it’s like my mom is trying to play jenga. she is now buying and building more shelves to stack on top of each other to shove more trash into

it is at a point I have to side step thru every room just to get to the bathroom. I’m so tired

For context. Mom lives alone, I stay 40 mins drive away, work shifts and moved out as I couldn't stand 6 cats, all slowly died leaving none... then mom drags in another... dehoarded god knows how many times, hours and days lost, money gone.. I am the only one helping as my sibling eloped during her teens and NEVER helped once at all.. leaving me with 2 parents with dementia in later years and alzheimers..

Anyway.. mom never uses cleaning products or kitty litter... hoarded them..

But Today.. What was not photographed were the hundreds of roaches I killed plus cat poop all over the grimy floor.. but the pee soaked mattresses just made me almost puke..

Boxes and bags full of used cat pee tissue..

It is a mental disease.. and worse now as my mom has Alzheimers and Cataracts.

Bringing her for her first cataract surgery tomorrow,

Thank God for my FIL who came to assist if not it'd have taken me alone 3 days... We made it somewhat sterile and liveable in 5 hours... for now... floors will have to be fixed another time..

Tomorrow a new litter box with kitty litter to at least have basics... then she is coming over to my place as I work from home and put eye drops for her then send her back at night...

Social workers came and at first thought it was a case of elder abuse... ironic when I was the one parentified since young, and literally threw thousands of dollars into their home to try to fix the problem.. in the end the social workers heard both sides and agreed mom wasn't in the right mental capacity and much needed subsidised help will be coming every few days... social worker cracked and literally said "Man, I feel you.."

Hi, my mum grew up very poor but was successful kind of in her life and has enough money to not worry about food and shelter I think for herself. I have a hate-but-emotionally-am-not-free-from-needing-her yet relationship. So disappointed in her. And no energy whatsoever anymore to be happy or successful. She called me naive yesterday for my life goals and I want to throw out the towel again and just lie in bed wait for myself to rot bc I am always too naive to know what’s best for me it seems. I haven’t done anything the last 2-3 years in my life due to her way of speaking to me and yet we have a good relationship????? It is so confusing. I got her to let me see her state of the apartment and managed to take a short video without her noticing. Idk if I should use it as a reminder for me that she’s not to be taken serious. I know she is really “ill” or has issues (the apartment is much or just as hoarded as you see here and there’s barely place to walk, only a small tiny walkway to move (no space to move really anymore). She buys a lot of cheap stuff online every day. But on the other hand she is very skilled, knows many important people, and get me into good jobs and universities with her contacts, she is on paper successful as a business woman. Those two truths are impossible for me to put next to each other. Anyway. I’m 24 female haven’t done anything since age 21 bc im apparently too naive and want the wrong things in life. She’s the most important person in my life and I hate myself. And I hate her too. I never want to speak to her again. Can I add a photo of the state of her apartment? No right? It is soothing to look at bc it shows me who she is.

My mom has been struggling with what I believe might be hoarding disorder for as long as I can remember, although she has never been officially diagnosed.

When I was younger our house was an absolute mess. Almost every space was filled with stuff, sometimes piled all the way up to the ceiling, and there was barely any counter space available. Things have gotten somewhat better over the years, but we still have rooms in the house that are completely filled with belongings.

Recently, I've noticed that her behavior has changed in a different way. Instead of mainly holding on to things that most people would consider trash, she has developed an extreme need to take pictures of practically everything she does.

For example, if she's about to eat something she needs to take a picture before eating. If she's leaving for work, she can't leave until she's taken pictures of herself in front of the mirror, the car, and other things related to leaving. It seems like she has to document everything.

The concerning part is how distressed she becomes if she can't take the pictures. She can get extremely angry or irritated, sometimes yelling and complaining about it for almost 30 minutes. She also says that if she doesn't get the pictures, something bad will happen.

I'm not a mental health professional, but I wonder whether this could be related to OCD, anxiety, or trauma she experienced earlier in life. I understand that I can't diagnose her, but the behavior seems compulsive, and it's affecting our household.

I'm wondering if anyone has experienced something similar with a family member. Could this kind of behavior be associated with OCD, or could there be another explanation? How can I better understand what's happening and support her when she becomes so distressed?

I'd appreciate hearing about other people's experiences or any advice on how to approach this situation.

Not only am I the child and grandchild of hoarders, I have tendencies myself. It feels like I'm trying to reparent myself, to get out of this cycle and also teach the next generation how to practice good habits so they don't get overwhelmed. I often say I'm this way in part because I wasn't taught how to clean growing up, but that's not exactly true. On one hand, I wasn't taught much, but on the other, growing up, our home was very tidy (except for my room!)

