will not live long enough to use up the bars of soap she has stashed away. And a BARGAIN? She bought a 5' bright orange stuffed Easter Bunny b/c it was 75% off. And she got an extra 15% off because she's a senior. So now she has this garish thing on her bed. It's not even something with sentimental value!

Dealing with the contents of my mother's house was a horrible emotional experience.I am not exaggerating, 200 paintings on the walls,this was a small garden home and these were not small paintings.So much furniture she could barely weave around with her walker.4 walking closets,huge closets ,so filled up that when you opened the door stuff fell out and it didn't make a dent in the rest of the stuff in the closet. Clothes that still had the tag on them,so many clothes.I knew she shopped to feel good, like a gambler's high,she has always been like this. I now believe the hoarding behavior started when my father started getting ill 15yrs. ago,she even had those little sheds you can get from Lowes' or Home Depot and they were filled to the brim.Thankfully those sheds were at her previous home and she was still up and about,driving, and I refused to be sucked in to dealing with that mess when she moved.But when she moved to my house I told her any china she wanted, and there was a LOT of china, would have to fit in the 4 ,8ft.tall,about 4ft wide china cabinets.I knew that with all my dogs that something would break. I didn't buy my home and set it up to accomodate china and besides according to mom I am clumsy and break things even at 56.It was a cold ,cold Feb. morning when I sat outside of her house watching the movers,I cried like I never cried before, even though I don't like her I felt sorry for her.To give her the kind of care she needed and not be in an AL or NH 2 households had to be combined. For years she complained about me not having any furniture,(with 6 dogs why do I need so much furniture,I like the Spartan look,less to dust).Thankfully for her I was this way or else she couldn't have moved the furniture she did to my house as there would have literally been"no room at the inn."My mother did what I call "high end hoarding",clothes,jewelry,lots of antique furniture, she had at least 4 complete china dinner services that stayed in closets and never saw the light of day until the estate sale.I felt like the worst daughter ever, that I was stealing even though all the money went to her accounts.I was so overwhelmed by the volume of contents in the house I finally cried in front of her and was honest about I have no help,I am an only child, that I didn't know what to do.Her response was to show me a diagram where ALL her stuff would be placed in my house, basically move her hoard to my house,OH H*LL NO! She even wanted me to put the same kind of sheds she had had in my yard, NOT GONNA HAPPEN! She couldn't understand what my problem was. It wasn't until I told her I was going to call her minister to come by because I knew when this man saw what I was dealing with he would help her with the reality of the situation. She didn't take me up on it, reality isn't her big strength,doesn't have dementai just a big ole narcissist.

This hit a nerve--I tried to clean a little at Mother's yesterday--basically bought her wicker basket with divisions in it so she can put all her tabletop "necessities" in one tidy place. Problem was, she wouldn't part with much of anything. She has always been a hoarder and that has increased with the smaller place she's living in. I've really only been effective at keeping tripping hazards to a minimum and taking YEARS worth of bank statements and junk mail into plastic bins and storing them. They are labeled "PAPERWORK" which is code for "just throw ALL this stuff away", eventually. She has junk under her bed, in every nook of the closets, one day on a lark, I counted her blouses,. She has over 100 WHITE blouses. Two GIANT closets filled so tightly you can't slide your hand in between things. She was eating at the table on top of her insulin shot records, notebooks, puzzle books, newspapers-- just kind of shoving stuff around, to make room to eat. Never the best housekeeper in the world, she is "tidy" but so jampacked cluttered I get claustrophobic. We moved her and daddy from a 5,000 sf home to a 900 sf apt. It took 3 years. I can see it will take us a year to clean this place out too. She won't hire a cleaning service and she gets mad if I do more than about an hour's worth of de-junking. I always tell her it's because of the birds and their poop and feathers all over the place (which is mainly true)..they are filthy and I hate them, but they are her little "loves"--however dirty they are. Sadly, Mother did once own some really lovely things, why she chose to go into the apt the stuff she did will forever be a mystery to me!
I happened to talk to brother, whose house it is, and he laughed and laughed. Said "Sis, you are sweet to try to effect a change, but I guarantee next time you go up there it will be the same as before". In my heart, I know he's right, but I just keep trying.

