Hoarding - UPDATED

[TheDisneyCouple]

Not looking for judgement or advice. I just need a little rant.

Earlier this year, because of Covid, me and my husband cancelled moving to our new home near my parents, because my dad was made redundant and they couldn’t afford the bills on their own, due to having other properties empty that would normally have tenants in. They were trying to cover the bills on too many homes. We cancelled our new furniture and took our few possessions, including a small side table, a lamp and my plants with us.

My parents live in a spectacular Victorian house. Think wide spaces, tall ceilings and large windows. It has four large bedrooms with large inbuilt wardrobes, drawers and shelves. Storage paradise. It has three long, spacious hallways. A big big living room with a whole wall lined with cabinets and lots of fussy bits of furniture with shelves and drawers. The kitchen is all built-in country-kitchen style with floor to (almost) ceiling cupboards and drawers. Just in case, this room also has an original floor-to-ceiling very wide bookcase and a floor-to-ceiling in-built double cupboard with really deep drawers underneath. It has a large utility room. There is also an additional floor underneath the main floor, which my parents call the ‘cellar’, only it isn’t a cellar. It’s below street level but on a hill. So, on one side it has large windows and doors just like upstairs. It has the same big, beautiful built in cupboards and, with a gas fire and wallpaper, has clearly been lived in. The ‘cellar’ has two large rooms, easily as large as the rooms upstairs and one medium-sized room. There’s also two hallways, another huge Victorian built-in cupboard and an under stairs cupboard down here. The attic of the house is useable.

The point I’m trying to make, is that for two people, the house has more space for stuff than anyone else I know. It’s a hoarder’s paradise. And a hoarder’s paradise is what it has become.

The house is bursting. Every storage item is overflowing. Stuff grazes the ceiling on top of cupboards. In fact, the massive, deep drawers in my parents’ room don’t close. They look like stairs. My parents have simply stopped shutting them and piled their new clothes on top of the open drawers. Spare beds are invisible under bags, bin-liners and boxes. Underneath beds are so crammed that the beds look like they’re floating on garbage as stuff comes out at the sides. The edge of the floor space in every bedroom has been covered in ‘stuff’, in some cases coming far away from the wall so that whole areas of different rooms are inaccessible. Books, board games, suitcases, old beauty products, two massive boxes full of old charity shop china that my mum bought for a tea party ten years ago, old toys, children’s books, carrier bags with stuff in, hat boxes, chests, shoes, chairs, wrapping paper, Christmas bows, more shoe boxes, every Christmas tree my parents and my grandparents ever owned, spare duvets for summer and winter for every room, a whole corner stacked with unused DVDs, a union jack flag, a bag with a blanket in it, furniture, lamps, decorations, cake-boards, forgotten workout gear, videos, long-redundant baby items, stuff that they bought in bulk because it was reduced, SO MUCH homemade jam, packs of discounted cards, Easter gifts, Christening gifts, Christmas gifts, just-in-case gifts etc etc etc etc etc.

Two bedrooms are basically unusable.
The room me and my husband are in was tricky to move in to. The higher shelves are taken with stuff. The huge, built-in Victorian wardrobe is no good to us because it’s bursting and we’ve had to hang our own stuff on a separate rail.

The cellar-not-a-cellar is so crammed with stuff that there is basically a narrow, death-trap corridor that runs across the floor for people to get to either door. This is crammed full of DIY stuff that my Dad has been too poorly to use for many years, garden furniture that hasn’t moved for twenty years, old gym equipment, toys, jam jars etc etc etc etc. It’s like a non-magical Room of Requirement down there.
The attic filled up years ago. It’s where my parents look when they’re desperate, before concluding that there’s still no room for any more. The attic is mainly full of old toys that, for some reason, my mum thought might get ‘passed down’ one day.