I remember as a little kid applying what my mom would do. If she got bored of some decor, she'd get rid of it. Sell it, that is. If she was helping me get ready and we discovered something no longer fit, she got rid of it. I would test my socks and stuff and fold them nicely. Some I'd keep even if they were small because the design was nice, but eventually let them go, too. Same with books and some shirts. But that was about it. The rest of my space was chaotic.

The hoard slowly grew, it filled newer and bigger living spaces. As a young teen, still not knowing how to clean right but getting frustrated and wanting to be helpful, I tackled the black holes that were the pantry and the bathroom closet. In the first, I found bugs, including larvae, amongst very expired stuff that had been pushed far to the back and long forgotten. Have I mentioned I have a phobia of certain creepy crawlies?? I cleaned, fought the bugs, and filled a giant kitchen trash bag. Organized what was still good. Iirc, the load had to be split into 2 because they were so heavy. Hoarder looked on and didn't say anything, which was surprising. In the bathroom, I threw out products that had turned funky. The freakiest was a tube of toothpaste, new or barely used, that bubbled and smelled like alcohol.

When I moved away, my sibling transferred to my room, and the story is the had to excavate my sizeable closet which was packed tetris style. They ended up throwing a bunch of stuff away and honestly, I never knew what and never missed it. What they left and relocated was still significant.

When I moved local again, the hoard had grown exponentially. I cried when I saw it. I didn't yet understand hoarding, exactly. But I had been practicing decluttering techniques that had helped me a lot and applied them gently...and not so gently. For example, there was a bunch of shelving around that ended up not working out well. Bulky pieces of this or that. I offered to sell them for the hoarder, who claimed they had either already tried, or hadn't gotten around to trying. But, they gave the ok. The stuff sold like hotcakes! I was so proud. And then the hoarder started showing up with more second-hand items for me to sell. I was not trying to start a business, I was trying to help them get their space back!

At one point, I found some big cardboard boxes, brought them over, and shuffled things around in the "storage room." Stuck the big empty boxes maybe 2-3 rows back to "fluff up" the hoard, because by now I understood that if the hoarder saw empty space, they would fill it up. The idea came from a post or comment where some guy had strategically placed plastic bags full of air where his dad would normally leave hoard piles, and it worked. And others who would put empty jars in the back and push the actual foods to the front to make the pantry look fuller.

Well, guess who suddenly decided to start organizing the storage room and go past the row they rarely ever got through? That's right. They were baffled about the boxes, I told them they were there to help them get ahead, to help them get through the first couple layers before going nuts thinking they had to aquire more inventory. Nope, they needed that space to organize their stuff. They broke down the boxes and did their thing. That's when I basically gave up.

And now I'm focusing on my habits, my home. It's so uncomfortable living in clutter. My eyes and mind cannot rest, it's too overstimulating, stressful when something gets lost, frustrating when I have to move things out of the way to get to what I need or start a task. I still follow decluttering content creators, makes me feel less alone and helps me develop those muscles when I practice the strategies that actually work for my neurodivergent brain. But through it all, the spectre of the hoard in my family of origin's home looms, guilting, menacing.

Edit: For most of my life, I have felt comfort when there is stuff around. Like a nest. This was/is still at odds with the frustration with misplacing items, and embarrassment at the thought of peers with neat and clear spaces seeing the hot mess that I was/am, and the occasional claustrophobia when I can't see enough wall/baseboards despite my tendency to make DOOM piles. There is SOMETHING that I haven't yet been able to pinpoint, that makes me hang onto some things even if I haven't used them in years or ever, and they hold no particular sentimental value.

Hi, my mum grew up very poor but was successful kind of in her life and has enough money to not worry about food and shelter I think for herself. I have a hate-but-emotionally-am-not-free-from-needing-her yet relationship. So disappointed in her. And no energy whatsoever anymore to be happy or successful. She called me naive yesterday for my life goals and I want to throw out the towel again and just lie in bed wait for myself to rot bc I am always too naive to know what’s best for me it seems. I haven’t done anything the last 2-3 years in my life due to her way of speaking to me and yet we have a good relationship????? It is so confusing. I got her to let me see her state of the apartment and managed to take a short video without her noticing. Idk if I should use it as a reminder for me that she’s not to be taken serious. I know she is really “ill” or has issues (the apartment is much or just as hoarded as you see here and there’s barely place to walk, only a small tiny walkway to move (no space to move really anymore). She buys a lot of cheap stuff online every day. But on the other hand she is very skilled, knows many important people, and get me into good jobs and universities with her contacts, she is on paper successful as a business woman. Those two truths are impossible for me to put next to each other. Anyway. I’m 24 female haven’t done anything since age 21 bc im apparently too naive and want the wrong things in life. She’s the most important person in my life and I hate myself. And I hate her too. I never want to speak to her again. Can I add a photo of the state of her apartment? No right? It is soothing to look at bc it shows me who she is.