You couldn't be within 20 ft. of the car when my mom opened the trunk. It was like the things in there were secret and I wasn't trusted to see them. She would say all angry; "You saw the things didn't you? Didn't you? You better not look in here!" Of course that only makes a kid want to see what was in there more, but I always felt like I did something so bad, so evil, by sneaking a peek. The trunk was always filled to the tippy top with what I can't even tell you-everything.
IT WAS JUST STUFF IN A TRUNK. I wasted so much time feeling guilty and bad about just glancing at it. -d.o.h. 2/2006
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My mother was all about blaming everyone else for the mess when I was young, the house was a mess because I would often leave a pair of shoes (ONE pair) wherever I happened to take them off.
My older siblings have similar stories, where the house was a mess because they left their bookbag on the couch, left a glass on the counter, whatever small transgression she could come up with.
She was able to completely ignore the stacks and stacks of newspapers that were her OWN mess, but focus on every small thing everyone else did (e.g. My father would forget to throw away an envelope from a bill and then the mess of the house was HIS fault).
Her favorite blame game was "Who Took The Scissors And Didn't Put Them Back In The Drawer?" One day, my brother and I cleaned out the couch and found TWELVE pairs of scissors...between the cushions where only my mother ever sat and clipped coupons.
I look at the house now (so much worse than it was even ten years ago) and I'm grateful that I don't have to live in it NOW. It's outrageous that anyone would ever be forced to grow up that way...-d.o.h. 2/2006
I would pray, pray, pray and bargain with God that I would do anything He wanted if only the garage door wouldn't be open when my friends parents would drop me off! It would have been sooooo embarassing!-d.o.h. 2/2006
I don't know if this has anything to do with her hoarding, but growing up our t.v. had to be cranked up to the maximum volume all the time, like my mom didn't want to miss a word of it and she'd get so irritated if she missed something.
I felt like the t.v. was more important than her kids, just like her things were. Even though I'm an adult, it's still that way today-d.o.h. 2/2006
"Where are my keys?!"
When those words were spoken, if I was an animal, I would have crawled under the table to hide and not come out until the storm had passed. Once those 4 words were spoken, WATCH OUT! You would probably get accused of:
taking them...hiding them...doing something to them.. during the frantic tirade of a search.
You could interchange the word"key" with pretty much anything. This happened about every day.-daughter of a hoarder (d.o.h.) 2/2006
"My Mother's Hoard", Done on aged sandpaper-the fire in the middle represents the very real possibility of it all going up in flames. By a Daughter of a hoarder
Gee, thanks for the useless craft fair doll made out of Readers Digests from 1964.Don't give me your crap. I know she likes to buy it, but I don't want it once she can finally discard of something.
She expects me to be happy over the things she buys or that she went on a shopping trip today. She expects me to be happy about it.
I've been competing with her "things" my whole life, they screwed up much of my childhood AND it permeates into my adulthood and don't want to cheerlead for them.
I get so angry when she expects me to be happy she just got more stuff. Oh yay. More stuff for us to clean out one day. 2/2006-d.o.h.
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When we were little, my brothers and sisters and I would play games like Hide N Seek in the piles of bags of clothes with lots of other stuff mixed in it that looking back, wasn't real safe. It was normal to us, we didn't know any better.
Later in my late teens, my friends (the few that I let come in) would be amused by the mess and say "Oh My God, look at all the stuff!"; but to me it wasn't amusing at all because it was a source of a lot of fights with my parents and a pretty depressing childhood.
I don't blame my mom for everything wrong, but I wish she would have been able to see it wasn't normal and she shouldn't have let her kids live like that. And I wish my dad took some real action to change it for us. I have to say I resent him in that he did not demand a change for his kids and that my mom get help.
She just grew older and got more stuff each year that went by.-d.o.h. 2/2006
It's hard to know that there are so many people in the family who need things and she has so many things new still in their packages just gathering dust untouched. It makes me mad that she is so selfish, yet I know she's "not well" at the same time and "can't help it".
She says she buys this or that with someone in mind, yet she never gives it to them or the kids grow out of it by the time she can part with it and it's a waste of money.
Literally a house full. -d.o.h. 2/2006
I am conscious all the time of doing things so I don't hoard like my mom. I am too organized at times. One time I overheard someone at work say "she will probably put a label in the refrigerator saying 'cold' stuff'. Growing up in a hoarders house has everything to do with it I think.
