Q. How does one declutter and simplify when they live with someone who is panicked by the mere thought of removing something of questionably dubious value that might be needed thirty years from now?
A. This is a really tough question because it sounds like the person you are dealing with is a hoarder. Hoarders are very different from your average person who is messy, or has some clutter. A hoarder has deep-rooted, psychological reasons for hoarding, and they experience the kind of panic that you describe, when faced with getting rid of stuff.
So I suggest this approach when dealing with a hoarder.
First – understand that hoarding is a serious disorder. You will need to find it within yourself to develop both compassion and patience for your hoarding partner. I acknowledge that this won’t be easy, but it’s the only way through your situation.
Second – educate yourself about hoarding. The more you understand, the easier it will be for you to support and encourage your hoarding partner. A great place to start is Hoarders Anonymous at www.hoardersanonymous.org and reading into how others have helped hoarders. I’ve included information from their website below.
Third, take care of yourself. While your hoarding partner cannot change overnight, that doesn’t mean you need to drive yourself nuts by living with the kind of clutter that a hoarder accumulates. Here are some ideas on how you can take care of yourself. After educating yourself about hoarding, you can have a compassionate and understanding talk with your partner, and hopefully get him to agree to make an appointment with a hoarding professional. A hoarding professional is not your average psychotherapist – its someone who specializes in helping hoarders.
Another way you can help yourself is by designating one room in your house for your hoarding partner to use for his stuff. Ideally, this should be a spare bedroom, garage, basement or whatever is available. It needs to have a door that you can close so you don’t need to look at the mess. Understand that your partner cannot throw things away without experiencing great distress and anxiety, so simply give him a room. Hopefully, with time and help, your hoarding partner will be able to let go of some stuff, but in the meantime, let him have a room.
Make two rules:
1. Any shared space in your house needs to be kept clutter free.
2. The room that you give to your hoarder must be kept in a safe condition. This means there cannot be items that pose a safety hazard such as tripping, and most importantly, the room needs to be kept free of items that could cause or inflame a fire.
Here is information from the Hoarders Anonymous website. I strongly encourage you to do further research by doing a Google search for “hoarding help” or “hoarding.”
“The Psychiatry Department at the University of California describes hoarding as a disorder characterized by one’s difficultly discarding items that appear to have little or no value. Hoarding is not simply an issue of aesthetics, but also can result in serious threats to the health and safety of the hoarder and anyone else who spends time in her home.
Compulsive hoarding is a mental disorder, deeply ingrained in the hoarder’s mind and habits. While it is vital that a hoarder receive support, you must recognize that you cannot “heal” her. A hoarder’s condition can improve with cognitive therapy and sometimes medications to treat an underlying condition, but as her friend your primary role will be as her supporter.
Hoarders are considered to have a form of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). While most people with OCD never hoard, those who do can have a difficult time unraveling their hoarding habit with their compulsive need to save things. Here’s how you can help.
Educate Yourself
The International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) offers information and other resources on its website. You can read through to get a better idea of what your friend is dealing with as well as what she faces as she attempts to control the disorder. Maryland Hoarding Cleanup also offers resources for those dealing with the problem.
Provide Practical Support
- Help your friend find a professional in your area that deals specifically with hoarding issues, recommends IOCDF. Taking the first step can be the toughest. Offer to help her find someone she feels she can work with.
- If you are physically able, offer to help with the actual clean-up process when the time comes.
- Help your friend gather others who are willing to help with the clean-up. Give everyone an assignment. One person might be asked to find a way to dispose of the mess, while another goes on drink and food runs. Try to think of all those small details that she may be too overwhelmed to remember.
- Do small things to let your friend know that you’re thinking of her. If you keep in mind how embarrassing a condition like compulsive hoarding is it, you can begin to understand how low her self-esteem is. She needs to know that you don’t judge her. Invite her over for a movie night, bring her a special coffee drink on occasion or find other ways to let her know she has a friend. Remind her that hoarding is just one component of her personality and not her entire identity.
Dig Deep for Patience
Psychology Today warns that patience is an integral part of helping a hoarder find a healthier way to live. While it would be wonderful if you could rent a dumpster and have everything out of the house by the end of the day, that’s not the way it normally works. Rather than expecting her to change her deeply entrenched behaviors overnight, be grateful for each tiny baby step she takes forward.
