Hoarding

The things that would stand out different from most hoarders tv shows is they made reference to me shooting and killing my abusive BF in self defense (but not detailed info) and I was the house that had model horses E-V-E-R-Y-where.

Oh! I think I saw that one again in the past couple of weeks. Did your son have very long hair?

How have you done with keeping the house clutter free since then? I always wonder because it's so hard. They rarely do follow up shows.

I really admire you for going through that. I feel like I'm talking to a star!

Yes my son has long black hair.

The hardest part to keep the clutter out is the kitchen. We eat a lot of pizza and it seems most of our foods come in containers that take up space so if we miss a trash pick up for a week or two the kitchen can really get out of hand. We've found it works best if we team clean the kitchen together.

I wish they would do follow up shows. It would be interesting. I continued seeing the T for a year after and that helped with the motivation to clear the clutter.

The T that they hired had been a therapist for a long time but he had never worked with a hoarder so when they asked him to do the show he asked TLC if they could refer him to another T who had experience with hoarding so he could do a better job. He talked to that T by phone before he even met me. Unlike the organizer who had never worked with a hoarder but didn't feel that she needed to learn anything from anyone else's experience because she knows everything already.

I'm a star? Like the Titanic maybe. Oh my, I don't think I want that to be my fifteen minutes of fame. I hear I am on Netflix now. TLC sent me a DVD and I watched it once and that's enough.

Lol, I didn't mean that in a bad way at all. The hoarding shows are very inspirational for me. I'm glad they paid for a year of therapy, and you're doing a lot better now! I love the success stories. I wish I had the motivation to just do a single thing everyday. If I'd just do that - but the problem is not having places for anything to go. For example, I don't have kitchen drawers so there's no easy place to put flatware, etc. It's a very low rent place. And I have no furniture.

I found some plastic organizers with 4-5 fairly large drawers on wheels at Staples and I bought two of those that I use in different rooms. They could be useful for all kinds of different items. Despite being such a messy person I actually enjoy the process of planning organization. It is the mundane day to day follow through that is difficult for me.

I can understand that perfectly. Were the organizers expensive? I've been wanting ones like that.

It was nice that TLC paid for the therapy to continue after the show finished. There were ups and downs to doing the show. The T was very kind and somewhat helpful. I have a jacket that my stepdad gave to me for Christmas when I was in 6th grade. It is clearly too small to ever wear again but I am unable to let it go because he picked it out for me and he died when I was 20 y/o and it is special. The T asked if I could take a picture of the jacket to remember it and would I then be able to let it go. I still have the jacket but I sometimes think about doing that but I'd like to know that whoever gets the jacket will treat it well, you know?

I really liked the producer that was on site and I (and everyone else on the film crew) disliked the assistant producer. The asst was a b----. But just the experience of filming was very interesting. I learned so much about lighting and sound. They placed blue filters over my incandescent lights, little things like that I never knew went on during filming and how many takes you had to do to get something right. "Now enter the room again and ...." Several of the people on the film crew said my son had a really good voice and should look for an opportunity to do voice overs. That would be cool.

I don't know exactly how much they paid the T or the organizer. The T would tell me we still had money in the account at each visit so I didn't have to pay until the last few visits. They paid me $3500 which sounds like a lot but when you consider the humiliation of having friends/coworkers/family see you most inner weakness it doesn't seem like much money. My pdoc said he had not seen it but his assistant had and he said she said it was really quite a mess and I was like, what do you think I have been trying to tell you all this time when I tell you I need some help!

I think they were about $25 for each set. You might be able to find something similar at Target. I have found handy sized plastic totes at Target that were ideal for transporting my model horses in the car to model horse shows.

Great, thanks!

I really don't think I could go through with that because I don't really have a support system like friends or family to make me feel 'normal' while going through a big thing like that. I can't imagine having a film crew in this place or anything. It would be so hard with my bad back. I've often enjoyed how they make areas look so big though. I'm wondering how big they could make my apartment look, lol. Probably pretty big because my apartment is quite long. I wouldn't mind the money, help, and therapy. But I don't think I could physically get through it with my back. I can only stand up for a couple minutes at a time.

That's the problem with doing this myself, though. I hope my friend can start helping me soon!

Oh, I found some looking online at Staples! Some are a bit more expensive but I really need them. I just don't know if they're in store only or can be bought online. This is exciting!

Oh I hope you can get some of those organizers! They really help.

I don't have much of a support system either. My mom is a hoarder and TLC wanted to film her house but my sister said, no way. Then they asked if my two sisters would like to come help clean in a scene to be filmed. They came. The producer said they try to get family involved for both the emotional support and family often comes to help even when they aren't filming. I asked my sister if they would come down to help clean again and she said no. Then a few weeks later I asked if she would come help again when they came back to film again and she said yes. She just wanted to be on TV at the cost of my dignity. (I didn't allow her to be in the final shoot to share in the glory of the reveal though since she had contributed nothing to getting it there)

It isn't the first time she has been like this. When I shot my BF someone from the newspaper called her (my mom's house) to get their side of the story. She talked to them and that evening she told me she had talked to them and they wanted her to call back the next day and I said, no don't call. She said, but I promised, as if they were more important than me. She did and she got her name in the newspaper so she was happy. B----. I told my attorney about that later that week and he said tell your sister to keep her damn mouth shut. My sentiments exactly, but she doesn't care about anyone but herself. Which is sad because she lives with my mom and my other sister and she is no fun to live with and nice sister sometimes schedules days off when she knows evil sister will be working so she can have a moment of peace and quiet. Evil sister is very dominating and I sometimes plan my visits to avoid her too. Wow, I really detoured this thread, didn't I? Sorry. Just sharing I don't have much support except for my son.