I have OCD in other forms, it's in the gene pool, so that's why it's important for the kids of hoarders to know about OCD so they are aware and can get help if they need it-d.o.h. 2/2006
When I was little we would play hide and seek in the piles of stuff in one room, and we wouldn't be able to find each other.-d.o.h. 2/2006
My mom is a hoarder. I live out of the state and when I go visit I can't even stay with my mom as there is no room for me because of all the stuff. I feel that she doesn't WANT to make any room for me. Since I live away from it, I am not desensitized to it so when my siblings tell me not to worry about it because it won't change anything and I see their resigned acceptance of it, it makes me think that I might be crazy, "what's wrong with me for questioning that way of life!" -d.o.h. 2/2006
My mother is a hoarder. She won't go away on trips because she "doesn't want to leave her stuff".
It makes me sad that her things are denying her a good life of experiences.-d.o.h. 2/2006
It only got bad went my baby brother was born. I was 9 years old. That's what she blames it on anyway.
I am the eldest girl in the family. In my teen years, I was the one who stayed home, looking at the dirty dishes in the sink from the night before.
One summer, I missed beach days and carefree time with friends because I was tied to the house. Too embarrassed to have friends over. I would come home from college and have to clear out my room and the stuff off my bed so I could sleep.
As an adult, I would even have to clean on my vacation visits to my childhood home. The vacuum cleaner probably hadn't been used since I used it the previous summer week I was there. There are no visits now. My sister sent pictures. I think it is amazing how every hoarders house looks the SAME!!!!!-daughter 2/2006
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To this day it bothers me to visit my parents.Before I even go in their house I see their junky yard with seven cats trying to jump in the house when I open the door.
When I hear a car coming I quickly run inside so they won't see me. As a child I got this sick feeling in my stomach and my heart would start racing every time I heard the door bell ring or the dogs (five) bark.
I don't want the neighbors to see me, the postman, or anyone.-daughter of a hoarder 3/2006
I can not BELIEVE THIS.
This morning I was watching GoodMorning America and they did a segment on Hoarders. I am in tears right now becuse I just read the home page on this site. THIS IS MY MOM.
My mom is dead now so it is ok to talk. And now I know what to call it. I remember my sister and I confronting her with the parish preist when we were teenagers she sat with a stone turtle in her hands petting it. ALL WE ASKED IS THAT SHE TRY TO HELP US CLEAN UP.The preist suggested making a pile of things to sell or donate. She pet the stone turtle and said but these are my things, they are important to me, I can't give up my THINGS& Yet she was quite ready to loose my sister and I. JUST DONT TAKE MY THINGS.-daughter of a hoarder 4/2006
My father is a hoarder. I've tried to talk to him about it but he says that he just got lazy and the garbage accumulated. I know this is untrue. He has depression. My mom and him are and have been divorced for a while. I know he is still in love with her.My brother who suffers from depression lives there right now and my dad won't do anything about it. He needs help but won't go to counseling.-daughter of a hoarder, 4/2006
My sister is the one who actually told me what our parent's disease is really called. I use to call them "pack rats", but now after visiting this site, and seeing photos I totally agree with the term Hoarding.
The worst memory for me as a child of a hoarder is the horrible feelings that washed over me when my ex-husband use to say lets go visit your parents. You see, all though out my 4 years with my ex-he was never allowed to see my parent's house (inside or out). I felt so guilty because how do I explain to him that there is cat/ dog pee all throughout the carpets of the house. Countertops in the kitchen stacked high with used and non used dishes. A refrigerator filled with decaying over stuffed bins. Ground to ceiling of pure junk, and pretty much no real place to sit.
I became really good at starting a fight to make him forget about wanting to come over to my parents house without him realizing it. He would get so distracted with our fight that he would forget about going over there. Or, I would make up lies ex: that they were at one of my other sister's house or shopping.
The funny thing is that during our divorce I found out through my mother that he came to their house to talk to them about our situation. I about died inside not for the fact that he was trying to say ill things about me to my parents. It was for the fact that he was standing in their yard staring at all the cats running around, junk cars in the yard, and possibly peeking inside of the house windows. I wanted to die inside. I kept asking my mom.... Did he see inside? Did he? She said she was on her way out when he was making his way up the front steps (so she swears he didn't see anything).
I'm just happy my lying ended when we as a couple ended. The cool thing is that I am now with my new boyfriend of 3 years and told him off the bat that my parents have a problem. It's been three years and he's never been over to their house until yesterday. I let him come over because the whole house has been gutted out and he's helping my whole family remodel it from head to toe.
