moving into the home of a hoarder - Page 2

[Crayfish]

I agree that she won't have the stuff taken care of in six months. But I think that that's the least of the issues - the main problem is that she won't have her stuff reduced to a small enough volume to fit in that basement area. And she won't pack it for storage in the basement. And she is very likely to protest bitterly against you packing it for storage in the basement.

She will do nothing of any significance. I hope that I'm wrong here, but I'm quite certain that she will do no more than pack a few boxes by the day that you're supposed to move in.

You can give her some time or some space, but you need to assume in your own mind, with each and every decision and negotiation, that she will do nothing. Giving her time and resources is a symbolic act with no real practical use. It's for your own peace of mind, to know that you gave her the opportunity to fulfill her responsibilities.

But you need to know that she will almost certainly fail to fulfill those responsibilities. She will intend to fulfill them. She will believe that if you'd just given her one more day she would have fulfilled them. She will blame you for her failure. But if she's a hoarder, she's essentially incapable of translating her intent into action, ever.

So, you can give her until a specific day to have her stuff moved out of the main areas of the house, but you need to assume that she will not do so, and arrange to have it done yourself. You can give her six months to get her stuff out of the basement, but you need to assume that she will not do so, and arrange to move it yourself when the six months are up. And so on.

That's why it's much better to have her move the stuff to a storage unit, because that's what's going to happen anyway, after six months. So rather than walking it all down into the basement, and walking it all back up again in six months, it's better to move it straight to storage units. And, again, _she_ will not move the stuff to the storage unit. You will have to do all of that, probably against her objections.

The stuff will remain in the storage units, largely undisturbed, until her death. For that reason, you should _not_ pay for the storage units.

Crayfish

[Shakti77]

She is truly overwhelmed.

Offer to hire (and pay for) a professional declutterer/cleaner/organizer person to help her to sort out of all her stuff - trash (which goes to the bin right away), pack her keep-stuff (to her apartment). move her sell-stuff to a storage for time being. It stays there until it is sold. Yes, mil pays for this because you never know how long its going to stya in storage.

Hiring a third person unrelated to you both will help her understand this better. If you or your mum does this, it will create unnecessary emotional tensions. I wouldn't want all that when moving into 'my' new house.

That mildew on dolls is stressing me out - the whole basement would have to be cleaned thoroughly. Glad you have your mum helping you.

[leigh09]

Originally Posted by Shakti77

That mildew on dolls is stressing me out - the whole basement would have to be cleaned thoroughly. Glad you have your mum helping you.

It's funny you mentioned this. I have a 2 yo dd who she wanted to pass the dolls onto. I said no. I told her it is because my dd already has quite a few dolls and, being only 2, is likely to get more for birthdays and Christmases. She is pretty set for dolls and my MIL understood and was ok with that.

The real reason was that I think all those dolls belong in the trash and don't want my dd playing with them. But really, that doesn't sound quite so tactful.

[SleeplessMommy]

what Sasha said.

[accountclosed3]

i'm with the others.

one option is to go through with her and pick out basics for her apartment and have those moved over, and then have movers pack everything else and move them into storage in her name. they will pack junk (like broken furniture and moldy dolls), but will throw away trash like candy wrappers or anything so ruined you can't salvage it (cat-urine soaked pillows).

when she passes, then you can have an auction house clear the storage room and the apartment and they'll divide trash from treasure, and take their fee and you get the remainder.

but what is nice is that it's no stress on you this way.

[Peppermint Leaf]

I agree with the other posters. Nothing will change 6 months from now - she will still ask for an extension at that point - I guarantee you she will not have dealt with her possessions!

If you have watched the hoarding show and also looked at the shows website you will see it is most definitely an illness.

You really need to give her a deadline to get everything out and that deadline MUST be "PRIOR" to you moving in. If she is as bad as some of the hoaders I have seen - you will want to really clean your home from top to bottom before moving in.

I agree with some of the other poster that a third party doing the packing etc is helpful as there is less resentment towards you. A neutral person is best. But regardless - take the bull by the horns and arrange for her stuff to be put in storage.

I am sure you can come up with a reason for why everything must be out prior to possession.

