Hello, many many months ago I posted on here about how to deal with my father and his hoarding. He had a stroke back then and we had to clean up his house so he could come home and live, using a wheel chair.

We were surprised that he did not FREAK out on us for throwing so much stuff away, though to be honest, we did lie and say most of it was in the garage. (which he couldn't verify at the time due to his limit mobility)

We would get the odd questions: "where is my big tub og nut shells?" "Dad, we had to throw them out. WHY were you keeping old nut shells?" "To burn in the fireplace." Duh. lol

Bless his soul, he passed away with a second stroke months later.

So on to actually cleaning out a hoarders home/garages AND a few storage units. I can tell you that even the auctioneer we are dealing with is amazed at the amount of stuff. It is taking months to clean out the house and a few storage units and we are not done PLUS we have one very large storage unit we have barely touched. Oddly, he prepaid it till May of this year. I swear soemtimes he knew he was going to pass.

Throwing stuff away from the house alone has been countless runs to the city dump as well as THREE dumpster we had to pay a pretty penny to have delivered. Furniture that no one wants to find places for, books that no one will take.... the list goes on and on.

I read a previous post here about a wife who is going to leave her husband. This hoarding scenerio has me so freaked out that if a guy I date shows any signs of hoarding, I am out of there! I had to tell a friend who is a huge hoarder that I can not come to her house anymore to visit. I will only enter IF she wants help getting rid of her crap.

I promise my daughter that if I die today, she could pack up my belongings in a day and I mean it. My basement is only used for function, not storage of stuff I might need one day.

I get that hoarding is a serious mental issue but I see it as complete selfishness. Guess what? You don't live forever! Someone you LOVE is going to have to spend countless days of their lives cleaning up your mess. Instead of spending time with my dad after his stroke, we had to go spend days and days preparing his house. And after all that, he still was able to continue his hoarding till the day he passed. I am not even sure that I have mourned for his loss because the second he passed began the clean up, dealing with legal stuff because all that was a huge mess. It is hard to keep up with legal stuff when you can't find your papers or be organized. YEARS of unfilled taxes..... yet he kept every single grocery store receipt.

Looks like this turned into a bit of a rant. I am sorry. Maybe someone will read a daughter's story and be helped.