It's an amazing feeling to finally let go of my past, and my lies. To let someone know about my family secret, but to also help do something about it. The other cool things is that now me and my sisters are older and we've pretty much made a pact to be on them like white on rice and to hire a house cleaner to show them that a clean house is a peaceful house.-Daughter of Hoarder/s 4/2006
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We grew up with parents who hoarded, got divorced and doubled the hoard. I never was allowed to have people over. If for some reason someone accidently saw inside of the home, it stuck with them.
Now in my 40's people who saw my home as a child still remember it and will STILL comment on it.
It is sad..My mother retired and said she would have time to start sorting through.. She kept everything in-case one of us might want it some day (when we were finally settled). As she aged, she got very set in her ways and would become very upset if a magazine or a pencil got moved.
She never did clean out her house. It took years for us to sort it all out.
My fathers home was no better, floor to roof, front to back. 8 adults working 14 hours a day for several weeks solid finally got enough out..Thank God the local trash pickup was able to be scheduled daily. We hauled more to the curb than you can imagine, One of us did nothing but drive back and forth to the thrift store, we packed what we wanted and finally had to hire a crew to finish cleaning out the rest.
What scares me more than the past is seeing some of my siblings becoming the same way. I see the stuff creeping into their lives and their inability to part with it. I don't want to nag them, but I do mention our parents... They don't see any resemblance (because the stuff is theirs)
I am in the middle. I regularly purge my home when I see myself getting too much. I guess I have Knee jerk reactions. I have 1 sister that lives like a monk-SPARSELY out of fear ending up like we grew up.
It is sad that we have to insulate ourselves. My parents favorite saying was "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without".
Do you know how hard it is to use up or wear out 30 years of saved bread bags and twist ties?-Daughter of a Hoarder
It's such a relief to read these stories, although it makes me sad for everyone. It feels good to know that I'm not alone. 4/2006
My parents are both hoarders. My mother always blamed my brother and I for the mess the house was in when we were young. Then as we got older she blamed the fact that she had to go back to work and didn't have time to clean. I believed her until recently, despite the fact that I was working, going to school, and keeping my own apartment clean.
Now I work full-time, go to school, have a toddler and still manage to clean my house, but my mom disparages all of these achievements by making herself believe that I must not have a very demanding job, or schoolwork, or child. I can't believe that I internalized that and believed it until recently.
I fear more than anything that I will become like them. I was never allowed to have friends over, except for 2 whom I had grown up with and who were pre-approved.
Since my brother and I moved out about 15 years ago, the house has become unbearable. There is no place to sit, lay down a glass (if you can even think about getting a drink in their house - the sink is filthy and the glasses are dusty and covered in ants), or even think. It is dusty and smells of cat pee, which my mom believes only I can smell (she says I have an extra-sensitive nose).
They want to have their grandkids over, but I cannot stand the thought of my daughter being exposed to that environment and to their sickness.
My dad acts like it's all my mom, and she acts like it's all him. I have decided to end my relationship with them after realizing that the hoarding itself is abusive, and that's not even considering all of the put-downs and anger that have been directed at me for much of my life - DESPITE the fact that I am the only person who has ever tried to help them.
How many times can you clean someone's house and then watch it fall into chaos within a month? How many times can you ask someone to get help and be ignored or criticized? It's a devastating feeling that I believe only other relatives of hoarders can understand. - d.o.h. 5/2006
Reading these stories takes my breath away and sends me back to the time when my mom was still alive.
I thought I had come to peace with her and her problems and their effect on me, but knowing that so many others are still struggling brings it all back.
I am an only child and my parents separated before I was born. My mom's hoarding began gradually; I remember our bathroom being piled up to the ceiling in one corner when I was three. As we moved from apartment to apartment, there was "never any time" to unpack or clean.
Finally, when I was ten, my mom bought a house and that tipped her over into fullblown hoarding and filth. First a mouse died in the hot water heater, so that got taken apart and never replaced. So no hot water. She never did get any heat put in, so all we had to heat with in the winter (in Wisconsin) was the gas cooking stove. We had bottled gas and the tank would run out, so then the water pipes and toilet would freeze.
I remember trying to hold in diarrhea until I got to school. I moved in with my grandmother when I was fourteen. Her life and small house were taken over by my mother's stuff, too.
When my grandmother died, my mother moved into her house until it was uninhabitable and the city health department forced her out.
When my mom died, her one-bedroom apartment was filled and I had 24 hours to clear it out, which I did, keeping only some photos and personal items. I had some furniture sent on to me, but gradually got rid of almost all of it.
