Hi Nic 🙂
Welcome!
Please read around this message board and join us here.
Tonight is our online support group starting at 5:00pm PST, that is California time and I don't know what time that is for you.
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Hi Nic.
You are welcome to post in the daily chat thread.
Australia or US, doesn't matter, people and things-we have the same kinds of difficulties.

Hi

stumbled on this site. I know I hoard have done for years. Probably not as bad as the tv show but I always have a designated room for "stuff".

If someone offers me clothes I take them, if they offer me something useful I take it. Maybe because we grew up poor and Im afraid of throwing away something that I'll have to pay for again later.

I had toys in the shed that I was going to sell sitting there for the last 6 years! I finally took them to a donation place. Even then I was apprehensive about parting with the items.

I also hang on to MOUNTAINS of paperwork. Perhaps I'll need it one day. And of course Im not organised when storing the paper work, so I can't get rid of it. Although one small step was to just collectively put a bunch of years "stuff" together and bundle it "up to year 2007". I know after next year I can safely throw away THAT bundle as far as tax is concerned....

I hate being a hoarder, I try hard to throw things away - you should see how many electronic cables I have that belong to some sort of appliance although I don't know what!

The other week I threw away a calculator that had no battery. I've had it for 30 years with no battery, constantly putting it aside, with the intent of getting a battery. I knew it cost a lot of money back in the day - being a scientific calculator and all - one that I'd never use again!

Ugggh! Hate this part of me.

I'm in Australia so don't know what kind of support is here but would love if someone could help me.....

Thanks for letting me vent.

WAY TO GO! ZuZu. 😀
That's a fantastic start!

Thank you so much for your suggestions! After I posted, I started clearing up the myriad of empty boxes that are all
over the place! So, I did make a dent in the mountain! It may
be a long climb to the top, but I can do something each day
instead of just throwing my hands in the air.
Yes, the mask is a good idea for both my daughter and myself
as I tend to develop mild wheezing when near dust! She will
gladly help me with heavier items.
I have am glad to report I can acknowledge movement and
going forward.
Thanks for your quick response~ I truly appreciate that!
I hope my small story can inspire someone to start on what
seems like a hopeless task. it is not! it is do-able!

Happy Thanksgiving to All! 😃
Huggs,
Zuzu

Hi ZuZu 🙂

No matter what the reasons are why you hoard there is a way to dig out and get clean and organized.
Even people who are limited physically can do this.
It takes time to declutter all on our own.
There is no one perfect method that fits everybody's lives.
We would love to have you join us in the "Daily Chat" and in the "online support groups".
For the bigger heavier items that need to be moved, your daughter could safely do this for you if she promised to wear a face mask while in the dust.

Hope you join us and let us help you get uncluttered. 😀

Help! I have no idea why I hoard. I do know that since I have
no family in this state, and many are deceased..I feel close to
them when I read cards, letters, etc! This brings me much
comfort.

I also save things that I rationalize will be useful one day? So
I amasses stacks of things. I further feel overwhelmed by the
piles of stuff that I will use "one day." It drives me crazy to see
all of it. Then I mentally beat myself up for being so very
messy!
Clothes that are way too big take up space, shoes I never wear, and purses I rarely use add to the list!

I am also somewhat disabled re: balance, and strength.So I
cannot haul things out of the house. And now the dust is
affecting my breathing so I know I cannot go on in such a state. My daughter offers to help and I refuse it as she is an
asthmatic and I do not want her besieged by dust.