That's a lot, though, having your son. I only have one friend and he lives out state. My mom and sisters also live out of state. So I'm very alone. My friend would never consent to being filmed. And the surrounding neighborhood people would be laughing and pretending to be nice. No, it would be awful. I just have to do it myself. I want those organizers though, I'll have to save money for them!!! I want the 5 drawer ones. Maybe a wall unit.

I have found several things at Staples discounted for clearance. I wander through the store every few months; I've never shopped their online store so not sure how often they get clearance stuff.

I saw this on target.com and they have free shipping
Sterilite® Storage Drawers - Pink : Target

Oh, nice! They stack too! Thank you for these suggestions, they're great!

Not much of a detour; I really appreciate you taking the time to detail your experience. I think you're very brave because I know how tough it is to have anyone go through your belongings. I'm sorry about how things went and I imagine it's tough to write about.

Yoda:

I remember watching your episode. It's one of the few episodes that I've cried while watching because I felt so much empathy for you and what you've had to experience. I'm sorry to hear that the organizer was useless but I'm glad that you and your son are keeping up progress!

It's really brave of you to have done that; and just as brave to be sharing your experience here with others.

Wow, reading about your experiences with TLC was really interesting. It sounds like you lucked out with the T, but that 'organizer' sounds awful. Growing up with someone whose cleaning method was to shove stuff in random boxes and stack them up along the walls is part of why I have such a problem keeping my house clean now. Nice to know someone makes a living at that!

I really identify with a lot of what people have written here. I don't think of myself as a hoarder, but sometimes when I see how much stuff other people have compared to me, I wonder.

I packed four extra large space bags full of sweaters last summer, with moth balls. Half the sweaters have moth holes, stains, and are really in such a condition that I should toss them. I don't because

a) they are cashmere and that's expensive (even though these sweaters were either from thrift shops or presents).
b) I could wear them around the house only.
c) I could use them just for camping.
d) some of them came from my aunt who died four years ago. She weighed 100 lbs more than me, so they are very roomy.
e) A lot of them were gifts.
f) One of the ones with moth holes I only got to wear three times before it got chewed up.

If I get rid of them, I feel like I should put them to good use. They can't go to a charity shop because they have holes, but maybe I could make cat toys from them? Then getting rid of them just becomes another monumentally difficult task because I have to think of the best way to use them up.

I have been helping a neighbor who was married to someone with extreme hoarding tendencies. Their place was visible from the highway because there was so much in the yard and you could not walk through the house. It has been amazing to see how quickly she has worked to get the place cleared out. That has been sort of motivational, but I've also come home with extra junk I don't need!!!

I feel this way about so many things. When it comes to throwing anything away, depending on the object, I usually have a list of solid reasons for keeping whatever it is, like you have with your sweaters. But then I get "stuck" and never actually do any of the potential things on that list. That leaves the sweaters — or in my case clothes in general — hanging around and taking up space.

Sometimes it's about attachment to things and other times, I just don't know...
Right now I'm trying hard to get rid of old underwear. For decades I had guinea pigs. When socks and undergarments needed retiring, I'd simply wash them, cut them and give the fabric to the guinea pigs for their beds. Then they'd get tossed when I cleaned the cage and I'd feel okay with it because there truly was no more "use" in them.
I don't have piggies anymore (not well enough to care for a pair) so when it's time to throw underwear away, I feel weird about it. But there is nothing more I can do with it and it's taking up room!
Since I've been taking Clomipromine, throwing this kind of thing out has gotten much better. But it's like, why is it a problem in the first place?

I'm feeling so urgent about getting my place cleared out but my back is so bad I just zone out and don't think about it. When I do think about it I look around and it's so hard because of the physical strain... I don't know. I wish I had friends here who could help me with the physical stuff. Or that I had an actual doctor treating me for the back pain.

Angelique, I hope your back gets better and you can get some stuff cleared out.

I read something somewhere that said that one of the problems a lot of hoarders/clutterers have is that they treat getting rid of stuff as two decisions:

1. Do I want to get rid of this?
2. If so, what is the next perfect home for this item?

The article I read pointed out that it's okay to just get rid of the stuff. To not worry about having to find the perfect home for something we no longer even want. I find that putting stuff in trash bags (when I can make myself do it) is a much better option for me than separating it all out into things I will give to X, stuff I can recycle, stuff I can recreate into something else.

It's so hard to just get to the point where I can make a decision about whether or not I want to keep something - by the time I start working on what to do with it next, I'm exhausted-- and then if I make the decision that I want to turn my sweaters into cat beds, I have to actually follow through - it just never happens.

I really identify with the giving old underwear/socks to the piggies. I was sewing cat toys out of old socks. I have a ton of old clothes cut up into rags, but there are only so many rags you can use...

These are really good points. Yesterday I pulled something out of a pile I was going to throw away, a pair of pants. But when I pulled it out I realized it's still fine and just needs washing. So now it's someplace else but still in the way and I'm not sure if I should toss it or keep it!

Yes, this sounds like me!

And it's likely you should toss it, but why get rid of a perfectly good pair of pants? I know the feeling. This thread makes me feel so much better about what's happening in my brain.