Finally watched Hoarders ... - Page 4

[Crayfish]

Originally Posted by stephienoodle

I so wish I had been able to watch this show for therapy when I was forcing my hoarding father to clean out.

Just wondering: Do you know about the Children of Hoarders group on Yahoo? It's a great place to share and gripe and therapize. My experience was not nearly as bad as the word picture I drew above, but all the same, it can be really good to talk to other people whose parents are/were a similar kind of crazy.

Crayfish

[ctdoula]

Originally Posted by Usually Curious

I don't think a foster home where the children have a much higher chance of abuse or molestation would be better than a hoarding home.

YIKES!!!! This statement is so way off base. The vast majority of foster parents are selfless people who really care about children and want to do the very best for them (mostly for very little money and with little help/support). My sister and her husband are foster parents.

And living in a horder home is hell.

My step-mother was a horder (she married my father when I was married myself, so never had to live with her). When she died suddenly we had to go in and clean out. It is beyond imagination. No child should ever have to live like that.

I have a very difficult time even watching the show because of my experience with my fathers wife. Once you've had to deal with the aftermath of it, it you have no need to watch it.

[stephienoodle]

Originally Posted by Crayfish

Just wondering: Do you know about the Children of Hoarders group on Yahoo? It's a great place to share and gripe and therapize. My experience was not nearly as bad as the word picture I drew above, but all the same, it can be really good to talk to other people whose parents are/were a similar kind of crazy.

Crayfish

Nope, but thanks for telling me! I don't feel like I need it right now, but in the future... who knows.



Talking about living with a hoarder as being abuse... well, my guess is that in comparison to the average joe, more hoarders are abusive (particularly emotionally) because of mental illness that goes along with hoarding. My maternal grandfather is also a hoarder and has been abusive to my mom and her siblings for their entire lives. He's got other mental illness issues going along with his hoarding, just like my father does. So aside from the "living in a hoarded home sucks" aspect of things, there's probably a greater risk for abuse of the others living in that home... specifically hoarding-related or not.

I do wish that hoarding was more widely recognized as being a major mental illness issue... both psych wards and various mental health agencies that my dad has been involved with have brushed it off and ignored it for the most part. I think it would help more hoarders get treatment for their hoarding AND their other mental health issues and probably decrease or prevent abuse from happening to the family members of those hoarders.

[Theoretica]

I'm hooked on it, my house is definitely cleaner now because of it

[dawningmama]

Just a quick mod note about this discussion and the bits dealing with mental illness: Please use caution when discussing mental health issues. Often, slang words for "mentally ill" can feel dismissive and hurtful so we ask that you think about the language used before posting to make sure you are being respectful and not trivializing the struggle for mental health. Thank you.

[SleeplessMommy]

Leechblock ate my detailed reply, where I suggested watching Obsessed season 1, episode 9. (on Netflix instant download) In that episode, a hoarder works with a PHD psychologist for 12 months, and cleans a path down the hallway plus one room.

[Theoretica]

Originally Posted by AFWife

Agreed. I've known some fantastic foster parents.



Every time I watch I have to fight the urge to start tossing stuff in bags.

Some of the episodes chill me to the bone because I see the warning signs in my mother...the shopping at cheap places for random crap, sending people boxes of said crap, keeping things "just in case"...

My stepmom does this. Ugh. Drives me batty

[Petronella]

Originally Posted by Peppermint Leaf

It almost makes sense to empty out the house into a big warehouse where it can then be sorted properly -- there is no room to move around in order to sort anything.


Emptying the house would also give an opportunity to give it a good cleaning/painting. .. and then they only have to take back in the house what they truly need.

I would say that the vast majority of the debris in these houses is just plain garbage. There is no "sorting" to be done. Anything that might once have been useable has become too beat up and contaminated to keep. The best solution is what bobandjess described doing above: get it OUT.

Agree 100% that these houses need to be CLEANED before people should live in them again. Even once the rooms and hallways are more or less emptied, often the surfaces below are revealed to be disgusting. In the episode where the children and animals were taken away, the final shot of the family in their "cleaned" living room was very sad...the room was NOT "clean", the walls and floors were filthy and looked actually damaged and rotting, from the years of garbage and animal waste soaking into the materials of the home.

