Hoarding of Clutter Bugs - The Hoarder

I've talked about fire ants, roaches, spiders, and the shooflies in my pie, but I haven't talked about the clutter bugs. Seems like I've always had one or more in my life. All of them wonderful in their own right. Guess that means I'm some sort of bug collector, or at least attractor.

If you live long enough, most of us know one, love one, loved one, or have at least heard about one or more. Thanks to a popular television series, "Clean House" here in America, we get to see some very fine examples of clutter bugs. We even get to see those nominated for the "messiest house in America." Being voyeuristic is apparently part of the American psyche.

While the show is very entertaining and even pokes fun at hoarding, the behavior can be a symptom of a serious problem. Individuals who hoard often feel the need to collect and save things that the rest of us would discard. Additionally, they will feel a stronger need than the rest of us to lay in a stockpile of "needed" items. They'll cruise yard sales, go through other peoples trash, and even dumpster dive.

The items that they need to collect often consumes their lives. They spend a lot of time sorting items, usually in an effort to find something they "know they have." The sorting, or rather moving things from one pile to another, seldom results in throwing any trash out of any significance. So valuable are their things, that they can become more and more reclusive and be very stressed if they must leave home even for a few days. Fearing that something will happen to their treasures, or that someone will break in and steal things.

My first association with a clutter bug was with my beloved grandmother, who was the primary caregiver to both me and my two siblings. Her clutter and hoarding, however, seemed on the surface -- to be within the acceptable norms of someone who just has a messy room, or a room with more stuff than room. What my siblings mistook for "messy" or "cluttered" had a deeper meaning for me, for being the oldest. I knew that before she came to live with us, her whole house looked that way. Her hoarding was kept in check by my mother who ran a tight ship when it came to a clean house.

I can speak with authority on this subject, thanks to her and a long association with the extreme clutter of others in my life that would follow her. There is a clinical name for this illness, it's sometimes called compulsive hoarding syndrome. It is a form of obsessive compulsive disorder or known as OCD.

As a young bride, we were living in Washington, D.C. in the row house, my husband's grandmother had owned since the early 1900s. Next door an older man lived alone, unless you counted several large German Shepherds that were his companions in life. He had a high paying position with the government, was a pleasant man, although somewhat shy.

From the outside, his house looked like every house on the block. It was only if he happened open the front door, that you caught a glimpse of piles of newspapers and books, impeding the front entrance hall. When he died, it took the city weeks to clean out his home. He lay dead in that house for several weeks before anyone knew he had died. Six starving dogs were removed, four dead dogs had died sometime in the recent past.

Gloved men in hazard suits and gas masks cleaned out more than forty years of garbage, human excrement, and animal feces. At least the neighborhood now knew why, our block had it's own stench on hot summer nights back when he was alive. The rats and roaches all had to find new homes too.

When I was twenty-nine years old, I was a young newly divorced mother of two. I made a disastrous decision to move one thousand miles away from anyone I knew, to start a new life. I'd been promised a job in a hospital, that once I moved there, had been filled before my arrival. Soon the meager savings I had brought with me, was spent and we were living on the edge of homelessness.

With no electricity, behind in my rent, a broken down car that wouldn't start -- I was desperate to earn money to feed and care for my children. My rescue came in disguise of a much older man, who offered me a home, electricity, and a small salary. His exact offer was, "I'll take away all of your old problems and give you some new ones" (well, he didn't lie, but that's another hub, maybe more).

This physicist, working in a think tank for a major defense contractor, moved us into one of his many houses that he claimed to be renovating. His big excuse for all the clutter that was stacked up the walls, was that he was a busy bachelor who needed a "woman's touch." My small salary and free rent was to compensate me for cleaning up the mess.

I cleaned and painted for an entire summer, while he charmed my children into championing his plead for me to marry him. The entire neighborhood applauded the clean up as it had long ago spilled into the yard, creating a public nuisance until I came along. By the time the house was cleaned and painted, junk cars, broken appliances, and building supplies were all gone. By that time, I had agreed to marry him.

