I'm just so frustrated with my parents, my mother especially. She keeps EVERYTHING. The stuff doesn't get used, enjoyed, nothing. Just stored in boxes, closets, shelves, tables, stacked on top of other stuff everywhere. Nothing is done with this stuff except just being kept. I'm tired of it being every one else's problem in this family except the one that's causing the problem. Every closet, every cupboard, every flat surface, every inch of space in the garage surrounding where you park the car, anywhere you can put something is full. It drives in CRAZY. They get upset with me and then I get upset with them and well... it's just not working. And to top it off, she just keeps buying... just "in case". She refuses to admit she's a hoarder. The only reason her house isn't absolutly full and disgusting is because we constantly and are cleaning it. I just don't know how to help them. It's not nearly as bad as see you on those "hoarders" show. Like the house is livable, it's not all just garbage she's keeping. It's literally just "stuff". But eventually, if you can't get it removed and you just keep adding, it's bound to be a hoarders episode.

I literally am always shuffling stuff from one spot to another, every day. Newpapers, mail, ball of string, tools, whatever. Just "stuff". There's no where to put it away because everything else is full.

supposed to say "help with a HOARDER" lol not "hoader"

funny
my mom resently called me a hoarder

but hoarders dont through things away...(I DO)

my older sister gave me a bookshelf that i could use and my mom sense she never saw it before called me a hoarder

my mom has a friend that has so much stuff that she has 3 storages and cant even get through her front door.... now that i call a hoarder..


i like to crochet so i make blankets
with a help of a friend of mine,
we went through my closet and went through the yarn i didnt want or wasent going to use, (including the scrap yarn) which came out all together to be 6bags.... i posted it on craigslist and it was gone within less than a hour...


this is what i collect
snowglobes (i have over 200 of them)
mini items (i have 3 doll houses)
pepper shakers
knick knacks
porchlin dolls

im planing on having a yard sale this summer so i can clean out my storage

so my mom or anyone else cant say im a hoarder

FOR IM NOT


geeze i also just resently within the last few weeks cleaned my other closet and took out 5bags of clothes that i wasent wearing or they were to small for me
and i gave them to a friend who handed them down to other friends that could use them

hoarders dont do that.....

They say hoarding is usually triggered by some kind of trauma such as abandonment issues or death of loved ones. Has anything like that happened that may cause them to feel the need to keep everything?

im not a hoarder
so what you have posted has nothing to do with my collecting
what i have posted.

This might give you start to changing this habit of hoarding Jill!

"Organizing-Organizing Ideas: 5 things to get rid of" by Kathleen Dore



"Don't delay! Ditch the junk and give yourself some room to breathe.



1. Clothes that don't fit.

2. Objects you don't like even if they were gifts.

3, Outdated papers (newspapers, magazines, invitations to events, expired coupons and calendars).

4. Things that you have more than one of. How many do you really need?

5. Broken items that are to expensive to fix."

******


Jill, I have a friend Laura that is a hoarder as well. In January she took a "Hoarding - Decluttering Course". Yes! I did not even know they teach a course on this. I will be at her side until she conquers this problem in her life.

It is not easy to overcome I have leanrt watching and hearing from Laura as she agonizes over "letting go of things". Apparently it is not something you can claim victory in one day's time either. It can mean several months of hard work in ridding things from your life or dwelling place for, there is an emotional attachment that goes along with letting go which is a true mental barrier to overcome. What totage has written I have heard as well could be a contributing factor to being a hoarder.

Good luck Jill! Help in turn hoarding into a yearly purging habit.

I thought of this article to share with you which I clipped out years ago. I use it as a reference or guideline when spring cleaning my home.

When my Mother was away on a trip......my brother got a roll off container delivered.
He and Dad did some 20 yrs worth of spring cleaning in a week.
She was livid at first.
when she saw that they had saved all the valuable memento's....
and how much room she now had in her home.....She was happy!!!
Doesn't work for everyone....but sometimes an intervention is the only way.!!!!

while i was in the hospitol
a few months ago
my mom wanted a friend of mine come in with her to my home
and do spring cleaning.. meaning she was going to throw almost everything i have bought and which some of the stuff i have is collectable.... but i have to admit i have given alot of stuff i didnt want anymore away...
and my friend refused to help
in fact the other day my sister gave me a shirt that my mom was going to throw away for she didnt like it..
i like the shirt and im not going to throw it away it fits me comfortable.

i had to thank my sister for giving me my shirt back

I am getting help with my hoarding. A good friend is going to help me take all the many computer parts together and sell old computers. He thinks I will be able to do good because of the economy right now and some people are satisfied with a plain computer. He is a hoarder himself so I was able to able him, too. It was funny when his mother was glad to get his hoarded stuff loaded into my van for him to take to his house. I helped to start the fire in his mother's back yard and drove him over to his mother's. She was glad to get the needed axtra space by moving his stuff out. She said if you can't burn it just give it to me and I will throw it into the fire. Of course, now it is his wife who is getting upset with him for bringing it to their house which didn't get burned.