Understand That It Is a Process
The reason most hoarders say they began to keep unneeded items is because they thought maybe they would be valuable in the future or because they had sentimental value, reports The Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Even after her home is perfectly clean, your friend is still going to be dealing with the issues that led her to hoard in the first place. She has a great deal of work to do to get to the bottom of what’s causing her behavior, and can certainly use a friend during this time.
Please see my newer, updated post on hoarding where I’ve learned that hoarding is a serious psychological disorder. Find out what’s going on with your hoarder, and how you can help here.
This quoted information was originally posted on the Hoarder’s Anonymous website, here.
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View Comments (195)
We have been together 32 years. In the beginning it was fairly easy to keep order ... when he was working. I could keep house clean and fairly clutter free.
As the years went by we amassed more and more from yard sales and thrift stores but until he retired it was more or less manageable. He is retired and now I sleep on the couch because the king sized bed is loaded with clothes: boxes: crap from other rooms: the garage is over loaded with mostly junk (he says our sone motorcycle is the problem...go figure) and the overflow has filled the back yard unit the beautiful lemon and avocado trees are nearly dead and I can't even go back there let a lone enjoy sitting on the patio as I once did.
One Christmas Eve I came home to him tearing down the overhang on the patio (he was sure it was going to fall down on someone at our Christmas Dinner the following day (which, by the way we can't have any long due to the house being so cluttered and, lets face it, filthy) Now he pulls the drapes open so far its a wonder they don't fall down while the sun pours into our now over filled living room blinding me and fading/rotting the furniture.
We are what is called elderly now. There's no one to really step in and help nor would he accept any. He can't smell anything so you can imagine the smell.
I was never a spit and polish person but I kept a sanitary home and one clutter free. This over whelms me and I find myself escaping by being on the computer most of the day and looking forward to nighttime and sweet sleep.
The suggestions I read have all been tried and failed. I doubt there is really anything to be done about this situation.
I have been married for 48 years. My husband is a hopeless hoarder. He has filled up an entire 10-room house including the attic, the family room, the garage, the workshop, the living room, and the dining room. He trashes everything he touches. He filled up the backyard with storage containers that he won't get rid of. Then he started with the driveway. He has filled up a broken minivan and left us nowhere to park for a couple of winters. He finally brought the city down on us when a neighbor reported us.
He trashed our kitchen and blocked the back door. He blocks stairways and hallways and creates tripping hazards. My adult son and daughter live with us, and we are all depressed and miserable all the time.
When any of us throw anything away he picks through the trash and takes things out, including things that don't belong to him.
He takes out the trash and opens the bags outside to take things out. I have to go to great lengths to get rid of my own discarded belongings.
This man is also a compulsive shopper and is always bringing home more junk we have no use for that I have no place to store, and won't return anything. My cabinets are all overflowing with crap I don't want.
This man trashes our cars, leaving nowhere for anyone to sit in the backseat as well as the rest of the minivan. He has left us only our bedrooms to live in since he covered the living room sofa and chairs. We can't have family dinners anymore because the table and chairs are always covered, as well as most of our kitchen counters.
My husband has a mental illness and he is convinced he doesn't have a problem. He watched an episode of that show on TLC, Horaders, and was sure he wasn't like those people.
there is no hope of him changing. He is also a selfish, and
vindictive person. We can't let anyone in the house. We would all be mortified.
Al this has eroded my affection for my husband. We are all always fighting. I am left with layers of bitter resentment, and very little love for him. And nothing but hopelessness.
Most of the online forums I have seen are to help hoarders, and their children, not their beleaguered partners and spouses.
Laughable article, but amazing comments. Our house looks packed, but normal, because we have so much outdoor storage space: Two sheds, two 20 foot connex boxes, and a covered dog run. My husband brings in things faster than I can get rid of them.
Gaslighting, Jeckyl and Hyde, and narcissistic behavoirs are getting worse. I couldn't work for years due to severe health issues, now, I feel stuck. Things won't get any better here, however. I know that.
Prayers to everyone who wrote in the heart wrenching accounts.
I am at the end of my relationship with my fiancée who is a hoarder. Your life will never change until you get out. I have broken this off in the past for a few months, only to get back together. This time it is permanent. You will never change him. For your own health, mental and physical, get out.
