[Kali_Namir]

I think this works here, but I'm not too sure...

So I just spent the past three full days cleaning my uncle's house.

He was/is pretty much a hoarder...

The trash was piled up to roughly knee height (so a couple of feet). And that's all it was, trash...Empty drink bottles, the packaging they come in, pizza boxes, old newspapers...this was a lot of just old trash.

We found mail and newspapers for 1996...it was bad...

He says he is ready to turn over a new leaf (after seeing the show Hoarders) and so he allowed us to come help him clean his house.

I will say this, to have had all that trash, there were little to no bugs (the occasional itty bitty spiders but nothing else really), no mice/rats, and no mold. It was just piles and piles of trash.

My dad had asked one thing, that my uncle clean up the bathroom. When we arrived it was almost spotless...(he even mopped the floor and scrubbed the toilet).

So we get there and the first night we start cleaning the living room, and the kitchen, then head to the bedroom we'd be staying in only to find out that it has had the door closed and is in no way dirty (a little dusty, and a few books in the floor but that was is). So the next day we finish the dining room and kitchen, work a little more on the living room, and then we tackled the hallway. We find the second guest bedroom, yet again, has had the door closed and is simply a little dusty. By then it's bed time. The last full day we finish the living room, and do the finishing touches on the other rooms (mopping, dusting, organizing for him, and trying to get the nasty film off the carpet). Then on one of the MANY trips to the dump me and my mom decide to tackle his bedroom...it had to be the worst room in the entire house...It was HORRIBLE...(still no bugs or mice though [aside from a computer mouse])...It literally took at least 26 DRUM LINERS to get all the trash from his room. I've never seen anything else that bad before!!!

Well we get done and it's bed time. This morning we get up and my uncle is happy and cheerful and cleaning up after himself. It was a major difference in his demeanor and everything! (and the house is clean and safe and livable again!)

Have you even seen the inside of a hoarder's house, or helped to clean one?

[Fey]

I've a friend who lives with a horder, and I wish I could say that her house was nearly as bug free as your uncle's was. Thankfully he's pretty good about trash, but they've two garages, both full up to the door taller than me(I'm short, but still 5'4" at minimum) with STUFF. Mostly tools, but engines, parts, books, equipment for the house and yard. Inside they've got five fridges(only one actually is plugged in and functional), three stoves(same), enough camping and outdoors equipment to outfit a few dozen boy scout troups and box upon box of things I'm afraid to look at.

I don't mind when people 'collect' things, but what sorta bugs me is that he lives with his girlfriend(my friend), her daughter, HIS daughter and a couple other people. And inevitably they're the ones put out if he 1)gets something new or 2)has to do any sort of cleaning. Every time I go over there I feel the intense need to start pointing at things and going 'When was the last time you used/touched/looked at that? More than six months? Does it work? Donate it!' Heck, I might one of these days if only to save her from the house that may eat her.

[Kali_Namir]

Well what we found out was that he just didn't know where to begin. As soon as we started, he would voluntarily help. But it literally took us starting for him and promising that anything that looked like it had meaning (my dead grandmother's things that he inherited, or things that were made by his friends) we would keep...

It made it even easier on him when I showed him an item he was almost sure we had thrown away.

All I can say is see if he's interested and then convince him to at the least have a yard sale...

[Ginger]

Fey - A yard sale is a good suggestion. Taking it slow is the best approach. Let him know that you'd be willing to help him clean it, and as Kali has done, put anything that you think might have personal meaning to him in a safe place. Letting him know you aren't about to throw away something that might be very dear to him is the first step to gaining his trust. Start with the trash, move on to the things that look like they can be put in a yard sale and let him observe through the stuff to see if there is anything he would like to keep that he'd have use for in the near future, and organizing the things he would like to keep. Then you would need to do a thorough inspection and cleaning of the house, like checking for any infestations of bugs or rodents, and sterilizing all surfaces. I would suggest telling him that a specific room in the house would be his job, like Kali's family had her uncle do.

Good luck!

[hyjin]

I have been to a hoarders house before... worst place ever... i was working with my father and we had to put down hard wood flooring, redo a bathroom and work on a kitchen... even though they were told to move the stuff out of the way they never touched it so i was longer work for us to move all of their junk and work around it... the worst part is that both of their houses are the same and all they do is just move junk around between the houses... the good thing is that we no longer do work for them bc of working for them with that junk twice...

[Fey]

Okay, guys, we may need to have a talk about what a 'hoarder' really is. He doesn't think there's a problem. At all. Even to the point that child services have been called because of the mess, and he WON'T change even if it means that he looses his daughter and his girlfriend looses hers. The rest of the household just spot cleans/covers things so it doesn't happen.