Jill, maybe she's not as bad as the people on TV, but I bet there are some psychological issues behind this. What you described is what my grandfather's house (well, shack, to be honest) looked like on the one time I remember visiting. You literally could hardly move. It was very much his personality. He had a lot of issues. I'm not saying your mother does, but I'd tread carefully. If you have a good enough relationship with your mother, you could ask her why she's holding on to all that stuff. Find out if she can identify any possible benefit to getting rid of some of it. I think just sneaking in and cleaning the place out without her permission might cause a major ruckus. Not only might it poison your relationship with her, but I bet she'd just starting hoarding right away again anyway.

If the house is livable (fairly clean and room to move around), then to be honest, the hoarded stuff isn't doing any harm. Sure it looks ugly and it's annoying, but unless there are health or safety concerns it may have to be a case of live and let live.

I don't think Totage was commenting on your statement but rather the OP as I see nothing mentioned about collecting being a part of hoarding. JMO

The Salvation Army and similar places will give you tax breaks for donations. I used to collect for them as a job helping to pick up stuff that was sold to the needy. Part of my recovery is cleaning up the wreckage of the past and hoarding can fall into this category.

No, there's a difference between collecting and hoarding.

I was talking about Jills concerns. If her parents are hoarding, that may just be s symptom of what the real issue is. If you resolve the issue causing the hoarding, you may also resolve the hoarding issue.

"Hoarding". Another so called "condition" that's been blown way out of proportion by the media.

I think it's some kind of security issue thing. I mean, I understand if you have a lot of collectable stuff worth some money, but you gotta weed out the useless crap.

Try surprising them, get them out of the house, and take a day to clean the place. They might freak out at first, but they'll thank you for it later.

1. I fall into the "keep it, you might need it someday" camp. I grew up with people in both sides of my family operating this way.Their mind set seemed to derive directly from living through the Great Depression. This makes sense to me.

2. I did not live through the Great Depression, but have emotional attachments to things to trigger memories. There is not a lot that can be done until the person keeping all that stuff comes to a realization about how they are being held back from living, and moving forward by all the stuff. And it can also take lots of time for the process to sink in. I have been working on it for 20 years.

3. I can identify with Jill about having to move the piles of papers, etc. on a regular basis, and living in the stacks of stuff. My mom's house was/is like JIll describes. In can be claustrophobic and exhausting. I was able to get breaks to go live at my other parent's house every couple of weeks, and escape the piles of stuff, otherwise, I don't think I would have made it.

4. Being on the mini-hoarder side of things, I am absolutely mortified with the idea of someone coming in and clearing out my stuff - I would having a frickin' nervous breakdown! My husband and I battle over this constantly. What does make the difference for me, is seeing how uncomfortable and frustrated he is, and connecting with how frustrated I was with my mom when I was living with her. There are definitely things that I will not get rid of (photographs, child hood toys, costumes). I am also working very hard to make our house liveable for all concerned.

5. The list of getting organized steps are good. I've been using a similar version of it for several years to use as a reference point. Psychological counselling also helped me. I also need consistent help and support to feel like I am making good decisions. I have major GUILT over throwing stuff away because someone else could use it! Charities that accept gently used items are a godsend for me. :)

6. I do not think Jill has to just suck it up and live with it, either. That is completely unfair to her and what she needs. Family meetings, compassion, strategies for change - all of these things are avenues to affect change.

There are no easy fixes. Hopefully you will find some helpful ideas in my epic response!

All the best.

soon when money is useless the hoarders will win

but garbage is another story

just imagine if they had these shows on right before

the 1st great depression

i want to see shows on like bill gates and

warren buffet hoarding money

the wal*mart family are big time hoarders

where are those shows?



watch doomsday preppers

they are all hoarders

My much-beloved ex girlfriend was / is a hoarder. Her daughter made her hire a woman who comes in every week for five hours at fifty bucks an hour to reduce Ruth's amount of belongings.

Ruth was eventually able to move to a retirement residence with everything she still owned.

Her place is still messy, and full of stuff, but slightly less full each time I visit (twice to four times a year).

Ruth, herself, however, started to gain weight.

She went from a swelte figure to an emaciated, pruny figure between 73 and 78 years of age. For the last four years she's been gaining body weight rapidly. Her beautiful breasts rounded out again to a pert full stiffness, her body gained smoothness and fullness. When she lies naked on her bed, on her back, one can only see her age on her face and on her hands. Maybe her neck. The body is smooth, wrinkle-free, and void of discoloration; a smooth, homogeneous bouncy, healthy, skin, with a vibrantly creamy-white hue. No body hair on unwanted places. Her thighs are full and healthy-looking. Her legs have vericose veins, though. And her upper arms do not sag. Her fingers are crow-leg like... her worst part. The poor sweet thing's had arthritis in her hand joints which have been (badly) fixed via repeated operations.

Ruth's body responds to my grabbing her anywhere with a healthy, elastic resistence. She is soft but bouncy. Her skin does not sag, and if you pinch it, it has no "memory", that is, it does not hold the shape of the pinch even for a moment.

She has beautiful, bouncy, shapely, grabbable buttocks. An azz that just won't quit.