I would love to hear the outcome - keep us updated

PEP

[Catubodua]

Just another caution that may or may not apply in your case.

this sort of behavior tends to be inherited. my hubby takes after him mom in this way and refuses to just throw things out that need to go.

i've already told him when his mom dies that all her crap isn't coming to live with us. but, he feels guilty about getting rid of the xyz. be prepared for your MIL to try to pressure your hubby to keep things b/c of sentimental value. he may give in easier if she convinces him to keep grandma's old whatever.

[leigh09]

Originally Posted by Catubodua

Just another caution that may or may not apply in your case.

this sort of behavior tends to be inherited. my hubby takes after him mom in this way and refuses to just throw things out that need to go.

i've already told him when his mom dies that all her crap isn't coming to live with us. but, he feels guilty about getting rid of the xyz. be prepared for your MIL to try to pressure your hubby to keep things b/c of sentimental value. he may give in easier if she convinces him to keep grandma's old whatever.

my husband does have pack rat tendencies, but more milder than his mom. my most effective way of dealing with it is to put something away for a period of time. then i'll tell him it's going to the thrift shop, recycling, etc because he hasn't touched it in forever.

i am in the process of major purging because we are packing and moving. i asked him if he ever feels good getting rid of lots of stuff he doesn't need, because i love it. if i don't use it, and don't need it, there's no sense keeping it. and it is great to be able to give it to someone who will use it. he told me no, because he usually finds he needs it after he has thrown it away, so it's better to hold onto it. arg!!!!

i am working on purging our children's toys and old clothes. this is especially painful for dh, because what if they want to play with it someday? (they have way too many toys) what if we have another baby? what if our youngest likes some of the toys that our older children didn't really play with and i donated? what if ...? if i saved for all the what if's i would have too much stuff. and we don't need it!

he also doesn't agree with storage units. we have the space in our new basement, it won't be for long, so why pay the money? and she's family, it's the least we can do for her. it's like fighting a losing battle since he's right, it does cost money. and she is family ... and his mom. and he believes we'll be done with it in a few months. i hope so. but i feel like hitting my head against the wall just a little bit.

[Crayfish]

Thought One: If it's "not going to be that long", then it's not going to cost that much, so why not rent the storage unit?

Thought Two: What are your plans for the basement? Was it going to be your territory or his? If it's filled with his mother's stuff for the next twenty years, who will lose out on personal territory? I'd say that you should arrange things so that it's him that loses.

For example, if he was going to have a study in the spare bedroom, and you were going to have a craft room in the basement, that gets reversed - you get your craft room in the spare bedroom, and he gets his study in the basement, after his mother moves her stuff out. And, no, meanwhile he doesn't get to put his desk in your craft room. A craft room belongs in the basement where there's lots of space, he says? You'll happily move it down there when it's free, you say. Meanwhile, the spare bedroom is yours.

Or if half a two-car garage has to be filled with stuff that belongs to you and him, because it can't be stored in the basement, then you're the one that parks your car in the garage, and he's the one that parks outside and scrapes his windshield every morning.

No room for the winter clothes because the basement's full? He can store both of your winter clothes in his closet.

And so on. _He_ needs to be the one to suffer from the fact that he's about to permanently store his mother's stuff. He needs to be the one who's reminded and inconvenienced, every single day. You should not suffer, the least little bit.

Crayfish

[accountclosed3]

i agree with crayfish about the territoriality stuff. that makes great sense.

another option, too, is to put a time limit. she cna have that space for 6 months, and then it goes to storage.

[leigh09]

i like your idea crayfish. this home is literally 3 times the square footage of our current home, so it's not like we can't say we don't have the space it is just the idea of it all.

i am very pissed with my husband at the moment. he knows how i feel about moving into a home full of junk. and he promised to help clean it and help his mom pack as much as possible before moving. today was supposed to be a big, productive day. if i got them "lots" of boxes and watched the kids all day long, they were going to get a lot done. and i have done them both. he calls me at lunch to tell me he spent his morning having coffee with his dad, doing some work around his shop, and visiting the neighbour there who is selling their home.

he knows i'm mad. he also very rarely breaks a promise to me. i feel i am completely within my grounds to tell him that when we move in, there is no more chances to wait for them to clean up anything that remains in the house, i am doing it. and they all know i am a much more brutal cleaner than they are. i trash and donate with vengeance.

he and his mom want the chance to be able to go through things himself, because some of it is sentimental and passed down in his family. he knows i may get rid of things that he may want to keep. he's lost that chance if it's not done in two weeks.