This morning me and my mum had a disagreement that got a bit heated. After several months of being here, in this huge house, with nowhere to put any of our few belongings, I suggested that my parents might consider letting go of a few things to make the space more usable. My mum was outraged. Apparently she has no interest in ‘minimalism’ and living in an ‘empty’ house, isn’t throwing out ‘all’ of her things and, apparently, her house wouldn’t be so cluttered if it weren’t for the two very small piles that our belongings have made, because there literally isn’t a single reasonable space to put our own belongings in. I can’t even persuade her to get rid of silly things that are of absolutely no use to her.

The biggest cause of the current situation is that my parents keep things that they have no intention of using, or that belonged to other people. They just ‘hold’ things.
I might have made the situation worse by eventually using the word ‘hoarding’. I may have gained some headway with my mum, who ironically in all other respects is very house proud, by pointing out that it’s impossible to keep a house clean and tidy when you have so many items that tidying can only really create a sense of ‘organised chaos’ and it’s impossible to dust properly.

She threw out an old broken boiler. Then said she felt like she was being told off.

I’ve tried to explain that there is a difference between keeping old family photographs, favourite items and cherished memories, and holding on to Nanna’s old busted vacuum cleaner because ‘if it worked then I wouldn’t have to take the dyson upstairs’.

[mitch84]

Sounds tricky. How much are you paying them to be there? Just to understand better

[TheDisneyCouple]

Originally Posted by mitch84

Sounds tricky. How much are you paying them to be there? Just to understand better

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Hi Mitch, we pay £500 to cover the bills that they can't and we're paying the food and petrol bills.

[duchy]

Ultimately, their home their choice but incredibly frustrating.
No one wants to be told by their own children how to live their lives so head on Hoarder conversations might make them more stubborn not less.
Do you watch TV with them ?
Do they watch those hoarding programmes ... or avoid them like the plague ?
I grew up with a semi hoarder “one day this might come in useful” and yes I threw out nearly a skipfull of old jars filled with rusty nails, rusty saws and drills etc after my Dad died so I get it. (My Mum wasn’t a hoarder so it was “his” stuff like DIY stuff not everything thankfully )
Maybe rather than just suggesting throwing stuff out suggest a bit of sorting to put stuff of not immediate need into storage or even just better stored at home in new boxes might prompt the beginning of a bit of organisation , small steps and all that ?
Ultimately though their home their lives, if it drives you crackers move out from their home and let them get on with it
Alternatively could you pay more conditional on it being in non cluttered rooms ? Give them a bit of an incentive?

[Disney_time]

Rant away - we'll all listen. Sounds like a nightmare though, and very little you can do while they so adamant it's not a problem.

I had to help when my parents were downsizing at the age of 89 & 87 and we had to bury stuff in the skip during the hours of darkness so my Dad wouldn't see 65 years marriage worth of rusty screws and incomplete jigsaws being tossed. The worst things were the hurtful looks we got - made us feel absolute heels.

I think we all have too much stuff these days - I was only thinking that this morning when I had to put away a suitcase padlock where I keep the others and counted about 17. I have a pair of reading glasses in every room & bag to save me looking for them and even two sets of vaccuum cleaner, iron and ironing board - one upstairs and one down stairs. Is this laziness (probably yes), but also just because I can.

Anyway, I have no advice apart from little by little, and hope you can get your folks to think it was their idea to have a clear out eventually.

[Melanie R]

I would be agreeing that the bedroom you are using and a seperate area for you to use as a living space be cleared of all their stuff so you have room for yours. Given you are paying rent and helping them out that would seem only fair - if they didn’t agree to this I’m afraid I would be considering moving out
Good luck!

