The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter (16 page)

The auctioneer, on the other hand, may take a wide range of stuff—both valuable and not—and make arrangements to dispose of it in the most profitable way possible. The auctioneer will, more often than not, take a large batch—except real trash—and sell it off in job lots or individual pieces. It is worthwhile for auctioneers to get the most they can for everything since they are usually taking a percentage as their compensation.

A
imee lived in a two-bedroom condo in New England. She had worked as a high-end fashion model when she was younger, but by age forty-eight it was impossible to see her fine bone structure or once-toned figure. Aimee looked like a stereotypical hoarder: overweight, with pasty skin and curly black hair streaked with gray. She spent her days in bed, drinking cans of nutrition shakes, giving herself insulin shots, and sliding to the edge of the mattress to go to the bathroom.

Until she started confining herself to the bed, Aimee had been a clothes hoarder whose obsession had gotten out of hand about eight years earlier. Aimee had kept the clothing from some of her modeling jobs, samples that the studios had given her as well as clothes that she had bought. She had about four hundred pairs of shoes and more than a thousand purses. Her collection was stacked in piles around narrow walkways through the house. On top of that was another foot of trash, from the point about two years earlier when Aimee gave up the hope of de-cluttering and just started tossing everything onto her piles.

The stink from the urine and feces had gotten so strong that neighbors had called the city to complain. Building inspectors visited and condemned the house, but they told Aimee she could keep it if she cleaned up and it passed reinspection within ninety days. The city hired us to work with Aimee.

No matter what the stage of hoarding, what the hoarder hoards, or what other mental disorders might be involved, hoarder cleanups all start with the plan. Cleanup day is when the rubber finally meets the road. The team meets outside the house to assign jobs, grab trash bags, and dig in. Each stage of hoarder has different issues, and any plan should be flexible enough to take that into account.

From my point of view, the actual cleaning may be the easiest part of this process. For a team that has done its research and put together a good group with a workable plan, cleaning will go surprisingly smoothly. It's the mental and emotional preparation with the hoarder that's tough, along with the hand-holding and guidance during and after the process. The cleaning itself is just a matter of sorting items into piles to keep, donate, sell, recycle, and trash.

Their hoarding was so early-stage that Brad and Ellen decided to try cleaning it themselves, without a professional organizer or a cleanup service. They called me for a consultation, and after walking through the house I wrote up a plan for them that focused on their main problems: Brad's computer stash; Ellen's teaching supplies; food; and the children's clothes and toys. Brad and Ellen set aside a weekend, sent their three young boys to Grandma's, and bought a few boxes of heavy-duty trash bags.

Brad and Ellen's garage before the cleanup. Simple Stage 1 that just needed some rules for organization.

They finished the house in two days, following the plan guidelines. Brad started with his computers. He had saved them to fix up and donate, but he realized that he didn't have the time. Instead, he found a computer recycling company to collect them. Ellen went to work on her teaching supplies. Once she started sorting through the material, she realized that a lot of it was already out of date. Also, advances in technology meant that kids were working from computers, not construction paper. She filed away her teaching plans and some supplies, but she tossed her outdated workbooks. Getting rid of the old computers and Ellen's teaching materials cleared a lot of shelf space for toys and books in the kids' basement playroom. Part of this family's goal was to begin showing the kids, all under age six, a new skill: how to stay clutter-free. And Brad and Ellen's efforts were a major step toward that goal.

Ellen went through the boys' clothes and gave away anything worn, stained, or out of style. She boxed up the nice clothes that were too small and took them to a consignment shop. Brad loaded his extensive music collection onto his computer and then donated his huge stack of CDs. With the rooms emptying out, the couple started working on the odds and ends cluttering up the dresser tops, chairs, and corners. In the kitchen, Ellen and Brad were surprised by how much out-of-date food they had in the refrigerator and freezer, and they threw it all away. Cans and boxes older than six months but still good were donated to a food pantry.

Ellen continued to sort out clothing, books, toys, and knickknacks to bag and take to a donation site. She was training herself to not stack piles, but to place the donation items in a box by the front door that was small enough for her to lift when it was full. Follow-through is a difficult task for any stage of hoarder, so Ellen worked on taking that box to her car as soon as it was full so she could then go directly to her preferred donation site at the end of the day.

It took Brad and Ellen a day and a half to get the rooms completely de-cluttered. Then they were able to give the house a deep cleaning. They were shocked by the amount of dust and cobwebs that they had all been living with and breathing. Seeing how much underlying dirt had accumulated made them resolve all the more to stay de-cluttered.

