Letters to the Editor

• Not just the elderly do this

  [Read the article: My mom's a hoarder]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  The overall impression here is that hoarding is mostly done by elderly people suffering from a sort of OCD/dementia, and that it might be fueled by having grown up deprived in the Great Depression. There is some truth to this, but I know a LOT of hoarders who are well UNDER 50 years of age, and grew up in the 60s! and were middle or upper middle class children.

  I do think that severe hoarding is form of mental illness, but there are many degrees of it -- there are benign forms of gentle "pack ratting", where people have a lot of stuff or collectibles, but it's not filthy or dangerous, just cluttered. Then there are people who don't so much collect anything but just can't clean or throw anything away, and are actually living in dangerous filth or fire hazards.

  Among the younger hoarders I have known, many of them are seriously or morbidly obese. I say this with compassion for their situation and don't mean to be judgemental about their weight. But being morbidly obese means it is very difficult to do the hard, physical, sweaty work of bagging and throwing things away, hauling stuff to the curb, etc. This kind of individual may be very tired all the time, and reached a state where they simply can't cope, and it is easier to let things fall apart. I have tried to help some friends in this state, and they are grateful to have assistance in cleaning, but I have found that very quickly things return to the way they were (Great term, BTW..."The Creep").

  It seems obviously in some of these cases that the individual is depressed, and deeply ashamed of both the depression and their weight, and they simply will NOT get help, because they are putting this off until things magically "get better" or they "lose weight". Of course, they never do.

  Another type I have personally witnessed is the hoarder with the outwardly fine existence, and the hoarding is hidden. One friend of mine had a picture perfect home....that is, the living room and first floor of the house. The attic and basement, however, were packed literally to the ceiling, with tiny pathways you could get barely get around. She saved literally everything up there, including two extra dining room sets she had nowhere to use, her childhood bedroom set, and her deceased father's entire wardrobe she couldn't bear to part with. Needless to say it was a fire hazard, and I literally worried that someday the entire floor would give way and crush anyone on the first level of the home.

  Her basement was filled with thousands of articles of clothing -- like many women, she had a bunch of stuff that didn't fit that she hoped to diet into -- so she had strung about 10 clotheslines from end to end of the basement, and they were literally bulging with thousands of items of clothing, many unworn. Since she almost never went down there, her dogs and cats had figured out they could go downstairs, and pee and crap everywhere with impunity. You can imagine what this smelled like!

  Yet if you had met this woman, she was a very successful executive, and impeccably dressed, and the main living spaces of the home were clean and lovely. You would never have had a clue.

  Having seen this upfront, I have concluded that actually NOTHING can be done about this by an outside person, even a child or spouse. Any attempt to really make a dent in the dirt or hoarded items provokes real pain and fury from the hoarder, and you may find yourself entirely shut out of their lives for "stealing/destroying their STUFF". It's horrible, but it's one of those human things you just simply can't do a thing about. A tiny number of hoarders will self-identify, and force themselves to change, but that is miniscule.

  Another point: I think some of the driving forces here have been, not the Great Depression, but the rise of collectibles and things like Ebay and the TV show "Antiques Roadshow". They have left the powerful impression that virtually anything can become "valuable" if you hold onto it long enough -- old clothes, crappy little toys, broken watches, outdated electronics. This is a truly powerful idea, that EVERYTHING will eventually become valuable, and it can really torment people who already have the hoarding "vulnerability"....the idea that even an old newspaper or busted toaster might make them (or their heirs) immensely wealthy. I know when I have tried to encourage the hoarders I know to throw ANYTHING away, this is often the response... "NO! that might be worth a lot of MONEY someday!"

  Permalink Thursday, July 5, 2007 06:59 AM