[SashaBreeze]

Oh Leigh this is so sad, and has got to be hard on you.

I am going to go against the popular opinion here and say that this is not worth causing a riff between you and your dh. It is never, never a good idea to be in a situation were your dh is sided with his mother against you. That is a recipe for disaster. You have presented him with the situation and the information on how to deal with everything and it sounds like he just is NOT going to budge. I would not push it at this point or else end up in a situation were he views it as a us (he and his mother) vs. her (you) nightmare.

The only thing I would really force is that anything with mildew and mold on it MUST be sealed tightly in plastic before being put into storage anywhere in the house. Make sure that it is presented as a safety/health concern and not you still trying to "control" them.

I'm sure at this point you feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall.

You know... your dh going through all of the things with your MIL is probably a good idea. The reason I say this is that maybe, just maybe by doing this he will see how bad things have gotten. My dh had no idea what a serious problem his mother had until he got into all the boxes and stacks of things himself. True he knew she had waaaaaay too much stuff but that is all he thought of it. Then as he went through the process of moving things he discovered over and over things that he had treasured as a child utterly ruined and smashed. I think the final breaking/waking point for him was finding his very much beloved grandfather's military tags stuck in a pile of a melted bag of "keep sake" candies in the bottom of a box. It was so painful to watch, it completely broke his heart to realize that his fantasy of his mom being the keeper of all things family and childhood was just that, a fantasy, and that the realty was that his mother was/is ill.

Maybe once he gets into things with her and sees what has happened and just how much his mother will actually want to put in the basement he will come around and realize a storage building is a pretty good idea after all.

Or maybe just maybe he will be right and all of the things he has wanted as an adult from his ancestors and childhood will be in great condition and his mother really did put them up carefully for him. And maybe just maybe he will be right and she will only put a few things in the basement and they will be gone in a few months. I hope this is what will happen. I am afraid for you that it will not though.

It sounds like you are going to have a couple of really loooooong months in the near future.

[sunshineafterrain]

I really feel for you.

Do you have an auction house for your area?

I am thinking that you mark your calendar for 5 1/2 months from now and make an appointment for the auction house to come to your basement in 6 months and 1 day.... I will be surprised if they don't have to take the whole lot of what she stored down there.

It has to be tough to have the space available for her to do this...but hoarders see a possibility in everything, all the what-ifs, all the renovating, and re-inventing and use it "might" have "if only" -- and the ones who have it the worst truly cannot distinguish trash from treasure

Good luck!!

[lach]

Oh, I'm so sorry.

I understand that you're pissed at your DH, and I understand why. But I also urge a bit of compassion. It can be really hard to grow up and see our parents as human, and to be faced with the fact that their quirks might be something more. It can be even harder to see our parents age, and see something morph from a quirk into a problem. Although you're part of their family now, you also have a bit more distance from the situation that he does (especially since I think you've gotten some good advice in this thread). He just sees his Mom, who took care of him and has always been there for him and who is either hurting, about to be hurt, or both.

The fact that he broke his promise to you and wasted all morning indicates to me that he knows there is a problem bigger than he can handle right now.

So while I would certainly not let him off the hook, I'd also urge a little bit of compassion. I think that, thanks to this thread, you realize that there is probably a larger problem here. But he isn't quite ready to come to that conclusion yet. When he gets home, I would try to be as calm and nice about it as possible: it depends on his personality, of course, but this seems like a case where putting him on the defensive about his morning and his mother's behavior will set him back from the realization that he has to come to.