Their cleanup plan also included follow-up rules to which Brad and Ellen could refer when they were cleaning, or making decisions about bringing in new things. For a Stage 1 hoarder the focus is less on the actual cleaning, which goes relatively quickly. The important thing is to learn and apply new skills. Early-stage hoarders have the same attachment to possessions that more advanced hoarders do. But because Brad and Ellen had fewer items, and hadn't been living with the behavior as long, it was easier for them to de-clutter, break bad habits, and learn better ones.

Once a plan is in place, everyone has to agree to the start date. Jackson, the Blondie hoarder, tried to cancel his cleanup twice. The first time he said he was sick. The second time he admitted that it was nerves. We convinced him to let us come just to see the house for an assessment, and told him that he could change his mind about the cleanup at any time.

As the new start date approached, the team behind Jackson began to assemble the supplies and services that would be needed—and had other supporters on call, such as repair and renovation people, just in case. Most important, Jackson's partner, Mike, was preparing for Jackson's increasing level of anxiety by being patient and reassuring.

Because of the sheer volume of clutter in Jackson's house, and because he had been hoarding longer, he needed more workers and supplies than Brad and Ellen did. With his cleanup crew of three hired workers, Jackson had extra muscle for hauling away his bags of clothing and memorabilia. He also got one-on-one time with a professional cleaner to help direct him. Jackson was willing and able to learn new habits for decision-making and sorting, but he needed reminders and redirection during the cleaning. Basically, he needed a little coaching.

Jackson's house wasn't dirty, just cluttered. We started in the living room—the biggest room, and the easiest since it was filled with lots of empty cardboard boxes. In any cleanup, the house gets messier before it gets tidy, and the growing mess can be alarming to the hoarder. Finishing the first day with a large, clean room is very rewarding and motivates everyone to keep going.

Recycling the empty boxes opened up a large part of Jackson's living room and made space for staging items that needed to be sorted through. Then we moved on to making some easy decisions on donating items.

First, we worked on sorting everything in the house into piles of like items—clothing, collectibles, toiletries, bedding, kitchen equipment, and so forth. Jackson's plan was to then sort through each of those piles to make “trash,” “keep,” “donate,” “sell,” and “maybe” piles. Although the “maybe” pile grew, we knew he wouldn't keep all of those items. Jackson was beginning to understand what was important and what wasn't, and when he went back to the “maybe” pile, we were sure he would realize that some of these things weren't worth keeping.

The first morning, we discovered a box of Cher's doorknobs. Yes, Cher's doorknobs. Jackson had bought them online, when Cher was renovating her house. They were strange and beautiful—a dragon's paw, a crystal ball, and other assorted shapes and styles. Jackson agonized over whether or not to keep that box, and then started to panic about his entire house, realizing that he had seven rooms filled with similar items he had to make decisions about.

The doorknobs went into his “maybe” pile, along with several other things, and finally Jackson began to see that the cleaning process was manageable and that he was able to overcome his fears. When Mike showed up with lunch on the first day, Jackson realized that he had the support he needed, and that Mike wasn't going away. Jackson's anxiety went down to almost nothing, and he rolled on through the house.

During the sorting, we made a rule for Jackson that anything he decided to move out of the house had to leave
that day
. If he wanted to give a leather coat to a neighbor who had admired it, that was fine, but he had to contact the neighbor and get it to him right away. Otherwise, it went to the donation site at the end of the day. The “donate” and “trash” piles got hauled away daily so that Jackson wouldn't be tempted to pull items back out later that night. Mike listed the “sell” items on eBay within a day or two. Jackson saved the “maybe” items to sort at the end of the cleaning.

To keep on track, Jackson reminded himself repeatedly of the goal to sell his house and move in with Mike. Whenever he debated about an item, he asked himself if it fit his goal. The impressive Cher doorknobs were ultimately kept because Mike and Jackson agreed that they could go in their new place—and besides, they were real conversation pieces. But most of Jackson's clothing and other collectibles did not fit his goal—he had already moved enough clothes to Mike's house, and they only had room for so much Blondie.

Three days into the cleanup, Jackson had repeated his new sorting process so many times that it had become his new habit. Without any prompting he was making quick, confident, and accurate decisions about items—whether to keep, sell, donate, or throw away. Because he was so highly motivated, Jackson was able to work independently. We decided that he could finish the last two rooms by himself, and so my crew and I packed up and left Jackson and Mike with the confidence that this was a success story.

Rick, the retired professor/information hoarder in the suburbs of Washington, DC, whose house was too far gone for him to even consider cleaning it alone, had an additional complication for the cleanup on top of the volume of paper. Physically, there were high levels of mold in the house, and mentally there were signs of dementia. The damage to his house was so extensive that Rick needed a large team that included building inspectors and construction workers, specialists to deal with the mold, a document disposal company with an industrial shredder, and a cleanup crew equipped with respirators and protective clothing. Rick's deeply ingrained hoarder habits and dementia indicated a slower and potentially more expensive cleaning.