I would KILL to get him to do a garage sale. I'm sure his girlfriend would LOVE to be able to get to her things that are currently hiding behind/under/in/around his things. Trust me, if it was as simple as having a garage sale we would have that place empty in no time. But first, and hardest, is to get him to see it's a problem. He doesn't, and as such the rest is moot.

[Kali_Namir]

My uncle didn't either at first. He would just not allow anyone in the house or anything like that. The main way he realized he had a problem was that he sunk into depression from getting laid off, and then ended up watching the show Hoarders, but I think the kicker was he had to go for a physical for his new job and I think he was informed of how unhealthy he was and it made him give my mom a chance.

Try having him see the show, that might help him recognize he's got a problem. Is he at all interested in monetary gain? Because that might make it easier to help him let go.

If anything, offer to help him Organize it better. Like put the things on shelves or in bins, anything to help make it safer and cleaner. That might help a little...

[Demonskid]

My mom's one friend is a hoarder. she got kicked out of her one apartment because of it. All the trash and stuff she collected drew in cockroaches.. she was so bad she was keeping stuff at friends houses and her boyfriends house.. When she was kicked out she had us go over there and clean.. each time i tried to throw something out she'd yell out "NO I NEED THAT!"

Also.. when mom goes to Boardmen to the hospital place to get that shot, her friend visits us. Normally she'd bring a bag or two.. now that she has a new place she brings a buggy FULL of bags x.x, ugh!

[Kali_Namir]

Throw away the stuff she brings when she's not paying attention???

[Demonskid]

can't.. those are her valubles.. she never leaves her most important stuff at home. she's paranoid about it being stolen

[Kali_Namir]

...REALLY?...

Okays...I'd start off by trying to get on her good side, act like your interested in what she has. Like ask her questions about what she has and why it's important to her...see if she can realize some don't mean that much to her...Then try to convince her that someone else could love her items as much as she could...???

[gremlin]

My friend's mother is a hoarder and their home is absolutely disgusting. I'm half-tempted to report the issue to someone so that the home will be inspected and cleaned up. It's just not a healthy environment for a family of five with a dog and cat to live. in. The entire house is cluttered and messy excluding my friend's room and her brother's room. The rest is just... ugh. They will eat and just dump the trash on the ground, juice boxes, chip bags, they leave both dirty and clean laundry everywhere. There's dozens of pictures and decorations cluttering the walls. It's such a eyesore and the floor is sticky and the walls are just filthy. I was only in there for ten minutes because I was dropping her off and she wanted me to see her kitten, it was when she first got her cat. I couldn't believe it. o___o

[Kali_Namir]

Yeah that's pretty much hoe my uncle's house was...only there was nothing really on the walls but a picture of my great-grandma...

[Quiet Man Cometh]

We moved into a hoarders house. Sparing the details of how we got there, I'll go straight to the cleanup. It took us 13 dumpsters to empty the basement and garage, not to mention the (big) house. We had to remove *all* the carpets and hired a friend to pull them out because the carpet guys refused on the basis of it being a health hazard (it was.) The neighbour (god bless her!) spent 8 hours doing dishes on the first day, we found about 12 sets of china. There was food still sitting in fruit bowls that was white with mould (we guessed it was a mango). The neighbour rounded up almost the entire block to clean all the stuff out. We had to scrape about 6 inches of hardened dried lint off of the laundry room floor after collecting I don't know how many bags of dirty clothes from the laundry room and from on top of the dinner table. The basement floor had to be bleached (thank god it wasn't carpet!) It was a nightmare and we were living out of a fifth wheel while we were getting the house done up.

If anyone is wondering why in hell we bought teh thing, it's a *very* nice house and we knew the guy built it used quality stuff so that the subfloors and all the important, non-replacebale house parts were unscathed. :)

[Kali_Namir]

That's kind of brilliant actually!!! I mean my uncle's house is a 4 bedroom, 1.5 bath, full kitchen, dinning room, living room, finished basement, and it has a pool! It's a really nice house.

I loved finding the house under all of it. It took a lot of work to clean, but seeing the house emerge was fun...

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Even better were the little miscellabous treasures we unearthed from the *clean* remains after all the icky work was done. I found LOTR on audio cassette (you know? Those small, plastic things with spinning wheels and black strips wrapped around them that pre-date CD's? ;)) and we found a special edition board game of Monoplogy based on our own small town! We're sure it's not part of the company but are curious as to how it came into existance. Fort St. John - opoly. Are you serious?