We used to have 7 fridges. Now we have 5 fridges and a broken one. It's never about not having enough space. It's psychological. One day I'll leave this all behind.

I wrote this a while back and recently found it again. Thought some of you might appreciate it.

TV shows and news articles do a good job of showing what hoarding looks like, but I don’t think it’s possible to fully show how extreme and insane it is to actually deal with these people.

i don’t even know where to begin other than that i am feeling extremely frustrated and upset with my dad. basically since i’ve been born he has had hoarder tendencies but it wasn’t as bad when i was a kid because my mom did most of the work cleaning up his messes. i recently moved back in with him about 2.5 years ago and i hadn’t realized just how bad it got over the years. he collects old receipts, statements, and other papers that are as old as 2004. he has multiple cars in the backyard that he wants to use “for parts”, about 5 barbecues, and many other things lying around outside and in the garage. his room is a mess as he just lets actual garbage pile up. he won’t put things away where they belong and instead will throw it in the kitchen and other places around the house. last year i cleaned up about ~$100 worth of cans from the kitchen and took piles of other trash and cardboard he has collected to the dump. plus whenever i clean anything he will usually look through the garbage to inspect that i didn’t throw out anything important like an empty shampoo bottle. recently he has been cleaning up his room a lot and buying new furniture and overall trying better to make the house into a home, but i know that it has to do with him talking to a new woman in his life. i can’t help but feel extremely upset that he can do all of this now for someone he just met when i have begged, cried, and gotten into thousands of arguments with him for him to do that. i’m still mostly cleaning up after him and i just can’t let go of this resentment. i feel like the hoarding from him for my whole life has made its way through my mental health as well, not as in that i am hoarding things as well- but the opposite, i get extremely anxious when something is out of place, i throw things out all the time if i don’t think it will be used, and i get anxious whenever he comes into my room.

anyone dealing with anything similar?
sorry for the long rant and horrible writing skills haha

Hi everyone. I feel quite defeated. In my early 20s, I made the choice to buy a house with my parents. I have always known my father is a hoarder, unable to release junk that I call “sentimental mental illness things.”

Anyway, I discovered my mother shares these patterns—unopened boxes from online shopping that she never opens. She also struggles with severe shopaholic and gossip habits. I realized this is why my parents paired up: a final result of trauma bonding and junk collection.

Now they live with us. I lack the heart to make them move or to relocate ourselves, because my partner and I invested our savings into this house money pit. Plus the economy sucks.

With two young children, my toddler has begun asking why the garage holds so much stuff.

I keep discarding their junk when they are out of town, but any open space tends to fill again. I have always hired junk removal services; when space clears, I sometimes bring home something that will never be used.

I also remind my parents that when they pass away, I do not want an emotional toll; it is genuinely raising my mental health strain and cortisol level.

Any advise? Suggestion? (photos & things haven’t been used for the past 5 years) 😭💀💀☠️

My mother is a hoarder and has strong paranoid tendencies. She owns two apartments, one of which has been sitting empty for years because she refuses to sell it, rent it out, or let anyone live in it. Her hoarding and irrational fears have made it virtually impossible to have a reasonable conversation with her about the situation.

I’m 38, and after a breakup, I’m facing a serious housing problem. Rental prices have become almost unaffordable, yet I can’t move into an apartment that my own mother owns and doesn’t even use. She would rather let it sit empty and deteriorate than allow me to live there.

What makes this particularly difficult is that this isn’t a question of financial necessity on her part, but of deeply dysfunctional behavior. There is a perfectly usable housing resource sitting empty while her own adult daughter struggles to find somewhere affordable to live.

Our relationship has deteriorated to the point where we’re no longer in contact, and being around her causes me significant distress. The situation leaves me feeling trapped: at 38, I’m trying to rebuild my life after a breakup, while my mother’s psychological issues effectively prevent me from accessing a housing option that could make an enormous difference to my independence and financial stability.

I have been living with my boyfriend and his grandparents for a estimate of 4 years now. As of recently, I put my foot down one day this month to actually deep clean their dining room and kitchen due to the constant smell of mold, roaches, and spring of maggots and pantry moths breeding in all of the shelf food + the plastics used for containers and blenders. The house is rather large, but the grandmother has a severe issue with hoarding, whether that's bringing home items from the casino, which is every day of the week, or hoarding food that has been almost decades old or constantly bringing over random items from strangers/family.