AndI promise, I'm not saying that you don't have every right to be pissed, and I would be pissed too. I'm just saying that right now I think that your DH needs to be handled delicately if you want to move this along in a timely fashion. So I would suck it up and just pretend that he tried his hardest, and let him save some face as to why he broke his promise (and I am sure that he genuinely didn't intend to or didn't want to, and that his mother totally played him to keep him away from the mess). But it is just as you feared and the project is larger than you expected and will take some extra time. Which is fine: these things happen. And, in completely unrelated news, you were doing some research on the internet and you feel that it's really important to bring in a professional cleaning service to give the whole house a top to bottom clean before you move your young kids in there. Which means everything in the house needs to get out of the house, and into storage if it's not going straight to her house.

[Crayfish]

Originally Posted by SashaBreeze

I am going to go against the popular opinion here and say that this is not worth causing a riff between you and your dh. It is never, never a good idea to be in a situation were your dh is sided with his mother against you. That is a recipe for disaster. You have presented him with the situation and the information on how to deal with everything and it sounds like he just is NOT going to budge. I would not push it at this point or else end up in a situation were he views it as a us (he and his mother) vs. her (you) nightmare.

The difficulty that I see is that this may not just be an argument about getting the stuff down to the basement, it may well end up with an argument about getting stuff out of the _main rooms_ of the house.

I'm assuming that if on moving day the living room (and kitchen and bedrooms and bathrooms) is still full of his mother's stuff, and he and his mother object to the original poster "disturbing" that stuff so that she can move her own stuff in, you wouldn't say that that isn't worth arguing about?

Hoarders tend to have a bit of trouble with reality. I wouldn't be surprised if this hoarder felt that by selling her house to her son, rather than to a stranger, she'd effectively still own and control the house, and she wouldn't really have to change anything, other than allowing her son's family to tiptoe around the house as long as they didn't disturb her stuff.

I'm not saying that that was a conscious expectation that she held when she was signing the papers, but I wouldn't be surprised if she behaves with emotions of shock and betrayal and panic when that's not how it turns out. When she faces the prospect of her hoarded rooms being _emptied_, and cleaned, and painted, and changed, there may be a lot of hysteria.

And hoarders tend to raise their children to cater to their anxieties, to fear that the world's going to go hurtling out of its orbit if the hoarder doesn't get what they want. So the husband is going to want to give his mother what his mother wants. He's going to have a strong pull to give her "just one more week" to get the rest of her stuff out of the main rooms, and then another one more week, and another one more week.

So, IMO, it's simply not going to be possible to tiptoe around and let the husband and his mother make all the decisions, not if the original poster wants a home for herself and her family.

Crayfish

[SashaBreeze]

Originally Posted by Crayfish

So, IMO, it's simply not going to be possible to tiptoe around and let the husband and his mother make all the decisions, not if the original poster wants a home for herself and her family.

Crayfish

Ultimately, you are right.

I suppose what I was really trying to get across in my last post was that the OP really needs to try very hard for the next little bit to nudge dh back towards her camp. My fear is that if she pushes too hard that it will just drive a wedge into their relationship and pull him closer into his mother's world. I did/do not want to scare Leigh, but everything you said Crayfish rings true to me. I just figured it would be easier to take things one step at a time and spend the next few days drawing him closer to her and then tackling the fact that they can NOT move into the house until at the very least the living part of the house is cleared out and cleaned.

When we bought my MIL's property it was exactly as you described. She never in a million years thought her son would get rid of anything in that house and so felt "safe" letting us buy it. In the beginning we were just shuffling things around and slowly dh found more and more things destroyed and items that were just bizarre (an entire barrel full of doorknobs still in their packages!) and he began to see the truth. That is my hope for the OP. That once he feels safe in helping his mother hoard away all this stuff and actually gets his hands in the midst of the chaos he will see how bad it really is and then he will be in the position of being able to rationalize the situation outside of the realm of "How will this make mom feel".

The goal is to have a cleared out/safe home for the OP while still retaining the trust and companionship of her dh. How to pull that off will be very tricky because as Crayfish and others have noted his mother is going to try every trick in the book, will manipulate, will lie, and when it comes down to it cry, yell and do everything she can to hold on to her things. Until Leigh's husband realizes that his mother has a problem.... I just dont see how the situation can be resolved with a happy outcome.