My mother died almost 18 years ago, and I felt a mixture of incredible relief and sadness. While she lived, I always felt it was my fault and my respponsibility for fixing her life.
My best friend of over 45 yearsdid not know until we were in our forties why I never invited her in--I was so good at lying. I loved my mom; she was basically a decent person who had, as far as I can tell, an unsolvable problem. I'm so gratefulthat I didn't inherit it, but my kids' habits worry me. I have never shared all the details (which also included cat pee and fires and keeping buckets of feces in a frozen bathroom) of my childhood with them.
Maybe someday.5/24/06-D.O.H.
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My mother was always a messy person, always unable to sort or be orderly as my grandmother, also a hoarder (more a collector). She lived in a large old house with us and dad.
After we grew up and left home and dad died she got worse. she would always say, "Gee, I hope you don't mind my messy house" to anyone who came by.
After she died we carted out 3 1/2 tons of boxes and boxes and things to eventually go into boxes -out.
I talked to her about helping her as she was in a depression about it. But if I said we would have to start by throwing things away she would hang up the phone on me or tell me she couldn't talk anymore and change the subject.
All she wanted was more boxes. She thought she could sort things better if she had more boxes.-d.o.h. 5/2006
I'm so glad i found this page! unlike many here, my parents house was clean and habitable while we were growing up, though she did have 'packrat' tendancies, most things were actually thrown out or given away when no longer usuable or needed.
i'm not sure when the major hoarding started....i think at some point after my brother and i grew up and away from the family. that's when the cats started, anyway. my mom has had literally hundreds of cats over the years. her house smells so bad from cat pee and cigarettes that you can smell it before you get to the door- but no matter how bad it smells or how many people tell her it does, she is in total denial (EXACTLY like another COH said in her post, she always told me my sense of smell was 'over-sensitive') and could sometimes get to the point of tears over it (like the time i told her i wouldn't send a big bag of stuffed animal to some relatives kids for christmas because they all smelled like cat pee).
she's had a terrible roach infestation for years, always! blaming it on 'the neighbors who cut down their tree' (20 years ago).funny, i've never heard of roaches living in trees before. the amount of junk i've thrown out of her house, on multiple occasions, is astounding. the guys who come by for the yearly 'big trash' pickup probably cry when they see her address on the list, this years pile was the size of a small moving van.
i've cleaned out entire rooms filled wall to wall, floor to ceiling with absolute junk- broken, filthy, crusted with cat hair, excrement, old food, spiderwebs, and dirt- nothing salvagable or clean enough to even give to the thrift store.... and gotten nothing but shit for it, even being told 'don't think you are doing us any favors'.
the refrigerator is always filthy and i have to clean out the 'dead food' every time i visit. oddly enough, despite all dirt, filth, and hoarding of utterly useless items my mom has very specific germ phobias aboutcertain things. for instance, we never had piles of dirty dishes, everything was sparkling clean from the dishwasher (which she insisted had to be a certain brand that heats up to a certain degree that is guaranteed to kill all germs). in the down time between when her old dishwasher broke and the new one was installed, she poured boiling water over the handwashed dishes to make sure they were disinfected, and she wouldn't DREAM of drinking out of a glass or eating off a utensil that someone else had touched to their mouth 'because that's how you get sick'.
about two years ago the city started cracking down on her about the state of the house, and forced my parents to make a lot of repairs and improvements. she complains bitterly about this and says they are comitting 'elder abuse', she can't see that they are trying to HELP her.
She hides her cats in a back room now so they aren't as obvious, but i am seriously considering making a secret call to the aspca, as she may end up losing custody of her mentally disabled daughter due to the filth and smell.
both my mom and sister are seniors (77 and 60, respectively) and since my dad passed away in march my fiance and i have been making a serious effort to clean & exterminate the house so we can move in and help take care of them, but it's a fight every step of the way.
my dad wasn't a hoarder, more like a hoarder enabler. he let her do whatever she wanted and would jump all over us if we did anything to 'upset' her (like try to clean or tell her the truth about the state of her house).It's very frustrating, and i'm glad that i've found others who truly understand what i have and will continue to go through as long as my mother is alive.5/24/06, D.O.H.
I just moved my mother, this is the second time in seven years. Thankfully she moved into my brother's house.l She relished the fact that every one commented on how much stuff she had.
She is going to be 70 years old! She had hundreds of canned goods (Of which she gave me one (1) bag full) which were out of date. (I'm not talking 2004-06) but from 1998!