I simply do not know where to start. I am familiar with 12 step
approaches to recovery. I think if I applied these to my case--
It would work. I seem to have a mindset that there is a perfect
way to do this. I feel inferior to those who are neat and have
dustless homes. I allow no visitors in my house, ever!
I know I am not alone..but that idea will not clean my house nor rid it of useless stuff. I rarely open my shades anymore!
Any suggestions would be appreciated,
Happy Holidays! Love, ZuZu

i HOARD because I have been Traumatized continuously for a long period of time. I am very pro-active, have gotten away from toxic people in my family but the abusers seems to follow me. Most are from agencies that are supposed to help me. Then the secretaries become abusive and have attitude problems and make me late for appts because they never tell the provider that I am waiting in waiting room or are sharp or swear at me and if I put a complaint in or grievance in because of poor treatment from Staff, I get terminated. I treat these people with respect but it seems that they get sharp and say things like, "Just sit down!" or "NO I won't put this letter in their mailbox!" or swear or "No I won't help you!" on a Job Site Agency. The Rudeness out there can be pretty bad and it has affected me as far as the trauma goes. There is a lot of personal family trauma with rejection and ostrasized and estranged by family and kids for things that I had no control over like sickness, gossip that is not true and family refuses to see the paperwork of what really happened. Trauma, trauma, trauma....and no one really deals with it at the counseling agencies I have been to. They say yes, but then terminate me when they realize how much I have and then the insurance companies get on my case because I put a complaint in for the terminations that were not warranted. Now my insurance company will not let me follow up with my complaints regarding the unwarranted provider terminations and complaints put in writing with proof of why they were not warranted and cannot get anyone on phone and I am not allowed to go in person to office. It never ends.

All this Trauma, get me collecting because I have no support system and no Family----so I collect items to "Create a sense of Homey and Family" and I collect serenity things like candle holders, practical useful things but I have too much pretty useful things and they get disorganized.

Paper things are the worse. Went to a lot of school, so I have a lot of Notes I won't get rid of and a lot of Court Papers I won't get rid of so I can prove to my Son what happened if he ever wants to know the truth and not Judge me based on Here say. I just want to love him and have a relationship with him but he wants no communication with me and cannot figure out what to do, so I collect to ease the pain. He is swayed by my vindictive sister and they use the Police to keep me and my son apart. This is awful! I love my son and lost him due to sickness when he was young but still saw him every chance got but he was poisoned against me to put it bluntly. Now as an adult, my sister is poisoning him against me. I am very giving and help everybody and helping myself and I am open to work on myself but the trauma is overwhelming and the clutter seems to be my security blanket in a sense.

I started a Hoarders Support Group in Buffalo and using a Book called Buried in Treasures. It is at the Mental Health Assocation in Buffalo NY, the 1st Tues of Month from 1-3 pm and it began in August 6, 2013 and is at 999 Delaware Ave.

There is no other help that I am aware of after much searching in Buffalo NY, so I started one here. Perfect location and is quiet and confidential. Encourage others to come. All Welcome.

Thank you Roxie 🙂

Tally Ho!

Hi, Mare, and welcome. Please feel free to post as you like, and to join in on the chats when you can. I don't do chats, but I blab a lot on these threads. You've found a good place for support and information!

Hello... I am new to the forum and busy reading this topic.

I am a newly self-acknowledged hoarder so I found this site in order to be in touch with others who share this problem.

I would love to chat in the live area,so look forward to others coming in there (no one at the moment is in).

I will post again after I catch up on the reading!

Cheers...
Mare

Hi, Kazzy. I can hear your frustration. You have a great deal on your plate and that would frustrate anyone. But you can only change yourself and how you deal with things.

Reading on these boards, perhaps attending some online support group chats, posting and sharing may all help you. One hopes so, at least.

Some of our regular posters are living with or married to hoarders, not themselves hoarders. So you can gain some insight through them. There is also reading you can do in books on the subjects. I'd recommend Matt Paxton's book "The Secret Lives of Hoarders," because it talks about how to approach and deal with a hoarder without making things worse.

If you can get support for yourself in tending to your mother and son, I encourage you to do so. You need some "me time" and some breaks, too.

Hi Kazzy 🙂
Welcome to the message board.

There will be an online support group meeting today at 5:00pm PST.
Just click on the link in the red box to the right to join us.

