I have to vent to someone. My mother's house is so cluttered. She has so much furniture and so much stuff that it is impossible to clean. Her bedroom is beyond description because of her mental problems. She has two quilts spread out on the floor and two huge suitcases at the foot of her bed. She has blankets stuffed under the bed. There is so much furniture in there. I've tried to straighten it, but she quickly undoes anything I do to return it to a state of filthy chaos.
She does the same to the living room. She has medications, lotions, and toilet products accumulated over the years set out on the tables so they will be handy. Cough medicines, eye drops, nose sprays, toilet tissue, Kleenex, multiple water bottles, ... I try to keep it down, but she puts it back out. If I say anything, the answer is that it is her house and she will do what she wants. Well, her house is nasty and cluttered and I hate living in it.
It's not a dementia thing. It has been like this since first three kids left home. People tell me that I should just do the best I can and let other things slide, but the truth is that it makes me ashamed.
I wish my mother weren't so dominant. It would be easy to fix things if she weren't so insistent that everything has to be for her convenience. And she absolutely refuses to get rid of things. I cleaned out the initial hoard, but the excess furniture, bedding, and ton of clothes are a hoarding stronghold. She has things stuffed about like she is trying to keep evil spirits out. She occupies most of the house, so I feel like I can't even go out of my room without being disgusted. And I am so darned tired of cleaning while she sits in her chair watching TV all day long. And I feel ashamed that, as capable as I am, that I cannot work against the tide of disorganization and filth that owns the house.
Vent over.
Ultimately, serious hoarders do end up building a fort around themselves. Their family and company can't visit because there is no room to sit or sleep, and the house is too disgusting. So the hoarders become isolated in their forts. To the world they can seem like normal people. To see their homes can be a shock.
Something that is funny now. My father spent his last 20 years sitting in a chair all day. He built a fort of plastic baby-wipe boxes around his chair. I thought he probably had all the things he used in the boxes. After he died, I started to work removing the fort. The boxes were almost empty. Some of them had one or two worthless trinkets in them, but otherwise there was nothing. It was like the twilight zone when I realized it was just a fort, instead of being anything useful.
I think we should adopt a big orange rabbit as our hoarding mascot. We have a 4' pig here that would look good next to it. We donated 4 or 5 garbage bags of stuffed animals to the abused women shelter so the kids could have them. The pig and a few bears escaped my notice, so are still here collecting dust.
I've always felt that materialism is rampant, and dominant in American culture. I'm sure it exists in other industrial and post industrial countries as well. Marketers make sure that we feel inadequate if we don't have picture perfect white teeth, beautiful smiles, molded (if not through a gym, through plastic surgery) features, expensive cars...you name it....there's an alleged positive and socially accepted influence for so much of the goods produced and sold.
"Things" are apparently seen as status symbols, indicative of a certain kind of wealth. The more visible symbols of wealth you have, the more you can (a) impress the neighbors, compete with the "Joneses", (b) feel wealthy (c) feel good about yourself.
Could this by reflected in some of the people who do end up compulsively collecting? Could it be a method by which they are trying to fill fulfilled for some inadequacy in their life, or in some perverted way to feel as if they still have status even as they segue into poverty and unhealthy living?
Just some thoughts that popped into my mind....
My father also bought a lot of knives. He had mixed dementia and shopped from catalogs. I didn't know the extent of his knife buying. There were over 100 knives, most bought from Duluth and not cheap. I gave a box of them to my brother so he could figure out what to do with them. Guess I could have put them on eBay. I still run across knives.
And tools. We could have a huge tool sale here. Men would love it. My father bought tools upon tools, though he never used them. Guess I could put them on eBay, since a garage sale wouldn't get a very good price.
Midkid, I like your paperwork file. A few weeks after my father died I bought a huge shredder and spent about a week shredding boxes of files dating back to the 1980s. Every bit of bank, medical, utility, and financial information was saved. The boxes occupied the entire dining room. My mother wasn't too happy with my shredding, but she liked having her dining room back.
One thing that I did like when she was taking the Remeron is that my mother got motivated to shred all of her bank statements -- about 20 years worth of them that included monthly statements for about 10 CDs, in addition to her savings and checking accounts. She worked on it for 3 days, but got it done. That was nice. The only trouble came when getting her to stop shredding things. She liked shredding so much that she was looking for stuff to put in the machine -- cardboard, bags, anything. I had to rescue my shredder before she killed it. It was the Remeron that did that a bit obsessive. It's funny now thinking back on it, not so funny at the time. Anyway... it was nice to see her get into the spirit of cleaning things up. Too bad the Remeron was too much for her, since it gave her some energy.
