How do I get my mother to let go of some of her stuff, like clothing she will never wear and magazines that haven't seen the light of day in 4 years?

I suspect for many people it is a control issue instead of being stubborn, or maybe even not being hoarders! For seniors who are losing control of everything and living in a world that has FAR outpaced them, what they have is what they understand! Unless it is a safety issue, truly a safety issue, I vote to let them keep their "stuff" - is it worth the pain and sadness to fight a battle over a THING? There will be time to call 1-800 Junk when they pass away or no longer have the ability to care about "things". The only thing Golden about the Golden Years is their urine, they spend day after day discovering something else they have either lost or are in the process of losing (confidence, security, vision, relationships, roles, control, choices , , , ) that maybe there is some value in not rocking the boat?

I forgot to tell you we started just telling her it was up in the attic somewhere packed...that seems to work. She can't get up there anymore. Just 2 years ago she would climb right up the ladder!!

Hanging on to stuff isn't just about older people, though. Don't you still have a pair of jeans or slinky dress in the back of the closet that 'someday' you'll fit back into?

I've come to see it's about hanging on to the person they were, the dreams they had. (Don Aslett, the famous writer on decluttering and home cleaning, has a lot to say about how anyone at any age is susceptible to this mental trap.) If the piles of references and drafts from his dissertation are gone, did he really get that degree? If her boxes of costume jewelry are empty, did she really used to dress up glamorously and host great dinner parties? Even if the whatever hasn't been touched in years, just knowing it's there can be comforting.

My dad resisted mightily when my mom started decluttering by selling books they'd reviewed years earlier (and never read again) on Amazon, and would indignantly rescue old desk lamps from the thrift shop donation box in the garage and put them back on a shelf. It was much less stressful in the end to get his buy-in, however much persuasion it took, rather than have him suspiciously poking through boxes thinking it was only his stuff being culled. Another way we got buy-in was to encourage him to visit the charity we primarily benefited, which was the local humane society (he has always loved his cats and dogs). Days when the donation went to their thrift shop, we'd stop and play with the cats at the shelter first.

After moving them across country to be closer to us in WA, and downsizing their home by half, we have a lot of frustrating but really very sad conversations about 'I guess you had to get rid of lots of my things' -- when in all honesty, lots of his books and things are still just in boxes in storage, cos they don't fit in the house... Don't yet have the answer to that issue, except to set up shelves in the storage space and unpack it all so he can visit it there!

But that revealed another interesting aspect of keeping stuff: for him, having everything on the same shelves it had been on for years was a memory aid: he has been much more likely to be confused now, because everything is arranged just enough differently in the new house.

Hope this helps a little bit. My experiences with my folks, and friends' parents, have made me determined to do a better job decluttering my own life, now...

Oh man I saw the title of this thread, and said oh yes that's me. Rolling up sleeves here.....okay yeah here I go..yep my mom is a hoarder too, oh my there's stuff at mom's house since the 60's. Everything is kept. After my dad died 11 years ago I cleaned up a lot of paperwork around where he sat in the patio. That took awhile. Then all these 11 years I would see all the stuff my mom had and she had it all well stashed. Well last year when she 5150'd I was there for a month and started to clean. First I started with the patio again and put everything out in the garden that could be used as garden ornamentation,..and that came out so nice. She did not say anything, but after about a week she was out there recleaning as in vacumning and such. That freaked me out...what was up with that, like she had to double do me. Well just recently I started to do even more. You would not believe how much soap I found. Well what I did was when she's not looking and something is not out in the open like closets or cupboards I have been putting it out in the garage in the back of the SUV I take to go get her groceries, and I either dump stuff in her garbage or I take it to the Thrift shop drop off. So slowly I have been cleaning out on the sly. My old bedroom closet is filled with tops upon tops and tops, with price tags many the same kind 3 times over. Never worn nor will ever be worn. I made up so many trash bags full to take to the Thrift Shop drop off but it seems like the endless closet.,.my Gawd.

Hmmm I don't know if it's holding on to one's lost self or just storing stuff up for the future...cause getting back to 2wheels and the canned food, I can proudly announce that I had the grossest CAN so far in the post. My mom had large can's the restaurant size can like Costco type, well one had plums and that was so old that it turned black and leeched it's contents so now I keep finding stuff coated with this tar like substance everywhere...what a friggin horrid mess that is going to take mucho elbow grease to clean up just due to useless hoarding of food. They buy this stuff dirt cheap at closeouts and then buy oodles of it and then think they are going to use it up...which most of the time it never arises and then viola you have the 'HOARDING EXPO' of a lifetime...LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL...geeez you never know what your'e gonna find.

My dad used to always say to me.."you come home and we clean out the garage"...in his german commandering accent...well I used to say..yeah okay you just tell me when you want to do it. He would never take me up on that..he's been gone 11 years. So now and then I clean up more and more and more, either trash or thrift shop gets stuff. I have always cleaned out my stuff, even when I was young I would clean out my desk or closet...and have been doing so. I still have a lot of stuff to clean out...but at least I don't hang on to stuff and now even see more the reason not to hang on to everything for cleanliness and safeness!!!!!

If anyone has old things like WW11 I hope they show it to the younger generation before it is the forgotten generation they might want to hold on to one or two things I remember my father going off to war at our little train station and crying -I was 4 at the time.

Austin, yes I agree throw away junk but not good memorabilla.

I'm grossed out by some of the stuff my Mom has stashed, but I leave her alone about most of it. I agree that its just not worth it to tangle with them about it-unless its a danger or a health hazard.
Now that doesn't mean that it doesn't drive me up the wall and that I frequently think "I don't want to live like this". Then I try to imagine that there will come the day when I can hire the "dipsy dumpster" and get some cleanliness and organization back.

More about stuff.....My Mother occupies the master bedroom and bath. We all thought that would be just fine because she was still sewing and quilting and needed the space for all the stuff that goes with those hobbies. Well, she no longer does either...just reads and watches TV and sleeps. My husband and I use the small 3/4 bath and she has 2 sinks and it is so much bigger..also has 2 huge closets. We are stuffed into one walk in closet about half the size of hers. We are thinking how nice it would be to remodel her bathrm as we have now finished the rest of the house in a total remodel. How do I approach the subject of cleaning out her room and moving her into our bedroom so we can finish the remodel(and have a bit more room for us). The task would be monumental but I would rather do it while I still can...I am no spring chicken myself. Or am I just being selfish? I do worry about her ability to keep getting around all the stuff without tripping.

Here's a kicker for you all:

This weekend I have been planning a garage sale. I've been working on it for 1 1/2 weeks. I told my mom about it last week. She kept calling and asking what I was gonna be selling so I kept repeating and repeating and repeating.

Finally she calls me and says she has some stuff that I can come pick up and sell.

ARE YOU SERIOUS??????? The last time she gave my girlfriend 2 pairs of shoes that she had never worn, she called me and asked me what happened to them so when I explained she'd given them to my girlfriend she had me to call my friend to bring them back. She did the same thing with a jogging suit she'd given her that she gave me because it was too small for her.

Oh by the way she's still looking for that black jogging top.

After I finished laughing I told her to go ahead and keep her stuff because she is an Indian Giver and I'd rather she just have her OWN garage sale.

Go figure!