Today is the first day I have read this, why do you hoard, it is terrific, thanks for being so honest. Not sure why we get to the point where we are finally ready to let go of stuff, but I am mostly there, still some problems with letting go of clothes and crafts, but can see more and more floor!!!
I was very poor and compared my clothes to the others new clothes. I only had 5 outfits, so if I wrecked anything, too bad, no fun play clothes, just junk from church. So clothes was my big thing for many years. Then about 20 years I bought this trailer with a big garage and extra little tacky rooms for storage, so there was no limit on my shopping. I became addicted to the high of shopping at thrift stores and garage sales, rarely missed a weekend of gsales, now haven't been going, am amazed it took up every weekend. I would often go to thrift stores on my lunch and after work. When not working that was my go to entertainment, shopping.
Many failed relationships and work situations, made me more and more fearful of relationships and failing again, so filled up the garage then the living space, goat trails only. No one has been allowed in at all, I have repaired everything myself, too shameful for repair person to see. I finally got high speed internet so I could get help, after trying therapy and failing. For some reason this site has been all that I needed and I am grateful every day that I have this resource and all of your wisdom and kindness. Life is getting better.

MY name, not frustrated with a house full of hoarders. I'll figure this out yet.

I have one with dementia, my mom. I have my son who is Autistic. Then my husband has a room and the back yard full of stuff. He sees all this as treasure.
My son I am working with, he is not as bad as the rest. But my husband I showed him the show Hoarding Buried Alive and he walked out of the room ten minutes into the show. I am sick of arguments over it. This mom is frustrated.

As much as I love psychology, the why's of things and suggestions about change I've learned one main thing.

Fascinating reading, Isabella, thank you. I copied and pasted here a portion. This is from David Tolin, Director of Anxiety Disorders at the Institute of Living, a mental health center in Connecticut.

"They avoid it because it's too painful," Tolin said. "And the clutter continues to build."

Must Read! New News on Hoarders' Brain Patterns, found on NBC:

http://tinyurl.com/kco75ko

This brain pattern is another key piece to the puzzle, I think! But it doesn't necessarily mean our brains cause our hoarding, since everything affects everything else. (For example, if I think depressing thoughts I can grow depressed, depression which worsens if not interrupted - making less and less blood flow up to the neocortex [high level decision making and thinking areas].) I think everyone in the clutches of hoarding - and in the field of studying hoarding - has a hard time knowing correlation from causation. While it's true my thinking is disorganized and I have been depressed and my house is a horrible mess, which came first? How would I know? Certainly each makes the other worse: it's hard to think clearly surrounded by chaos; and in insolvable circumstances anyone gets increasingly depressed. Often there's a clear event triggering despair and hopeless depression, but was I great at making swift decisions about sentimental objects before? Let's see hoarding clearly by acknowledging the interaction of a complex set of components, rather than just naming "a" cause.

Thanks, Janie, for telling us your story.

Keep up with your excellent work!

Roxie, Thanks. I just found this site and thought I would get involved. First I had an episode of trying to find a baby gate in my basement that woke me up to the fact I had a problem that would only get worse. For days I had a difficult time coming to grips with my life. Not knowing where to start, I began in the kitchen slowly de-cluttering a little bit each day.

At that time it didn't even dawn on me that my parents were my biggest enablers. I don't know what caused me to come to this realization about them, but it was like a light bulb went off. I knew I couldn't dig myself out unless they stopped bringing things over. I know they were just trying to help out, and I appreciated that. But it was getting to the point where they would bring something over that I would never use and I would say something like "I really can't use that." My mom's response would be "well, maybe you could hold on to it in case someone you know can use it." And on top of the junk pile it would go. Anyway, the first time they were over after my light-bulb moment was when I took them to the basement. After that I started my recovery in earnest.

Janie, what a good thing to read your story and see your determination to change things now. Congratulations!

For me, reading here and posting every day makes all the difference in moving forward.

I think your showing your parents your basement and telling them how it is was so smart and was a good move in setting boundaries. Allowing them to choose to let things go even if by default is the kindest thing.