Curtain, my mother tried Celexa and Remeron. The Celexa didn't have any noticeable effect, even at a higher dose. The Remeron made her hypomanic and more obsessive. My mother's chemistry and neural problems could be much different thans yours, so one of the antidepressants may work well with her. The can be taken together, since they work on different pathways in the brain.

Sometimes I feel like people are becoming like test tubes. Add a bit of chemical, shake, and see what happens. I don't like drugs, but I know sometimes they are useful in making things easier for everyone. I wish one had worked with my mother.

Hugs to you as well Jessie. It's a hard issue and your mother is very lucky to have you in her life. It sounds like you've done a massive amount of work de-hoarding for her. If you don't mind sharing what anti-depressants or other psychoactive drugs has your mother tried and what happened?

My mother has never tried antidepressants,but I think the day could be coming. She is really grieving her physical losses, as anyone would, she can barely walk now and has so many major health conditions. I think it's only her tiger woman will keeping her going sometimes. I've often wondered if she ever did get on a drug affecting her neurotransmitters if it would help the hoarding. She even starts a mini-hoard if she's in the hospital with anything handy, napkins, condiment packets, plastic utensils. Her desire to save and have stockpile of stuff is very strong.

Hugs JessieBelle! I totally understand. It is frustrating to have so much responsibility and so little authority. I like the suggestion from Eddie. If I tell dad that the accountant told us we need to donate, "we need to do it for the taxes," dad might agree.

The areas around my Dad's recliner and around his desk all look like filing cabinets had thrown up their contents. Dad [94] keeps going through the papers to see what to keep [like his physics homework from college when he was 16]..... what to maybe keep.... and what to toss. It seems never ending as Dad will save newspapers to read.... can't convince him that if the newspaper is a week old then it is old news.... [sigh]. He's afraid he will miss some important news.

I did buy a clear small storage bin because I noticed old family photos scattered in the paper mix... good grief, don't want those accidentally thrown out. This weekend I hope to dive into those wastebaskets and boxes to save those photos.

Later I thought, there isn't much my Dad can do around the house anymore due to his age and his age related decline... I might as well let him keep busy sorting and re-sorting papers.

Thank you, Eddie. I needed a big hug today. It is one of those days that try's men's (and women's) souls.

First, let me give you a big hug Jessie. My mother is in her 80s and her small apartment looks like a warehouse.

You could start putting the extra stuff in clearly marked boxes. And, if you can afford it, get some of those bags on TV that suck all the air out.

Push comes to shove, take some of the boxes to the Salvation Army.

I did a good job on the major hoard. I spent the first two years here clearing the hoard. It was the kind of thing you see on TV. Food in the freezer dated back to 1989. Cans and boxes of food were stacked to the ceiling in the kitchen. No cabinet or table space, since everything was loaded with stuff. Four rooms were filled, so you couldn't even walk. Now all but one room is presentable. This room holds multiple racks of clothes and is filthy. There is no way to keep it clean without de-hoarding it. My mother's bedroom is passable, but it looks like a crazy person lives there. It is actually not a safe place. There are quilts on the floor. I take them up. She puts them down. This goes on and on, with the number of quilts growing with time. I'm afraid to walk in there for fear of falling. I don't know why she does it. Her doctors know about it and prescribed anti-depressants. That only made things worse.

My mother doesn't really have any interest in the things in the house, but she is still adamant about me not donating certain things. It is a control issue. And sadly, I don't think she really sees me as a person with needs anymore. I am just an object to her that should do as she says. It makes her mad that I seldom do, so she is always mad at me.

I'm heading out the door now to get away for a couple of hours. I am glad that I'm able to do that.

My loved one did develop dementia and as it progressed, she lost interest in the "stuff" in the house. Her mind was unable to process things the way she used to, so I could stand in the kitchen with a trash bag and load it up with junk as she walked around the house and she didn't even notice! I nonchalantly would carry it to the car to be discarded and she didn't even question me.

I put all her scissors into a bag while she stood talking to me and she didn't even notice. So, at some point, if dementia is involved, she may totally stop caring if you clean the things out.