[SashaBreeze]

Originally Posted by lach

AndI promise, I'm not saying that you don't have every right to be pissed, and I would be pissed too. I'm just saying that right now I think that your DH needs to be handled delicately if you want to move this along in a timely fashion. So I would suck it up and just pretend that he tried his hardest, and let him save some face as to why he broke his promise (and I am sure that he genuinely didn't intend to or didn't want to, and that his mother totally played him to keep him away from the mess). But it is just as you feared and the project is larger than you expected and will take some extra time. Which is fine: these things happen. And, in completely unrelated news, you were doing some research on the internet and you feel that it's really important to bring in a professional cleaning service to give the whole house a top to bottom clean before you move your young kids in there. Which means everything in the house needs to get out of the house, and into storage if it's not going straight to her house.

[treeoflife3]

If this were my husband's mom, who is also a hoarder, he would just make it clear that if she hasn't removed her things from HIS legally owned home, then by law it would all be his things to do with as he pleases. and then he'd toss them.

He actually did this to her once when they were living in an awful place while he was in high school. He forced her to find a new place to live while also throwing away a TON of stuff on her. She hated him for it but ultimately, she is doing much better. She hasn't built things back up... but that is partly because she now moves every 3 months or so.

If this were a stranger you bought from and you closed on the home (making it YOURS) you would be allowed to throw it away. They would be at fault for not removing anything. I'd treat this the same way. It is callous and doesn't take into account the serious issue she clearly has, but your family should come first. If she was willing to sell and move out then she needs to also be willing to get rid of her things.

I like the finding storage space option PP have mentioned. It gives her the chance to remove things... but making sure she understands all things left behind once the house has traded hands legally will be tossed/donated without her help/input. She will probably complain and carry on, but she was given the best solution and a full understanding of the consequences.

It is your house and your family. You deserve to have it to herself. She can move her things elsewhere or lose them.

[leigh09]

i should explain my MIL a bit, she is tired of all her things. they seem to weigh her down, she has had enough of them. we have talked of buying her home before because her house is beautiful, large, and a gorgeous property once it is loved a bit. she knows full well it needs tlc. she says she fully doesn't blame me if i pitch all her things out the door.

it is just the physical act of doing it that everyone seems to be procrastinating about. when our home was listed for sale, i offered to help her sort through things, pack up anything she didn't want anymore, etc. but she wasn't ready. now our home is sold and we are moving. she is done with her stuff but can't seem to face the actual act of going through it, sorting, or getting it out the door. she's told me more than once she wishes it was just over with, that someone would to it for her. i've offered and said i would do it. but she also wants the chance to go through things herself, which i can understand. now dh also wants to go through things too, i can understand that too since some things are from his childhood and his family history.

i can't understand why no one gets to it, throws out the things that are obvious trash and gets rid of things that no one wants. we have made the offer to just take out the things she wants to keep and let me take care of the rest, but have been stalled up on that one too.

it seems she does, yes, want everything gone. but it is very hard on everyone to do it. i also can see it's easier for me because i have absolutely no emotional attachment to anything there

[SashaBreeze]

Once again I can only go from personal experience. But, this also sounds very much like my MIL. She has said, for at least as long as I have been in her life and dh says he always remembers her saying it, that she wants to get rid of the surplus. She even got a storage building when I first met dh and filled it with items for yardsale to the point of having tags on all the items. Not only is that storage building still being rented but it is still full of the same things she put in there over a decade ago. What is more she has gotten at least 2 more storage buildings (that we know of) that are filled in the same way.
I think that is one of the sadder aspects of this illness. Often times they really do want to get rid of stuff but then when it comes down to it they just can not bring themselves to do it. MIL will occasionally sell a few things but they are always things that are just trash and then she gets discouraged because she didn't make the money she felt like her effort afforded.

To my knowledge she has had to have other people move for her every single time she has moved. She just can not do it. It overwhelms her. She starts to pack and then like I said before she gets "lost" in the memories and attachment to everything as she tries to pack and it just turns into a nightmare for her.

And keep in mind just because she kept things from dh's childhood and family history does not mean that those things will still be in any condition that anyone can still use/appreciate them.

I really, truly hope I am wrong and that she means everything she is saying, but to be honest it all sounds exactly like the things my MIL has said.