[TheDisneyCouple]

Originally Posted by duchy

Ultimately, their home their choice but incredibly frustrating.
No one wants to be told by their own children how to live their lives so head on Hoarder conversations might make them more stubborn not less.
Do you watch TV with them ?
Do they watch those hoarding programmes ... or avoid them like the plague ?
I grew up with a semi hoarder “one day this might come in useful” and yes I threw out nearly a skipfull of old jars filled with rusty nails, rusty saws and drills etc after my Dad died so I get it. (My Mum wasn’t a hoarder so it was “his” stuff like DIY stuff not everything thankfully )
Maybe rather than just suggesting throwing stuff out suggest a bit of sorting to put stuff of not immediate need into storage or even just better stored at home in new boxes might prompt the beginning of a bit of organisation , small steps and all that ?
Ultimately though their home their lives, if it drives you crackers move out from their home and let them get on with it
Alternatively could you pay more conditional on it being in non cluttered rooms ?

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Hi Duchy, Sadly moving out is not an option, as they require us to support them and we cannot pay our bills and theirs. My Dad was made redundant and we gave up our home to support them financially. After that, his health spiralled. So we have to live here for now. Sadly, there's nowhere to put what few belongings we have.

Funnily enough, my mum is not strictly-speaking untidy. Everything has a bag or a box and the house is full of storage solutions. They're just packed to bursting and there's no more room.

[klr15]

Oh gosh, sounds tricky. My Nan was a hoarder (she is still alive, but has dementia and lives in a care home now) and their house was an old Victorian terrace, two sitting rooms, plus kitchen and then three upstairs rooms. Every single room was full to the brim with stuff, I thought it was amazing (as a child would), but it was probably was a bit much. Every single room was similar to what you have described. I think with my Nan I think because she was an only child, she wanted a big family, so she had 7 kids, but once the kids started to leave home I think the house felt empty and she felt like needed to fill it with stuff, bless her.

She wouldn’t part with anything though, old butter tubs, urine sample pots ect. My grandad and their kids did clear outs a few times when she would agree and it was tricky getting rid of stuff. We found a single shoe once and she said was keeping it just in case, to which my auntie said, “just in case what? A woman with one leg happens to need a left shoe because that’s the leg she has?”

(Im not criticising my Nan in case anyone thinks that, I thought she was amazing then and I still do now) its just I have never really heard of anyone else in a similar situation (apart from on tv) so I thought I’d share my story. I do feel for you, my mum was a minimalist so I’ve never lived in clutter as I am also a minimalist, it must be tough for both you and your husband and your parents. I do agree though your room at least should be clear just for you two.

[TheDisneyCouple]

Originally Posted by klr15

Oh gosh, sounds tricky. My Nan was a hoarder (she is still alive, but has dementia and lives in a care home now) and their house was an old Victorian terrace, two sitting rooms, plus kitchen and then three upstairs rooms. Every single room was full to the brim with stuff, I thought it was amazing (as a child would), but it was probably was a bit much. Every single room was similar to what you have described. I think with my Nan I think because she was an only child, she wanted a big family, so she had 7 kids, but once the kids started to leave home I think the house felt empty and she felt like needed to fill it with stuff, bless her.

She wouldn’t part with anything though, old butter tubs, urine sample pots ect. My grandad and their kids did clear outs a few times when she would agree and it was tricky getting rid of stuff. We found a single shoe once and she said was keeping it just in case, to which my auntie said, “just in case what? A woman with one leg happens to need a left shoe because that’s the leg she has?”

(Im not criticising my Nan in case anyone thinks that, I thought she was amazing then and I still do now) it just I have never really heard of anyone else in a similar situation so I thought I’d share my story. I do feel for you, my mum was a minimalist so I’ve never lived in clutter as I am also a minimalist, it must be tough for the hoarder and for those living there too.

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Yep that sounds like my parents . Some of the stuff they keep I just don't understand. They're lovely people and they have some really lovely things. They just want to keep everyone else's stuff as well!

[Princesses 3]

Wow this is a tough one but it won’t go away without being tackled.
You have a few choices but without knowing the people involved it’s hard to advise.
I’d either start throwing stuff out which is broken and might go unnoticed (controversial I know!) or force the issue by saying I respect its their house and they need to live how they wish but You can’t live there. If they need your financial contribution they need to meet you half way - hope this helps