I am suffering too. With a partner that hoards for over 25 years. My kids see this control issue and excessive need to keep everything. I’m constantly cleaning and trying to tidy up. We never invite company over and it feels like my anxiety is getting the best of me. Eczema and stomach issues are becoming a real issue. I never wanted to divorce because I came from a divorced family and it really screwed my life up. I feel hopeless and I can’t imagine him ever getting help or changing. I’m so done and bitterly angry all the time. Ready to leave but feel guilty.
Another in a long line of useless articles written by an “expert” who knows nothing about living with a hoarder. If the writer really knew, they wouldn’t suggest that hoarders accept help. They do not. For once, approach this from a realistic standpoint. Listen to the people in the comment section, true hoarders won’t change and don’t want help. The real victims are the families. Shame on you, Janet, for suggesting otherwise.
My husband and I were separated for more than 40 years. He got sick and started staying at my house in 2013.
I went to take care of my granddaughter in the summer of June 2021 and doing that time my brother was found dead in his home and I couldn’t return home for about three months there after. When I got home he had moved so much stuff from his house to my home. My house is now a hoarder house and my backyard is filled with about seven old vehicles and all are full of stuff. Now I can’t get him and his stuff out of my house. I never went where he lived and didn’t know he was a hoarder. My garage and additional permanent mini AdL is filled with stuff. When I tell him he is a hoarder, he tells me I’m calling him a names.
Soon after I returned home I tried to find my golf bag and fell and got a torn meniscus and hairline fracture in my right knee because of the hoarding. I had to go live with my daughter while I recovered. I couldn’t even manage to recover in my own home. Very fortunate my knee recovered without surgery. The chiropractor was surprised at my recovery at 75 years old. This didn’t make any difference to this hoarder of my injury. I still can’t get him and his stuff out of my home.
I can’t have anyone to my home. I’m so depressed and angry over my living conditions.
I think after reading all these posts from people on hoarding I’m going to have to get legal help to get out of this hoarding.
I can’t believe that there aren’t many government medical resources to help with hoarders.
The literature presents this disaster as my responsibility. I must be nice, patient, supportive, make edifying comments, ask what i can do to make him feel more comfortable. I must surround myself with ideas on what I can do to, what not to do or say or offer a hint of anything negative. I must not express in any fashion my abhorence at the hell I live in within the disgusting, filthy, putrid, jam packed pig pen I call home. Be delicate. Be considerate. Be loving. Think about all heis going through by being a hoarder. Think of things from his perspective. Don't do anything that might discourage him. MY GOD! 12 Step Programs offer concrete steps the abused can take to establish boundaries, to put things in his court so to speak, to take care of themselves, to live. To meet with others for support. To work on our own recovery from the hell we have lived in, many for years, even decades. Not clutter's anonymous. Their program seems impotent, to me. Emphasizing the 12 Steps of Recovery might do some good, but I don't believe that is something they stress. A full, honest fearless moral inventory might do them a lot of good. Kids can't have friends over. Adults can't visit us. I am sickened by this unhealthy hell hole and he goes on his merry way oblivious to the havoc he causes. If I begin to clean up a mess, he gets offended and angry. I can't throw out the trash that floods this wreck.
Do everything you can to GET OUT. It will never improve. Promises will be made time and again. The bottom line is, they CANT get rid oof the crap because it is a security blanket to them. I'm out of my bad situation with a hoarder girlfriend I was with for 14 years. Took me months to full get away, but now I am free of it.
I have sincerely tried all the steps to no avail. I also find it infuriating and misguided to suggest we the partners must allow this behavior and continue giving and understanding. After 10 years, I have nothing left to give. The only option I feel is available to me to escape this nightmare is suicide.
I have read so much over the years on hoarding, and this is the best site ever. My wife has been a hoarder really since we married 36 years ago. She actually inherited it. I see her in so many of the comments I have read here. Like so many, I have tried everything I can. She is a nice enough lady, but at the mention of getting rid of something she becomes unhinged. So, over the years I have saved my money and have bought another house. I am scared at the thought of moving out and sort of feel like a bad person, but the stress is now affecting my health, and I now have to put me first. I really think I have given it my best shot. Guess I am starting a new life so to speak. I just have to follow through and do it this summer. Gosh it is hard living with a hoarder.