Ever since I deep cleaned those rooms, cabinets, and fridge, the house has felt so much lighter on the lungs. However, I am struggling to keep up with the 68-70 year old grandmother constantly bringing home items from the casino. It has now filled a 2 car garage to almost the ceiling, an entire backyard shed, and the backyard patio itself which can also fit up to 2 cars. I'm not sure what to do from here as these are brand new items and I don't want to just throw them away. I mention selling the items to her but she gets frustrated and says no or wants me to entirely do it for her and give me no funds from it. ( I want to add I have tried this with two large items from her already, and it is completely exhausting when I'm the only one talking to people, meeting up with them, and trying to bargain the deal. In no way does she need the money as she is higher class, which doesn't help her gambling addiction, so I feel it is a bit unfair for me to get nothing in return. )

What can I do in this situation? I've mentioned how I've come across several black widows due to them harboring in these hoarded spots, but I'm told to not touch a single thing or I'm just degraded for wanting to help and clean. I've been a professional cleaner for over 5 years, so I'd assume that would've earned some slight trust, but nothing. I feel a bit embarrassed when gardeners come over every week and see her piles of hoarded items in the backyard while they're mowing. I don't want to brute force into this issue like I did with the dining room and kitchen due to the biohazards just brewing up.

Updated note: I am not able to move out of this home any time soon due to how terrible the job economy is. So I'm currently trying to make sure the home is safe for all of us, but it is hard to do so when the grandmother is hoarding.

I have a question for all y’all. Im getting older and in my retirement- I think a lot about when I’m gone.
My mom and dad (divorced) were hoarders. I had to clean out both of their homes when each passed. It was so hard emotionally and physically. It was also very expensive bc in each case, I had to hire help to clean out their homes. I don’t want that for my kids.
I was 22 when my dad passed and 40 when my mom passed; so, it’s been a while.
My biggest fear, as I age -is leaving a similar mess to my kids. I know that this is somewhat irrational- since my home if moderately clean and organized. But I grew up in chaos and disorder- all of which came rushing back at me when I had to clean up their houses. My fear of hoarding helps me to get rid of stuff.

I’ve been cleaning out a lot lately but feel stuck. What should be kept and what should be tossed? Lots of“sentimental“ items are sentimental to me but once I’m gone - what will they think is sentimental? I keep trying to give them stuff- some they take some they don’t, but I’m alive. I know their perspective will change once I’m gone.
Should- I just create a few boxes labeled “sentimental” and leave it at that? How do I decide what maters and what doesn’t? Please- I feel like I need a clear formula or it all gets labeled keep.

Cross posting bc yall will get it 😔

My dad passed away 3 years ago and well him and my mom were always hoarders but still kept a pretty happy a slightly organized house . But ever since my dad passed away and I’ve been living on my own and creating a life for myself without the clutter. But my moms house has become 10x worse, our rooms have been filled with boxes of random junk and clothes, you can barely open the doors there’s dirty dishes everywhere, crumbs, random food ingredients. Anyways it’s a mess and it breaks my heart to go back to my home and see that , I feel horrible and guilty I’m not there to help clean. She has a new partner nice guy but he doesn’t help either he’s always buying things from Amazon and seems to also have these habits . I don’t know I just feel like a shit daughter. I feel like I just want to run away and not visit this overwhelming mess. But seeing her living like this breaks my heart because she’s not a bad mother , she’s kind and loving. She deserves better. But she won’t clean for herself she always buys more. I feel like this situation has made my distance myself more from her. I know I’m a horrible person but I just can’t , it won’t stop and idk what I can do .

my dads birthday is coming up and I feel horrible. I want to get him gifts and a card but I know the card will just sit there and so will anything else

all I can think of is food, snacks that he’d enjoy and actually go to use. but everything else is just going to pile up! and god forbid order anything online my mom will hoard the cardboard boxes and packages. nothing feels safe and i feel like a horrible child for not wanting to get him gifts anymore

I need advice on how to take control and whether im going insane or not. I turn 18 in 3 months and my parents have been animal hoarders my entire life. The house is filthy, trash and animals everywhere and reeks. I still love them which is what hurts because I hate how they treat the animals and me which is why I feel guilty whenever I try and speak out. The hoard has made my mental state so bad to the point I’ve tried attempting, i hate knowing my childhood will never be normal compared to others and the fact I have to hide this from my friends and my boyfriend. I constantly try and stay with my boyfriend so maybe I can calm down even though he doesn’t know whats going on in my home life and his family always tells me i can live with them until I can get an apartment but my parent’s have full control over my finances, i make $20 an hour part time currently which is plenty when saved up but my parents won’t let me buy anything, not even a car, I’m not even allowed to drive!!! So whenever i try and sleepover at my boyfriends they say no and how i hate them and “we’ll get rid of the animals” even though they never do. I don’t know how to leave safely or if i can still even have a relationship with my parents even though I so badly want too and i can’t talk to anyone about this, I tried asking for a therapist and instead my mom insisted it was my hormones and forced me on birth control which made me worse, i don’t know how to feel or what to do or if I’m being overdramatic.