I understand why you feel embarrassed. It's not your fault and you can do something about it because you live there too. When I did this for my inlaws I started from the back of the house working forward. I decluttered one room a little bit at a time and left a few items they hoarded but threw away the bulk of the junk. I think my inlaws had enough soy sauce packets to keep a Chinese restaurant stocked for a week. My inlaws also hoarded old clothes and linens, plastic utensils and magazines. I'm just thinking out loud here but you could start by getting a few baskets big enough to hold your mom's creams, tissues, medicines and placing the basket next to her seat in each room so that it's handy. That would clean up some surfaces. I will admit it here that I donated and threw away a lot of my inlaws stuff without asking. Only once did my MIL notice that a certain blouse was missing. Not that she could wear it because it was huge and she had shrunk but she obsessed about that blouse for weeks. I'd pretend to go "look for it" and tell her it will "turn up." Is that horrible of me? Perhaps but it was the only way to get them ready to move. My MIL still obsesses about old clothes and shoes and continues to hoard but at least she's living in a place that's wheelchair accessible. I wish you lots of luck!

We have the "keeping evil spirits out" thing, too -- our 95-year-old actually hung a grouse wing up over the window of her door, and balanced a SHARP KNIFE right where she leans against the window (that "disappeared..." thanks to me). She's always been fierce. When we said that authorities might find it hazardous, she just said, "Aw, come on...I've always lived like this." That's true. Doesn't make it safe for her now. There's no hope for change, though, until her will is broken. What I DO do is smuggle out a useless item or two a day, as I take/pick up the breakfast tray. Outdated vitamins, old eyedrops, pens that have been taken apart. It's not really clearing anything out, but it's my own tiny rebellion.

My parents house have a lot of junk too but I don't think quite at your level. When I'm there I just wait until they leave the room, go to the bathroom which they can be in there for a while or consumed with something else, and discreetly as I can throw stuff out. Sometimes hub and I tell them and sometimes not, just depends. Mom is more open to it and has started throwing out stuff but my dad is terrible. We got a big trashcan and threw a lot of stuff a few weekends in a row and just spread remaining stuff around so he'd think his junk was still there. Seemed to work he didn't complain and hasn't added to it.

The trick we use sometimes is since they have a reverse mortgage (ugh) we tell them the mortgage company is obligated to make visits unannounced to make sure their investment and loan made to you should still be in effect. I said otherwise you could get evicted. I know there are terms and conditions, but one day, I just said it and he said okay you can start throwing out some stuff. We just chip a little bit at a time. Sometimes, we have a neighbor or friend to come visit and keep them occupied while we're doing it also.

Hope you can find some relief, Jessie. You endure so much you deserve to have some real daylight to help resolve this and feel more comfortable for however long you remain there. I know you probably wouldn't leave but the poster above does make a good point of using that as leverage. If you're not there for there is no one else to step in to care for her. But she'd have to be convinced it could happen, at least that's what I sense from your postings. You never know, though she might be more amenable. Agree also on the APS suggestion, that should surely get her attention. If not, may be really time to think about an exit strategy soon or at least have a plan in place.

Thanks, everyone. I do have some leverage in actually moving out. Threatening to move wouldn't work. It would be easier if things were either all the way bad or all the way good. She can still do all her ADLs and has good mobility, though she is slow. Keeping a cluttered house does not seem serious enough to put someone in a nursing facility.

We may come to parting of the ways soon. It is 84 degrees outside and she is trying to bully me into turning on the heat. Actually, the air conditioning just came on. I closed the vents in her part of the house. She said last night that she tried to turn on the heat, but it wouldn't come on. I told her Praise the Lord that it didn't. She often forgets that she's not the only person living here. My major consideration is my rabbit, who cannot tolerate heat. We will have no option but to move if she insists on cranking the heat up until it's cool enough so I can close my vents and open the windows.

I know what you mean about unraveling the mess that our parents have made. Since I came here I've been working through a lifetime of neglect and I'm tired of cleaning up the mess, but never feeling like anything is clean. It is discouraging. APS would find nothing wrong with the house, because I try to keep it livable. My dream is to bring in a little bulldozer and push everything out the door.

