Story sent in from a daughter, an only child, who cleaned 
hoarded house alone and now owns & lives there with father.

---

As this continued to get worse I was told that I
was never to tell anyone about this for if I did, "they will take you
away". These kinds of things were always said to me and finally would
scare me so bad, that if someone would knock on the door I would have a
panic attack and be filled with horrible anxiety.   I could never have
friends over for fear that they would think I was a "freak" that my dad was a "freak"...
---
There was so much garbage I
didn't know where to start. It was a daunting task to consider doing
and I knew that I would have to do it alone, to spare "myself" the shame
and embarrasment of it. I had to continue to keep this "secret", just
as I had always done...

MESSAGE SENT THROUGH  WEBSITE

This form was submitted:  Sep 15 2007 / 15:30:54

Daughter and Only Child

 I apologize first of all that this story may be very long, I
feel the need to say this in order to purge myself from the shame,
guilt, anxiety, hatred and madness that have claimed my life due to this
illness. I never really thought of it as an illness. I just could never
understand what would make someone this way, live in these conditions.

It's only recently in doing research that I have come to know the
inumerable amounts of people, like myself that have had to deal with the
exact things that I have dealt with for so long. I am 29 years old. My
parents divorced when I was about 6 years old. My mother kept a clean
house, my father kept the house clean.

When my parents divorced my father
got custody of me. Slowly over the years messes were made, junk
accumulated, things were never put away, they had no place to go. Bags that
were packed for trips would still be sitting in the same place years after
we got back. Coffee grounds that were spilled onto the floor would
  never be cleaned only ground into the carpet year after year. Things
would just pile up.

As this continued to get worse I was told that I
was never to tell anyone about this for if I did, "they will take you
away". These kinds of things were always said to me and finally would
scare me so bad, that if someone would knock on the door I would have a
panic attack and be filled with horrible anxiety. I could never have
friends over for fear that they would think I was a "freak" that my dad was
a "freak".

Eventually the outside of the house was becoming the same
way. Garbage in the back yard, garbage in the front yard. Grass
overgrown, everything living outside overgrown. It was like looking at an
abondoned house. I hated knowing that my neighbors knew I lived there. Im
sure that they knew something was not right, but I dont think that they
ever could know what it was really like, for as bad as the outside
looked, the inside was a millions times worse.

When I was about 16 years
old I got the hell out. I sought refuge in anyone, usually some guy
that I would live with for awhile, just so I would not have to live
there. Eventually years went by and I started to forget about what it was
like to live in that condition or how bad it really was. I never went to
the house, my father would only come and visit me. It was as if I tried
to black out the whole thing all together, deny it like it never had
happened.

I got married to young, at 23, to a complete jerk, but I
wanted someone "normal" that would take care of me, have a nice place to
live. I was divorced by 26. My father was always an issue. Besides his
hoarding problem he was always in some kind of finacial turmoil for which
somehow I was agian, always to blame. I was his daughter and I should
figure it out right??

When I was going through my divorce I moved out for
the first time, on my "own". I had a wonderful little apartment, it
was kept clean to the point that I would almost have a breakdown if s
omething was out of place. I had to have everything just right or I
felt like people would think that I was a slob, a freak, a pig, and thus
would not associate with me. I also developed an anxiety disorder and
had much difficulty with any kind of confrontation where someone might
think that I was somehow abnormal, because of something.

I had not been
to the house in years. I didnt know if it was still in that kind of
condition. I tried to talk with my dad about everyday. I was scared to
death that something would happen to him in that house, that I would have
to call someone that would have to go in there to get him, that the
neighbors would see, that there would be a news crew there to report it
and my face and my name would be plastered on everyones television
screen. Perhaps that was an irrational fear, but none-the-less it was my
burden.

The real kicker came when he came to me in March of 2005 and told
me because of bad finacial decisions that he had made that he couldn't
 pay the note that he had taken out on the house and he needed me to
do something. I had decided to go back to school at the time, so I was
only working part-time and took out student loans for the rest. I
tried to get a loan. Afterall, this is where I grew up, this was the only
home I had ever known, this was the link to my childhood.