I happened to talk to brother, whose house it is, and he laughed and laughed. Said "Sis, you are sweet to try to effect a change, but I guarantee next time you go up there it will be the same as before". In my heart, I know he's right, but I just keep trying.
Sometimes I feel like people are becoming like test tubes. Add a bit of chemical, shake, and see what happens. I don't like drugs, but I know sometimes they are useful in making things easier for everyone. I wish one had worked with my mother.
My mother has never tried antidepressants,but I think the day could be coming. She is really grieving her physical losses, as anyone would, she can barely walk now and has so many major health conditions. I think it's only her tiger woman will keeping her going sometimes. I've often wondered if she ever did get on a drug affecting her neurotransmitters if it would help the hoarding. She even starts a mini-hoard if she's in the hospital with anything handy, napkins, condiment packets, plastic utensils. Her desire to save and have stockpile of stuff is very strong.
I did buy a clear small storage bin because I noticed old family photos scattered in the paper mix... good grief, don't want those accidentally thrown out. This weekend I hope to dive into those wastebaskets and boxes to save those photos.
Later I thought, there isn't much my Dad can do around the house anymore due to his age and his age related decline... I might as well let him keep busy sorting and re-sorting papers.
You could start putting the extra stuff in clearly marked boxes. And, if you can afford it, get some of those bags on TV that suck all the air out.
Push comes to shove, take some of the boxes to the Salvation Army.
My mother doesn't really have any interest in the things in the house, but she is still adamant about me not donating certain things. It is a control issue. And sadly, I don't think she really sees me as a person with needs anymore. I am just an object to her that should do as she says. It makes her mad that I seldom do, so she is always mad at me.
I'm heading out the door now to get away for a couple of hours. I am glad that I'm able to do that.
I put all her scissors into a bag while she stood talking to me and she didn't even notice. So, at some point, if dementia is involved, she may totally stop caring if you clean the things out.
The trick we use sometimes is since they have a reverse mortgage (ugh) we tell them the mortgage company is obligated to make visits unannounced to make sure their investment and loan made to you should still be in effect. I said otherwise you could get evicted. I know there are terms and conditions, but one day, I just said it and he said okay you can start throwing out some stuff. We just chip a little bit at a time. Sometimes, we have a neighbor or friend to come visit and keep them occupied while we're doing it also.
Hope you can find some relief, Jessie. You endure so much you deserve to have some real daylight to help resolve this and feel more comfortable for however long you remain there. I know you probably wouldn't leave but the poster above does make a good point of using that as leverage. If you're not there for there is no one else to step in to care for her. But she'd have to be convinced it could happen, at least that's what I sense from your postings. You never know, though she might be more amenable. Agree also on the APS suggestion, that should surely get her attention. If not, may be really time to think about an exit strategy soon or at least have a plan in place.
We may come to parting of the ways soon. It is 84 degrees outside and she is trying to bully me into turning on the heat. Actually, the air conditioning just came on. I closed the vents in her part of the house. She said last night that she tried to turn on the heat, but it wouldn't come on. I told her Praise the Lord that it didn't. She often forgets that she's not the only person living here. My major consideration is my rabbit, who cannot tolerate heat. We will have no option but to move if she insists on cranking the heat up until it's cool enough so I can close my vents and open the windows.
I know what you mean about unraveling the mess that our parents have made. Since I came here I've been working through a lifetime of neglect and I'm tired of cleaning up the mess, but never feeling like anything is clean. It is discouraging. APS would find nothing wrong with the house, because I try to keep it livable. My dream is to bring in a little bulldozer and push everything out the door.
JessieBelle, do you have any leverage? Could you threaten to move out unless she allows you to make the house more livable? Is moving out even a possibility for you? She greatly benefits from you being there and it's your home too now. If you haven't found some of the wonderful resources on the internet for children of hoarders please do some Googling, it will help. You have nothing to be ashamed of, this is one tenacious disorder that brings the families down a tough road.
I have known people to file with the courts contending Incompetency of a parent due to this factor. As it turned out, there were other factors too, once they started looking into the life of the hoarder/dirty home. They also found self neglect of medical care, neglect of their financial affairs, and self isolation. The guardianship was appointed to a person by the court, as the adult child who brought the Petition did not want to be involved with the parent and wanted a third party to make the hard decisions. The court appointed guardian then placed mom somewhere safe, cleaned the house and then sold it, as mom was not fit to run her own household.
I know you weren't asking for advice. Feel free to ignore it.