[SleeplessMommy]

Note to self - quit shopping on HSN!

wait ... I have never ordered from there anyway.

[homemademom]

Originally Posted by wemoon

The thing about this show that gets me is not the fact that there is so much junk in their homes, but how the mental illness can take over someone's life. Those of us on this thread who say that we get motivated to get up and clean after watching the show are not suffering from mental illness.

But I think there are degrees and someone on "Hoarders" is deep into their mental health issue, while others are not, but have the potential to be. I think even people that grow up with hoarding parents may struggle with hoarding not because of an inherent mental illness, but because they've never been taught what "normal" is and hoarding becomes their default. They adopt the feelings of fear, paranoia, and deprivation that they heard their from their parents. I mean, I know that an "acquired" mental illness is no better or worse than an organic one, but I'm just saying it's possible for a person to be prone to a hoarding problem without actually having a full-blown mental illness and they may be able to nip it in the bud by seeing it objectively in someone else on TV.

[philomom]

Originally Posted by SleeplessMommy

Note to self - quit shopping on HSN!

wait ... I have never ordered from there anyway.

Me, neither. I don't get the appeal.

[Vanessa]

I was kind of in shock watching that episode last night. How much money had she spent there?!?

[philomom]

Originally Posted by Vanessa

I was kind of in shock watching that episode last night. How much money had she spent there?!?

Yes, even if every item was $19.99 plus shipping... that was a houseful of boxes. Has she any retirement left? Was she able to pay property taxes each year? Poor thing.

[Lunaria]

Watching hoarders made me come to a sad realisation. My sweet beautiful mama is a hoarder, and it makes me really sad to know this. It has happened slowly, over years. And she does try to get rid of stuff, she actually spends a ton of time and energy sorting, organizing and planning on how to get rid of stuff. Sometimes she even succeeds in getting rid of some of it, but never enough to make a difference. She has no idea how big her problem is. My dad doesn't really help either, he has a hard time letting go of stuff when he feels they should receive money for it. I just wish I could come and help her get rid of it. She is a clean horder but her 5 bedroom house is so full there is barely room for just her and my dad. I don't know what to do to help her.

Jenny

[homemademom]

Originally Posted by philomom

Yes, even if every item was $19.99 plus shipping... that was a houseful of boxes. Has she any retirement left? Was she able to pay property taxes each year? Poor thing.

Yes, hers was a really sad case. Other hoarders featured on the show know they have a problem and are distressed by it, but their anxiety keeps them from doing anything. This woman didn't even see anything wrong with mouse poop all over everything. At least she didn't have children living with her. I felt so bad for the boy living in the other house

[triscuitsmom]

Originally Posted by homemademom

But I think there are degrees and someone on "Hoarders" is deep into their mental health issue, while others are not, but have the potential to be. I think even people that grow up with hoarding parents may struggle with hoarding not because of an inherent mental illness, but because they've never been taught what "normal" is and hoarding becomes their default. They adopt the feelings of fear, paranoia, and deprivation that they heard their from their parents. I mean, I know that an "acquired" mental illness is no better or worse than an organic one, but I'm just saying it's possible for a person to be prone to a hoarding problem without actually having a full-blown mental illness and they may be able to nip it in the bud by seeing it objectively in someone else on TV.

The part I bolded is how I feel about myself My Mom is a full blown hoarder, although there is nothing dead in her house (or even rotting food etc). But her house is *full* and it's most of it stuff she does not need or couldn't possibly ever need. I'm not 100% sure that the stuff in the basement is still going to be salvageable at all when it finally is dealt with because it's been down there for so long. She doesn't even know what is down there, some of the boxes are still unpacked from her move from Toronto (before I was born and I am 24!).

I struggle a *lot* with this too though. And yet I don't have the attachment. I did the 2010 in 2010 challenge and I'm at almost 2010 things I've gotten rid of this year and that is after doing a huge purge bigger than that last year. All me, no outside help. But the fact that I had that much stuff I could get rid of and that I still could easily get rid of that much again makes me realize how much of the "I might need this someday" I've adopted from her. I'm really really working on it though... I know that I don't want the same for my kids. Whereas she doesn't even see it as a problem at all...