So often I have read in my hoarding and squalor readings that folks hoard "for the life I'd like to live" instead of the life they really live. And so many of the children of the people who lived through the 1930s tend to be "frugal" in saving everything "in case" they need it.

I think the rule of thumb in clearing out such things is have you used it in the past year and or are you going to use it in the next week? If not, out it goes, whether to a dumpster, a charity or somewhere else. Just not where it is now hoarded nor on the property. Oh, and no renting storage sheds. LOL

I didn't grow up poor, but money was tight. I learned to be frugal and never throw away something useful. When I moved out on my own my mother helped me out by giving me things that she didn't want anymore. There were towels, dishes, glasses, bake ware, lamps, etc. This actually was great for me. When I became financially independent I asked her to stop bringing things over and she did. At this point all was good.

Then I got married (wedding gifts), bought a house (housewarming gifts) and had my first child (baby gifts) within an 18 month period. It was then that my upbringing of not throwing out anything useful kicked in gear. I had an abundance of storage space in the new house and just kept boxing things up that I didn't use. These items were too good to get rid of and I might need them someday. The guilt of not getting rid of gifts was there too.

Now that we had a house, mortgage and baby to provide for, money was becoming an issue. My parent's way of helping out was to start bringing stuff over again. A lounge chair for the basement, an extra coffee table, a patio set, towels, blender, and such. It was rare that my parents visited without bringing something for us. What I didn't realize until then is that my mom was a secret hoarder. She didn't get rid of anything since I asked her to stop bringing stuff over to my apartment when I was still single. Her reasoning was that I may need it someday and she wanted to be the one to provide it for me. All of their unwanted stuff was being stored in their attic, garage and a spare bedroom. I personally think she just didn't want the responsibility of getting rid of things, so she put that on me. Of course I did get guilt along with the stuff. "How come I don't see the (whatever) I gave you?" "Didn't you like it?" "You didn't give it to someone else, did you?" You get the picture.

Fast forward 25 years. Every inch of storage space was filled and then the entire finished basement became junk storage. There was no where to put anything else so I somewhat stopped cleaning. I figured what good would it do if I didn't have a place to put the unwanted items from each room. All the bedrooms became over-loaded with stuff. The situation went from bad to worse. As things broke I didn't get them fixed because I was too embarrassed to let repair workers in the house. At this point I guess I was a functioning hoarder, if there is such a thing. The public areas of my house are in somewhat decent shape. There is some clutter and repairs that need to be done, but nothing too bad that prevents my parents and a few select close friends from coming over. But no one was allowed in the upstairs bedrooms or bathrooms, or in the basement. The garage was very cluttered but I don't really care because most people I know have the same thing.

I don't know what happened, but one day I finally had enough. I brought my parents down to the basement and told them, "Most of this stuff was yours at one time or was given to us as a gift. I need to re-claim my basement. If there is anything you want back, take it. If not, I'm letting you know now that most of it will be donated or thrown out." And that is how I started on the road to recovery. One small bag of trash... one donation box... one load of laundry. I still have a long, long way to go but I'm trying my best to stay motivated.

I forgot to mention: I still have a couple big piles of paperwork to go through and I've done two things to help with that. I bought three big folders that close with a rubber band type thing. I've marked 2011, 2012 and 2013 and will sort by date into those. These are tax papers, receipts, etc.

For all other papers, I bought a cheap paper shredder and I open the mail near it. It is very satisfying for me to put something into the shredder. And I feel safer about putting things into the garbage after they are shredded, if they have personal information on them. I did learn the hard way not to put envelopes with cellophane into the shredder as it jammed it for awhile. Credit cards and such I cut by hand with scissors. Who knows why I had so many expired cards laying around. Purse laziness I guess.

I hope you newer folks will come back and continue to post. It helps in recovery, for sure!