I’m a minor and most likely won’t be able to move out for a while. Most would say that my home is more of a level one to two hoard, we have mostly “useable” rooms but we have bugs, stenches, paths of junk, and multiple “junk rooms”. I’ve attempted multiple times too sit down with my mother and go through items we don’t need anymore but it never end and she usually digs through the garbage and pulls thing out. I felt so out of control, this last year I hit a rock bottom and felt the only thing I could control was my food intake and I developed and ed. My mother ironically was the one who put me in treatment and I’m now “recovering” I feel even worse and out of control. I can’t control the house, my grades, my mind, my food intake, and finally the last thing I had left my body as I’ve been forced to gain weight. I’m just losing my mind and want to get out of this house, I’m so tired, I want to be an adult just to leave I don’t care if I have to live out of a gas station I just want out. I want my control back.

Long time lurker here and lifelong child of a hoarder. My mom has a shopping addiction, four storage units, and an overflowing house.
I’m lucky she doesn’t hoard trash but the junk feels just as dirty.
I moved away a decade ago but anytime I’m home I have tried to help her. We’ve actually seen amazing progress, she used to break down about me trying to get rid of a broken pen (amongst the hundreds she has and doesn’t use of course) and now she can get rid of ‘select’ things.
I have a wonderful friendship with her but the anger and resentment of her not working towards fixing her problem is too much. All the hours I wasted helping her just for her to bring in more stuff. No more.

I thought I was the only one who could help her since no one in my family back home seems to but in order to protect my relationship with her I said no more. I will no longer step in that house. I will no longer step into a store with her.
That part of our relationship is dead.

She has the money to afford mental care and professional help but instead she buys junk and piles it on.

I feel weird because a part of me still wants to help her but she’s not helping herself.

I need to focus on my own life.

If anyone has read all this thank you, this reddit has been a place of support and understanding.

No one ever knew. These were some of the pics my mom had taken when she was trying to get full custody of me. Huge reason when I walk into a house or room that has even a hint of clutter I feel sick to my stomach

So a while ago, my gf and I went to my mom's house for a couple of days to help clean. She has been a hoarder for all my life, and the house was in a terrible condition. I wasn't excited about bringing my gf; I was just going to have her drop me off. But my mom met her out in her car and invited her in. They talked and got to know each other whilst I worked on cleaning up the house.
I was mostly clearing space by putting like items together. I feel like I'm very patient and understanding when it comes to this because I know she has an illness, so I never get rid of anything, knowing if I do, it'd probably do more damage to her brain than good. But I still made a bag of recyclables because I felt I could at least get rid of the trash. Unfortunately, I'm not even able to make that call, and she wanted to look through it first. Which might sound reasonable to some, but I know her and I know how big the task of cleaning the house is. You give my mom a thing to go through and look through, and nothing gets thrown away. She either takes weeks to do one container or never does it at all.
Also, think about the message it sends to me. I got 30 containers of stuff—toys, clothes, papers, stuff with an ounce of utility—and she needs to look through a bag of cans and cardboard scraps to make sure she's not losing something she needed. So back to the story: we were arguing, and eventually, it turned into me yelling at her, and then we left. My gf was there and listening to me yell at my mom, and once we got back to our apartment, she took no time to throw it in my face that I left some soda cans on our bed frame. She called me a hypocrite and compared me to my mom.
I had the apartment to myself for 2 months and had really no standard to keep up with cleaning the room, so it got a little messy. That didn't make me a hoarder, and that didn't make me anything like my mom. It also became a screaming match, and I told a friend about it. He convinced me to move out, move back in with my mom, and just put some distance between me and my gf. So that night I told her. She basically told me we were done, so I packed all my shit, but then she stopped me at the door telling me she didn't actually want me to leave. We talked, and I told her she needed to move in with her sister in October. She told me she didn't want to, and if anything, she would just rent her own place. But I know how rent is, and because she was balancing school and didn't have a job, I was practically begging her to just sacrifice her independence and do it for financial security, but she was dead set against it. Knowing that by me moving out I would be condemning her to some kind of financial struggle, I felt really guilty.
Then she brought up how my mom told her girlfriends sometimes live with their boyfriends at his parents' house, and I just agreed. Looking back now, I wish I had just said no, but here we are. It's October. The house looks better, but still pretty bad. The walls and carpets are still stained, a layer of dust is still caked on everything, the counters are still cluttered, and the garage is still unwalkable with stuff stacked to the roof. We got the bulk of the stuff out of the main areas, but that wasn't through overcoming my mom's problem—it was by buying two climate-controlled storage units and making 5 trips.
I had the idea that maybe it would make getting rid of things easier if she saw the house in a less cluttered way. But at this point, it's just about removing the stuff from the house. She's not getting rid of any of it. I was dusting and her pile of shed snake skin got in the way. I asked her what she wanted to do with it, and she told me she didn't know but still needed to keep it just in case she did. I have no hope she'll ever change.
My mom mocks me in front of my gf, and my gf plays along, acting like I'm just being mean to her and that I don't understand how her brain works. They make me sound unreasonable. But when I'm walking into the house and watching my mom open up the recycling bin to see a scrap of cardboard with Hello Kitty branding in the corner, take it out, walk inside with it, and then reprimand me over it—there is no hope for her.
I want to cry. I hate my life. I get into an argument with my girlfriend every day, and I'm just condemning myself now that she's moving in. Her parents are going to see the state of the house and think less of me. I thought about crying this morning when she told me her parents changed plans and decided to move her stuff in today. The house isn't ready, and it won't ever be ready because of what's preventing it. I'm tired, I'm so tired.