She kisses now better than before. She used to abhor kissing, and she salivated all over the place. Since sex is out of the question these days, she is now learning the language of love; the langauge of sexless yet sensuous and receptive-giving love, and learning it very well.

That woman is a love-goddess, a one-time sex machine, and the apple of my eyes.

As for myself, I come from a very long line of hoarders on my mother's lineage, and my father's side was a dream-hoarder... people could not hoard because they had no money to buy anything. They were too full of pride and morals to steal, and there were no cheap second-hand stores in the great depression in hungary. If you found a piece of potato peel or an oily rag with holes in it, you blessed the day you found them.

I am a hoarder. I am reformed hoarder, but a hoarder just the same. When I have money I live in a big place, and I hoard, and when I am in a poverty phase, I live in a rented basement room and have everything with me I own.

It did not used to be always this way.I used to store stuff in Hungary at my sister's, at my aunt's cottage, at my brother's house, at my cousin's home.

I reduced it by throwing out all my books, by chucking the record collection and buying CDs, and then later chucking the CDs and buying iPods. After becoming a hermit, I chucked all the things that had a social connotation, such as playing cards, board games. I chucked all kinds of furniture. I chucked the mattresses, and now I sleep on memory foam. I chucked all the carpets, wall picutres. I send my entire photo collection to my sister, who was very happy to have got them. I split my exclusive and valuable antique map collection in two, sis got one half, bro, my brother, got the other half. I chucked a ton of food utensils, cooking stuff. I never replaced my slowly emptying bottles of booze. I got rid of the excess clothing, things I haven't worn even once in the last five years then (2006). I am a man now who can't go to weddings and funerals for I no longer own neckties, white shirts, jackets, and pants. I only have shorts, shirts, and jeans. Some underwear. The only excess I still allow myself in the clothing scenes are socks. I got rid of my beach towels, but got four face towels, soft and fluffy. I used them to catch the J(sm when I mstrbate. I then got at my humongous amount of collected, saved papers. I saved every piece of correspondence I received in the new world, since 1972. All the letters from my father, from aunts, uncles, my brother and sister, all the friends and cards that ever came from friends and relatives and lovers. I put away all visa bills, phone bills. All my bank statements. Papers related to work, to love, to play. My efforts at literary creations. They were all stored in two huge four-drawer filing cabinets.

Two years ago I started to put them on digital media. I'm now only halfway through. Some I scan, some I photograph. The photo option is faster, much faster, than scanning, yet it produces the same or better results. It just distorts the page's image, but ever so lightly. You can read the words easily. The amount of detail is staggering, and it takes a fraction of a second to take one picture.

So now I have all my stuff in my room, and they occupy, furniture included... allow me to look around (I look around)... in an estimated volume of 10 x 4 x 6 cubic feet. That includes clothing, food, coffee, bedding, computer stuff, hand tools, power tools, fresh paper and stationery, like staples, knifes, and paper cutter machine... bicycle parts, old toys, some antique maps... prescription glasses... flashlights, gadgets, small gadgets, earphones, headphones, cell phones, batteries... and "sundry". I have two bicycles locked up in the yard, and two cubic feet worth of food. Some sound equipmen, a Bose compact loudspeaker system. Medical prescription drugs, medical aids, loose change, writing instruments, blank cheques, about five 12-inch rules, clocks, empty boxes, packing material, some decorative items, some photo pictures, some supplies to make my own hard-covered books, raincoats, a windbreaker, two plastic jackets, hats, gloves, plugs, extension cords, a very small but very powerful fan, hygienic supplies, such as toothpaste, brushes, soap, shampoo, conditioner... cleaning supplies, such as a broom and a mop, and cleaning liquids... a set of basic dishes, cutlery, cookery. Spices, rice, dry pasta.

I don't need to further reduce just yet. But I will finish the copying of old papers. I do this to put the collection on electronic media, such as DVDs, and then I shall try to sluff it off on museums, library collections and paper collecting houses. I am a nobody, but I have a COMPLETE correspondence, which might be of interest to researchers in the future who want to learn about the life of the everyman in the era around the millennia change and the blowing up and annihilation of the world on May 12, 2012.

The next big reduction project will come when I finally get ready to emmigrate to BC, to Victoria, Canada. I want to retire there, and die there. I actually don't want to die. But I know I will need to, for administrative purposes. It would be immoral of me to stay immortal and nullify such true and tried old addies, like "only two things are for sure in-life: sex and dying", which is tax and dying.

I am not often successful of making my family be proud of me, but my brother has developed a lot of respect for me now that he sees me throw stuff out. He and his wife are both hoarders. They live in a huge house, chuck full of stuff. The triple-garage is full too, the cars are always on the driveway.

hey!!! cant totally relate wat you feel!! my Mom does that too and its so frustrating!! I tried talking to her but nothing helps her understand dat she needs to change....anyways...best way is to see a doctor and explain what the problem is....a psychologist will have a solution....a doctor I approached for my Mom helped us understand the problem and in turn help her with it without her knowing she is 'ill' we have been able to makes things a bit better....hope you find a solution soon..