Little did I know, this brilliant man, was an extreme compulsive hoarder. Years later, in the end, long after we had gone separate ways -- it was evident that his was a life long OCD hoarding problem in the extreme. What happened to the house that I cleaned that summer? He had filled again with more junk, that spilled into homemade outbuildings and the yard. Finally, he made the newspapers a few years ago, when the county seized his assets, fined him heavily, and bulldozed his several homes.

The symptoms of hoarding are many, here are some examples:

• Unwilling and unable to get rid of anything
• Constantly accumulating more unneeded or useless things
• Piles of newspapers, magazines, junk mail, and books
• Excessive saving of used food containers
• Saving things that most people would discard in the trash
• Extremely cluttered and trashy cluttered rooms
• Difficulty with normal daily activities
• Problems with increasing procrastination
• Difficulty in decisions
• A personality of perfectionism
• A different viewpoint on organizing than the rest of the world
• Valuing possession more than loved ones
• Selfishness in allowing others to use objects
• Insisting on collecting items that they "might" use someday
• Insisting on keeping items that they "might" use later
• Not wanting to waste anything, they will save everything
• Hoarding animals, particularly inside the house where others can't see how many they have

Just about anyone could be at risk for having this problem. Some will remain only harmless disorganized pack rats (like my grandmother), while others will go to the extreme (like my former husband). The disorder is not fully understood by the medical community, in terms of knowing what causes it.

What they do know is:

• Hoarding usually starts at an early age, just before puberty.
• You are more likely to become a hoarder if others in your family live that way.
• Many people don't develop this OCD until a very stressful event occurs in their lives, such as the death of a loved one, loss of everything in a natural disaster, eviction, etc.
• They are perfectionists.
• They have attachments to objects that are excessive compared to the rest of us.
• Hoarding will get worse the older the person gets, if they do not get help.

Remember, these kind of disorders often are part of a bigger mental health picture -- hoarders often have other disorders, such as:

• Depression
• Social phobias
• Anxiety
• ADD

When someone you love is a hoarder, you can:

• Encourage professional treatment
• Get help for yourself from a professional, in how to cope with this issue
• In extreme cases, when health and safety becomes a serious issue --you may need to contact other authorities, such as the: (1) Fire Department; (2) Public Health; (3) Animal Welfare; (4) Police
• Learn how to support your hoarder with out enabling them
• Gently raise their awareness that there is a problem
• Don't do any cleaning for them too quickly
• Don't throw things out against their will

The consequences of hoarding can be serious. They can include:

• Living in unsanitary conditions
• Unsanitary conditions that pose a risk to health
• Not being able to bathe
• Not being able to cook
• Not wearing clean clothes
• Problems at work
• Extreme loneliness
• Feelings of hopelessness
• Social isolation from family and peers
• Fire hazard
• Illness

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to get hoarders to want to get help and when they do, the help may prove to be ineffective over the long term. The main key, is that they have to be highly motivated internally to change. Most with this OCD have little internal motivation. The best that can be hoped for in most cases, is to alleviate the problem and help them control the clutter.

There are two medical approaches:

• Psychotherapy in the form of cognitive behavior therapy
• Medications that reduce hoarding urges and anti-depression medications

Some of us, might worry as we look around and ask ourselves -- "Am I on the slippery slope of becoming a hoarder?" Apparently, this is increasingly becoming a problem in the United States. The biggest component of becoming a hoarder, has to do with anxiety and feelings of loss of control.

So what do you do, if you want to live a less cluttered life?

• Get rid of things you've kept that remind you of certain events, even know you'll never use or need them again.
• Donate items to charitable organization, like Goodwill and the Salvation Army
• Stop spending therapy (it doesn't work for the long term)
• Make a hard rule with yourself: If I buy something new, I get rid of something I don't need or will never use.
• Don't keep items that you are going to use "someday" or fix "someday"
• Get organized or get help getting organized
• Make a priority list

For many years now, we've had a dear friend with this hoarding obsessive compulsive disorder. We will continue to support that person whenever they are receptive to our help. And we will continue to love them, "just as they are." Having this disorder, doesn't make them a bad person, or less of a person.