This so runs in our family. She has a cousin (in his 60's and another cousin in her 60's, that do this.) It's insane. She packed my brother's house. I asked her for one piece of furniture... of which she has two... and she turned me down!
Sometimes I think it's selfishness. Can you imagine giving a dinner party for 12 at 70? Let's get a grip.5/30/06,doh
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My story is a little more of a current situation and maybe somewhat less extreme than some I have read. My house has been cluttered since we moved in about eighteen years ago and I'm sure the house before that was cluttered as well. My house was not so much of a health hazard because luckily, my dad is not a hoarder.
My mom blames her hoarding on work because when she gets home, she claims to not have any time to clean. Truth be told, she'll sometimes watch QVC and order more stuff that she'll never use.
As a child, I was never allowed to have friends over and when I had them over, it was only ones that my mom was okay with. Now I'm in college and I cannot bring my friends home to visit. When I come home for visits from college, I have to clear things out of my room so I have a place to sleep and put my clothes, etc. I can't even shower or close the door in what used to be my bathroom because all of her things are in my shower and keeping my door open. I also remember my mom digging through my trash and taking things that that I shouldn't have thrown away (one being a kindergarten pictures that we had at least twenty other copies of).
My parents have continually argued over ways to fix the problem. My dad has threatened to move out, that didn't work. My dad and I tried to throw things away and that didn't work, she just got hysterical.
I never realized this was such a problem until recently. As far as I was concerned, this is just the way things were. Throughout my life of going to friend's houses, I was always jealous that their houses were so clean and livable. Most of the time, both of their parents worked,
yet, somehow found the time to clean the house.
I realized this was a problem when my dad retired. Because of the reduced income due to my dad's retirement, we will have to move at some point in the next few years. My mom does not want to move because she does not to get rid of her things. She complains my college education is so expensive, yet all of the money she spends buying and hoarding things, and keeping our big house (for her stuff) is money well spent.
It's not fair to my dad or me! It also wasn't fair to my brothers when they were growing up. –6/2006
Which stories to tell? We had a 1950s house, with a "breadbox" drawer in the kitchen. I tried to throw out the literally 50 empty raisin cookie bags which were jammed inside. My father grabbed my wrist like a vise, and forced my hand back into the drawer. He held it so hard I almost cried, until I let go of the first bag. How about the 1968 Chrysler station wagon rear door? We were rear-ended in the car around 1970; my father put the damaged door in the rafters of the garage in case we "ever needed it". How about the basement which frequently flooded after storms, when the mountain of 20-year old clothes got soaking wet...then dried...then molded...then smelled...then got flooded
again...oh, and the knobs had long since gone missing from the washing machine, so for as long as I can remember we used a pair of pliers to turn the machine on. How about the pots of cooked food on the stove top that sat and molded for days until the pot was needed again? I won't discuss the refrigerator. Or the broken stove that was filled with stuff and then tied shut.
The day of my awakening to the fact that the fault was my parents', not mine, occurred when they moved from NY to OR to be close to me. A 53' moving van came to their BRAND-NEW 2-bedroom house, filled with many things I had personally put in a dumpster. Like the wooden picnic benches
which had been used as saw horses. Like three rusty bicycles with flat tires. Like a box with only a busted lampshade covered with spiders inside. Almost 5 years later, about 10% of the boxes have been emptied; the rest will be by me when my father passes away. The stairs are his "filing system", with each stair being nearly filled with junk mail. He brought about 10-years-worth of NY telephone books...to Oregon. The house is packed, and now that my mother has passed away, "her" side of the bed is covered, too.
God has helped me "let go"...my father CAN'T be fixed. For myself, I keep a very clean house, and buy very little. I still need my husband to throw out the junk mail...it incompacitates me if the kitchen gets cluttered. I still get freaked out at the thought of "company", even though I am almost 50. Thank you for reading this far...it helps to tell someone.
My mother died 2 years ago when I was 47. She was the hoarder. Dad lived until this winter. When the paramedics came to take him to the hospital the first time my sister (also a hoarder) was furious that they didn't bring the stretcher with oxygen into the house (he was having respiratory difficulties) and let him walk out without oxygen.
My other sister (not a hoarder) pointed out that they couldn't get the strecher into the living room because of all the junk. Now the house sits, still full. Two of us want to clean it up and sell it, the other is dragging her feet. I'm mad at Mom for leaving us with all this mess and at my sister for not letting us do anything. All three of us could use the money from the sale of the house which my parents owned free and clear.