I've done an insane amount of research on this as I'm the child of a hoarder too and I'd like to inject some reality here. In most states social services and APS will not act to force a hoarder to clean or into healthier circumstances if they appear mentally competent otherwise. There has to be a level of filth that would get the house condemned most times before they'd act. Not my personal experience, but I know people on the internet whose parents live in horrific conditions that APS came in, said ok they are competent, and walked away. Children of hoarders are in a terrible bind. Once the parent becomes elderly suddenly the "it's not my problem you are an adult responsible for yourself" stance of the the adult child that gave them a chance of having this not consume their life isn't ok anymore, suddenly society sees us as responsible for "letting her live that way". Never mind that she insisted with terrible anger all her life to live exactly as she chose, but now she's old so suddenly the adult child is holding the bag. Guess this is a hot button for me as it's been a burden all my life. Forgive the rant, it just frustrates me that this is seen as some easily resolvable issue when it's moral quicksand for the adult children of hoarders and the legal support is very thin if non-existent in many states.

JessieBelle, do you have any leverage? Could you threaten to move out unless she allows you to make the house more livable? Is moving out even a possibility for you? She greatly benefits from you being there and it's your home too now. If you haven't found some of the wonderful resources on the internet for children of hoarders please do some Googling, it will help. You have nothing to be ashamed of, this is one tenacious disorder that brings the families down a tough road.

Even if it's not caused by dementia, this type of thing comes under the umbrella of mental illness. I've seen quite a few documentaries about it. It is caused by a number of factors. It may be longstanding or triggered by a traumatic event. The patient is resistant to change and often they don't see any problem. It's unlikely she will accept help from a therapist in order to change. Often these patients will only accept help if they are at risk of being evicted or having their children or pets taken away. It must be frustrating. I think I would get a plan to deal with it and work on that plan.

I have known people to file with the courts contending Incompetency of a parent due to this factor. As it turned out, there were other factors too, once they started looking into the life of the hoarder/dirty home. They also found self neglect of medical care, neglect of their financial affairs, and self isolation. The guardianship was appointed to a person by the court, as the adult child who brought the Petition did not want to be involved with the parent and wanted a third party to make the hard decisions. The court appointed guardian then placed mom somewhere safe, cleaned the house and then sold it, as mom was not fit to run her own household.

Good question (timely for me) as I am trying to slowly untangle my parents huge house that has become a 3 story hoard of many estates, yet they would never pass anything on...even when asked. Father is now in SNF and we are trying to slowly pass on some things.....But it seems like I have hit a wall....have little ambition....and feel like the easy thing is to fill dumpsters..! Unfortunately, family will still occasionally bring father back to his house and he gets upset when everything is not exactly as he left it. I feel like the expectation is that we keep it a museum that is just sitting there rotting or waiting for a burglery! With limited funds I am struggling on what things make sense to spend $ on repairing and what to just let go. Eventually house will have to be sold. I fantasize on having HGTV come into do a make over!!! haha I have been cleaning grime and decline for 6 months now......getting better, but a long way to go! Jessie Belle ....HUGS to you....getting through this is so much easier said than done. I just take one room at a time....kind of like an onion....peel off one layer a day.....tires you out!

Oh, I know what the hard-core answer would be. I call in a cleaning team to give the place a good scrubbing after I relocate my mother to a nursing home. The thing is that I am not that person. Nor do I want to become that person. Something I do like in myself is the feelings of empathy and sympathy I have with other people. This includes my mother, even though she is lazy and driving me nuts.

This level of filth (your word) is not healthy for you or for your mother. I guess i would wonder, if APS came in, would they accept "she's still in her right mind and i can't make her do otherwise". I'd take pictures to her doctor and id ask him to write you a letter, certifying that your mother is competent and responsible for her own well being. Explain that you are afraid you will be charged with neglect by "the authorities" if EMS or APS ever shows up. I'm hoping this will prick his conscience and he will be spurred into helping get her placed, for her own safety.

I know you weren't asking for advice. Feel free to ignore it.