Busymom, the bringing more things into the house (or garage or wherever) is where to put your own foot down. As Tillie said, if you do not NEED it, then it isn't a bargain in any way because it will just cause more clutter and more despair, and you cannot AFFORD that. I know about debt because on a binge on the internet and eBay years ago, I pushed my limits. I watch a lot of the tv show Suse Orman, and that actually started me to pay attention to finances. It took several years but I paid off all credit card debt, finally.

I agree that if you plan to sell, you must make CONCRETE plans and pin a deadline on it. Otherwise it is just wishful thinking. You could put the 100 Skeins on eBay in "lots" of 25 and sell them, but I'll bet you soon learn that it isn't worth the effort if you even make back the money you spent. You can instead get a tax write off by donating things to a charity. As for paying off debt, a lot of that has to do with focusing on ways to do it most efficiently, even if that means taking a part-time job dedicated to debt repayment. For me, it took writing down my debt, the percentage of interest for each account, then paying off one at a time and after it was paid off, rolling that money onto the next credit card to pay that off, etc. Of course, I could no longer use credit cards or it would just accumulate. I do maintain credit cards for emergencies or major expenditures as needed. I paid for all my new appliances by credit card, but I have the cash to pay it off within four months, which I will do. It is just too expensive nowadays to keep credit card debt.

As for new purchases, I did not buy a new (really used) car until my last one died under me, literally. I almost never buy new clothes, but purchase second hand ones that are new to me. The rare retail purchase is only for a very special occasion and that may come up once every few years. And I plan for it by saving money.

Hope this helps.

Hi Busymomof3 🙂

It is not easy to break this circle but you CAN do it.
First & most important thing is to stop bringing in any more stuff.
No matter how great a deal it is if you do not need it right now today, like food, do NOT bring it home.
No window shopping, no yard sales, no "free" stuff, no internet browsing shopping sites.
Only shop when you have a need for an item or items, like food, and use a list. Buy only what is on this list, nothing more.
The shopping addiction gives you a "high" when you score a fantastic deal. But that high so very quickly wears off, leaving you upset & depressed in all the clutter.
Replace this addiction with other more positive activities.
Find other things to do that give you some pleasure.

Since you plan to sell items, set a firm date for when this will be accomplished.
Online? Yardsale?
Don't wait until you have everything all sorted out and organized before you act on this plan to sell.
The more you get out of your home right now the easier it will be to sort out what else you may be able to let go of.

Please keep posting and reading here. Ask all the questions you have and feel free to just talk to other people who really understand what you are going through. 🙂

Why do I hoard? I don't know. Maybe its because I like free & cheap. I don't NEED 100 skeins if yarn, bug I've only spent about $50 or less on all of them. I don't NEED to save old clothes to fix or repurpose. I don't NEED to save evry pen, pencil, or piece of paper. I just don't know HOW to throw "good" stuff away. I don't have room to store it. My garage is jam packed. My closets are full. My house makes my family sick...emotionally & physically...and I still can't stop accumulating. I've cut down on how much I bring in and have started sorting and getting stuff ready for a sale. I need money to pay off credit cards (a side effect of accumulating stuff is debt) so I want to sell everything not donate it. It's a never ending circle and I don't know how to stop it.

Why do I hoard? I don't know. Maybe its because I like free & cheap. I don't NEED 100 skeins if yarn, bug I've only spent about $50 or less on all of them. I don't NEED to save old clothes to fix or repurpose. I don't NEED to save evry pen, pencil, or piece of paper. I just don't know HOW to throw "good" stuff away. I don't have room to store it. My garage is jam packed. My closets are full. My house makes my family sick...emotionally & physically...and I still can't stop accumulating. I've cut down on how much I bring in and have started sorting and getting stuff ready for a sale. I need money to pay off credit cards (a side effect of accumulating stuff is debt) so I want to sell everything not donate it. It's a never ending circle and I don't know how to stop it.

Dianne, I really liked your post and it helped demonstrate yet another way to work around our problems successfully.

Hi Gabbie, Welcome!

Keep posting, it's a great place. 🙂