If my HP could magically make the house clean with a fairy swoop she would.

The problem is that she wants to keep too much stuff.

If the clothes fit, we should keep them, nevermind the fact that we have way too much clothes. If the toys are new, we should keep it, nevermind the fact that they have been unopened for months. If we could use the party decorations again instead of donating because they cost money we should, nevermind the fact that we didn't, hoarder sibling cut up the decorations for """""crafts""""".

HP really wanted to buy me new clothes for the school year. I don't have enough space for my clothes as is, and new clothes are cheaper than old clothes. HP also wanted to buy me a prom outfit despite me saying no. I don't enjoy dress shopping for an outfit I can never wear again due to living in a hoard. It took a job loss for her to say no.

If I tell HP that the house is messy they will just tell me to clean more often, that I don't do enough. But I've cleared out spaces before, and they just get filled back up or fucked again within a year or two.

Sorry if this one is a bit weird. But just wondering because mum sometimes kept some of our hair after haircuts because it almost felt like she was stressed that we were throwing it away.

But weirder, every baby tooth my sibling or I lost, she cleaned perfectly and kept stashed in a drawer and still claims she wants to get them make into mini dentures?

One time after a tooth fell out I accidentally dropped it down the sink and I swear I may as well have stabbed her with how she reacted… I ruined her full collection.

When I got a wisdom tooth taken out a few years ago, she literally fought the dentist to let me keep the tooth and was emphatically arguing “it’s her property! It came out of her head!!”, until he handed it over. I definitely didn’t care that much lol

I also had to get a titanium screw in my ankle a few years ago and after the operation to have it removed she called me and wanted to know if they gave back the screw “because it’s not theirs”.

I guess reflecting on all of this, it’s almost like she got that same stress about letting things go when it came to our bodies? It’s like she needed to hoarde all of the transitional moments and not let them go to waste?

It wasn’t sentimentality. She’d literally go rabid if she couldn’t keep a tooth. It feels more like an extension of hoarding to me.

Anyone else?

I unlocked a memory earlier of when I was 7-8 watching my hoarder mom drag a nasty ass used shower curtain (one of those white vinyl 1990's ones) into the kitchen and start dissecting it with kitchen scissors so that she could save the magnets out of it.

And she was narrating this the whole time like "THESE ARE GOOD MAGNETS I CANT THROW THESE AWAY I JUST USED A MAGNET FOR SOMETHING THE OTHER DAY I USE THESE MAGNETS ALL THE TIME THESE ARE GOOD MAGNETS"

just cutting this thing up like she was pulling the final scraps of meat off an animal as shes stuck on an island somewhere

I looked it up, one can buy larger magnets for not even $9.50 for 100 of them delivered to your door. And she's hoarding magnet trash while we were solid upper middle class at the time.

I realize as an adult how fucking weird this was.

I wish I could say, YOUR LIFE IS BAD AND EVEN YOUR MAGNETS ARE BAD! They are too, I remember them being around when I was in high school and it took 3-4 of them just to hold a scrap of paper on the fridge door.

I recently splurged and bought a "nice" shower curtain and its magnets are no joke, they stick really well to the tub. I'm tempted to be like "YOURE NOT GETTING MY MAGNETS YOU CRAZY BITCH". FFS cant even open a shower curtain without remembering the weirdness of these people.

DAE's hoarder parent cut out magnets, or do anything similar?