Because I was
only working part time I could not get a loan through a bank. A friend
from high school told me that he would help me out. He would pay the
note off and I would pay him, just like I would the bank for the next two
years, by then I would have to figure out how to get a traditional
loan. I accepted the offer as they were going to forclose on the house in
2 weeks. I had the property deeded to me and I put my name on the loan
to secure me with the finacial burden. I didnt want my dad out on the
street.

After all this was done I told my dad that I needed a key to the
house. I hadn't even stepped inside the house for years. I had no
idea what the condition was. I only new that in order to get a
"traditional" loan that there would be an appraisal and that meant that
someone would have to come inside. That thought terrified me. No one had ever
come inside. Not my best friend of ten years, not my first boyfriend,
not the kids I used to play with from next door. No one had ever come
inside, because if someone would have come in "they would take me away."

My dad kept making excuses as to why he didnt get me a key made. This
went on for months. After threatning, he finally let me in.

When I opened the door and attempted to walk inside the first thing that hit me
was the stench. It just hit you in the face. I could only imagine that a
landfill would actually smell better than what I was smelling. I walked
up the stairs and into the kitchen it was filled with garbage and
filth, actually everywhere I looked was filled with garbage and filth and
stink. I stood in the path, and by path I mean the path that lead th
rough the garbage into the other rooms. The only place you could walk
and I cried. I cried because I had never thought this kind of disaster
was possible, I cried because this was now MY disaster to contened
with, I cried because my father had done this and I couldn't understand
why, and I cried because my father had been living in this for so long and
because I didnt know what to do about it. There was so much garbage I
didn't know where to start. It was a daunting task to consider doing
and I knew that I would have to do it alone, to spare "myself" the shame
and embarrasment of it. I had to continue to keep this "secret", just
as I had always done.

I told myself the only way to get through this was
to pick one small area and forget about the rest of them and make that
one spot, clean. I went to the store and I bought, cleaning supplies
and garbage bags, face masks and brought all these things back. He
couldn't understand why I would need a mask, cause he said he couldn't s
mell anything, I couldn't believe he couldn't smell what I was
smelling, it would make a normal person throwup.

I had to call someone to
bring a dumpster so that there would be somewhere to throw everything. I
wasn't easy trying to clean it out, my father fought me every step of the
way. Everything was useful, everything had a purpose or could be used
for some unknown project in the future, even though 90% of everything
had a layer of dust and filth so thick, that it hadn't even been touched
in years. It took me 1 and a half years to clean it out. I bagged and
hauled 12 tons of garbage out and now the house is only in managable
condition. I have had to replace almost everything. The carpet all had to
be removed as it was a health hazard. I am a medical person and I know
that that could hold alot of things to make someone sick. The bathroom
had to be ripped out, the shower, toilet, the floor, the sinks.
Everything was destroyed. The fridge had not worked in years.

When I asked
  him how he kept his food cold he told me he only bought that kind of
stuff in the winter and would leave it on the porch to stay cold. I had
to buy a new dishwasher, fridge, stove, washer/dryer. The whole inside
of the house had to be repainted. I had to do alot of fixing
everything cause the condition the house was in, if i didn't do this, when I had
to get the appraisal, no one was going to give me a loan on the
balance when in this condition it was worth less than nothing. I felt like I
had no other choice but to do that.

I now live here with my father. I
am still going through and throwing things away, but it's now tolerable,
but I still would not want any of my friends to come over, I still
dont like that there are people that know that I live here. I always think
the neighbors are whipsering. They must have some idea now of what it
was like since they saw 1500.00$ worth of dumpsters delivered one after
the other for all of those months. I still feel so angry that I wa
s shouldered with this burden and a burden that I have never felt able
to share until now, with people that have gone through the same things
as me. I still have alot of work to do till I will consider it "home",
but I have come this far and Im not going to stop now.