We moved mom into yet another nursing facility and well I started cleaning out her house. She is a hoarder. Hundreds of craft items , junk you name it, floor to ceiling. She wants to go through all of it, but I dont have time nor do I live in the same state as her. She is mad , mad and upset, but what can I do, I have to get rid of stuff. there is 40 plus years of stuff, the stuff will out live her. I am keeping some but really I cant keep it all. i am so tired and broken down from her, she is making me sick to think that this stuff is all her life , not her children not her life, not her grandkids, great grandkids. SHe is mental ill I know that but no one will help what do I do.
You get rid of the clutter and the depression or at least 90% of it goes away. My own house has too much stuff in it that we will never use but might be good stuff. There are things in my house that I would like done but don't feel like doing them because it is too overwheling as far as time goes. Working backwards is a good policy so things don't get worse. You get more pleasure going to the re-cycling center than you get buying something new that you MIGHT use some day. I try to buy things that I will use in the next 3 days. Things I really need. My depression has increased because of the care of my 89 year old parents who will not throw anything away including JUNK mail. Their dementia has made it impossible to figure out what mail is important and what mail is not. Including empty enevelopes that they take the junk mail out of. They have been married for 65 years and stuff means more to them than people or personal relationships. Very Very sad..
I am an only child and my daughter is an only child. I don't want to do this to her.
That remark was so cold and I walked away. My sister says what she thinks and never sugar-coat it. Not my style. And regarding getting rid of trash and paper and cans, these were put in bags and still in the house after a few weeks. I would either get the bags into the garage or into my car. she didn't have any dumpsters and lived in a rural area and didn't get much help in getting it out to the curb. Mom would sort piles of photographs, bills, etc. but not much was organized. It seemed to be hard for her to decide how to organize it. Now she is in a nursing home and my brother has control of her home. I don't know if Mom will be coming home or not. I don't know what shape her home is in but my brother has control over that. There is so much to say about the subject of hoarding. You do what you gotta do.God bless.
Then after a couple month of my parents in independent living, the financial management person wrote me:
"We have a question...your parents have refused our assistance in unpacking boxes and have asked to have many more things in their relatively small apartment than we would normally advise clients. Could you describe in general what your parents' home was like prior to the "organization" which your sister and her husband did? We do not want to press them to live someone else's life style, but we also don't want to leave them with an apartment full of moving boxes with which they are unable to manage."
The financial management person and I had a chat after that and I showed her some 'before' pictures that I had taken of the house a few years ago, which practically knocked her off her chair.
Perhaps, when pigs fly. On the other end, I have started throwing away everything in my house. I might end up with one cup, one plate and one place setting. I might be taking minimalism to a new level but after this experience, my son won't have to dig through generations of junk. It is an illness - and a remnant of a depression era person that gets validation from "important people" contacting him.
My Mom [97] is trying to get Dad [93] to go through all his 3-right binders of which he has many dozens, as Dad liked to cut out newspaper articles and tape them onto sheets to go into the notebooks. So right now around Dad's recliner, around his desk, and around his computer it looks like file cabinets had thrown up... paper everywhere, large sheets of paper, tiny bits of paper, etc. All those 3-ring binders will probably outlive him as he will pick up one newspaper article, read it for probably the 100th time, then he will talk about what is in that article, then decide he will need to save it. Thank goodness Mom has this under some control.
And the paper...oh my gosh. Dad saved every single receipt, handwritten note, scrap of paper, utility bill and paystub for the last 50 years, I think. All of the bills for every year are bundled together with rubber bands, check copies stapled to each bill, and all in a big ziploc bag with the year on them. They are *everywhere*. When he ran out of room in his big 4-drawer file cabinet, he stashed them in his closet. When he ran out of room there, he stacked them on top of the file cabinet. When that pile threatened to topple over, he bought *another* cabinet to put them in. So now I'm burning up the shredder getting rid of all but the ones that need to be kept (tax returns, etc).
It seems every time I open a door or drawer, I find more and more stuff that needs to be gone through and cleaned out. One of these days I'll get it all done, but not sure if it will be soon!
Mom and Dad were not what you would call "classic hoarders" where the house is filled from floor to ceiling or anything, but there are definitely some major "stuff piles" stuck away behind closet and cabinet doors and in that basement! I still have to figure out how to get the huge old cabinet stereo (record player, radio, etc all in a huge console cabinet from the 70's) up the basement stairs.
Loved to hear how this turned out; it would be insightful to all of us. I sit in my mom's house and she is not a hoarder; but there is a lot of stuff. I can't wait to get started. I do have a plan but can't do anything until she is out of the house and won't be going back. I observe her favorite chair, rug, lamp, table, etc. and will move those things to her new "home" if we ever get that chance. Maybe have her favorite dish, cup, saucer and spoon, knife, fork --- so she'll have something to familiar. I will hang her favorite pictures in her new room or prop up on the dresser so at least homey....Then I'll get started. All her clothes will go the veterans to sort through or toss. Shoe collections = trash. Furniture; rugs, dishes, leaving in the house, have a yard sale and let people just go through and make an offer and haul it off. Nothing we want (maybe one coffee table). Linens, etc. = old and will trash. Jewelry - sell to jeweler. Dishes, silverware, anything else = habitat store.
We will go through all closets, clothes, etc. carefully because we suspect there is money, documents, etc. hidden or stashed. That will be most time consuming. But there is nothing of value in the house that I or sibs want or care about.
Again, shes not a hoarder -- but crafts, and crap in your case; if its in containers, etc. - consider donating to the senior center, etc for them to use.
My mother isn't a horrible hoarder, but we've managed to cut off much of her ability to purchase things. Thank goodness, she is no longer online, because she was an Amazon junkie for a while there, buying nothing but books.
As far as her house, it's not a fire or safety hazard. She just has about 60 years worth of stuff, both hers and my father's (he died in 2009), and aside from a few of his items of clothes, hasn't gotten rid of a thing.
When I can't sleep at night, I go through my list of What to Get Rid of First: her books (tons of them), clothes, furniture, dishes and cookware, linens, other furnishings and knick-knacks, computers, sewing machine, lawn and garden tools...
Frustrated, my mother would do that too - push her stuff onto me. For a long time, I'd take it, feeling guilty that I didn't really want it. Then I'd take it, but immediately donate it (it would go right from the trunk of my car to Goodwill). I'm annoyed that she refused to handle any of this when she still had the ability to. It's going to be quite a task when the time comes. There are moments where I fantasize about the whole thing going up in flames, and only having to make one call to the insurance company.
so she won't miss it. When she is asleep (not often!) I pack up a box of things that she has bought which have no value. She has lots of antiques which are valuable, but in the last years, her ability to judge value went out the window and she has a sh*t ton of resin figures, silk flowers, and ugly craft items "decorating" her house. One at a time they are "disappearing" Since she is still alive (using that term loosely) I have time to do it this way instead of all at once. I think my
biggest hurdle is that every time I get rid of something, I feel guilty because in the back of my mind I think what will she say if she gets better? I KNOW that she can't and will never get better, but my brain still hangs onto foolish hope and pokes at me with guilt. I just tell my brain to "shut the fu*k up" and get rid of the crap.
When the time comes for me to close out her estate, it will be an enormous undertaking.