Hoarders

[Luddly Neddite]

Its pretty obvious its a underlying mental issue. Ive seen the Hoarder show a number of times and everyone of those people have some serious mental issues. For some it shows just how far people go when they isolate themselves. We were meant to live in groups. For others it shows how dangerous it is to only hang around like minded individuals and enablers.

Isolation.

And, the internet is making it easier and easier to withdraw from society.

 

[percysunshine]

There isn't much of a debate going on here. Someone needs to step forward and take the pro-hoarding side.

Ok, I'll give it a try.

Pro-hoarding position;

1) It doesn't really hurt anyone. What is the big deal? As long as it is the hoarders money they are spending, and no one is being forced to live with them, it is a free country.

2) The benefits to the hoarder are peace of mind. Would you try to force them to stop? Causing all sorts of pathologic behavior? No.

3) Maybe they have something you just might need. Then you would be glad someone had the fore sight to save it. For all anyone knows, there is a cure for cancer buried in there somewhere.

4) Hoarders provide a useful reference point for normal behavior. If there were no hoarders, how would you know what normal was? Society might select some other behavior as an example of abnormal and excoriate or decry it. Like writing messages to complete strangers on the internet or something. In a way, hoarders protect USMB members from being declared reprobates by society.


There...counter debate anyone?

 

[Luddly Neddite]

1. Oh yeah? Go visit a hoarder and come back and tell us if you want to stay for dinner.

2. Chicken or egg ... Were they crazy before they hoarded or hoarding made them crazy later?

3. And, how would they know?

4. Too late. This joint is crawling with reprobates and rascals. I myself take great pride in being fairly nuts. 'sides, for all we know, its the hoarders who are sane. Didja think of that?

Can't dee-bate anymore right now cuz one of my 37 cats is sharpening his claws on my foot and I hafta staunch the flow of my life fluid or sumthin like that.

 

[percysunshine]

1. Oh yeah? Go visit a hoarder and come back and tell us if you want to stay for dinner.

2. Chicken or egg ... Were they crazy before they hoarded or hoarding made them crazy later?

3. And, how would they know?

4. Too late. This joint is crawling with reprobates and rascals. I myself take great pride in being fairly nuts. 'sides, for all we know, its the hoarders who are sane. Didja think of that?

Can't dee-bate anymore right now cuz one of my 37 cats is sharpening his claws on my foot and I hafta staunch the flow of my life fluid or sumthin like that.

Wow...I won the debate in one exchange. That must be a forum record...chuckle

 

[Luddly Neddite]

I let you win.

 

[Noomi]

There isn't much of a debate going on here. Someone needs to step forward and take the pro-hoarding side.

Ok, I'll give it a try.

Pro-hoarding position;

1) It doesn't really hurt anyone. What is the big deal? As long as it is the hoarders money they are spending, and no one is being forced to live with them, it is a free country.

That is where you are wrong. If the mess spreads to outside, it devalues the properties around it. Its a firehazard, not only to that house, but the homes around it, and lets not mention the smell.

 

[arKangel]

Since getting home today, I've been watching the program, Hoarders, Buried Alive. I had never seen it before and decided to watch it because I visited a hoarder today. I had been told it was bad before I got there but I was absolutely stunned at what I saw.

A long time, widowed woman and her 30-some son live in this very nice bi-level house. They're both very heavy smokers so breathing is pretty much impossible. Just inside the front door, you can look up to the top level but there are boxes and stuff right to the edge of the steps so going up there is not possible.

She invited us down to the lower level where we walked past a little alcove where there was a TV playing and her son sitting at the end of a couch that was piled high with stuff.There were boxes, VCR tapes and overflowing ashtrays.

The next room was a kitchen where there was a table with her computer on it, two chairs besides the one where she sits and a refrigerator. The stove was piled high but it looked like they use a microwave. More ashtrays and filth everywhere.

Both are overweight and diabetic. She sort of served coffee, key lime pie and brownies. The coffee was instant, heated in the microwave and the desserts were store bought. As we sat there, she ate most of the key lime pie while her son ate most of the brownies.

I once knew another hoarder where you had to shimmy inside sideways and you literally stepped up onto the filth. This person seemed to be clueless or maybe just uncaring but she invited me in as though she lived in a castle. Inside, she took me in to the bathroom to see kittens so I walked through the living room, down a hallway, past a bedroom and into the bathroom. In that walk, there was no place to sit, no toilet or shower. The tub was piled high with clothes, empty cat food cans and empty TV dinners and soda cans and just trash. Seeing that was years ago and I was really unprepared for what I saw today.

So, I've been asked for help in dealing with this situation. Both are unhappy with this awful mess but I didn't see or hear any thing that indicated they wanted to make a change. I feel like there's a huge wall and no way past it.

MY opinion is that nothing can be done or should be done until and unless they want it. And, they're going to have to want it really bad because, out of a 4 bedroom house, they are actually living in two very tiny rooms. (I have no idea where they sleep.) Moreover, I feel like I (my friends) don't have the right to go in and tell these people how to live.

A major factor here is that the son has no way to make a living when his mother dies. As it is now, they're living on family wealth passed down to them. The house is paid for.

Has anyone ever seen this before and have any thoughts?

BTW, I've dealt with animal hoarders but never anything like this.

Thanks for reading this long post.

1st, you prefaced this whole anecdote with a TV show(?), which means you are admitting that you are clearly biased.
You appear to be very simply justifying your own anti-privacy bias.

Your anecdote has a lot of holes in it...
Why were you there in the first place?
Was you assessment in any way tainted by your clear prejudice?
Do you feel better now that you have denigrated some people on a who apparently welcomed you into their home on an obscure message board?

 

[arKangel]

There isn't much of a debate going on here. Someone needs to step forward and take the pro-hoarding side.

Ok, I'll give it a try.

Pro-hoarding position;

1) It doesn't really hurt anyone. What is the big deal? As long as it is the hoarders money they are spending, and no one is being forced to live with them, it is a free country.

That is where you are wrong. If the mess spreads to outside, it devalues the properties around it. Its a firehazard, not only to that house, but the homes around it, and lets not mention the smell.

Nothing about the anecdote indicated that it was spreading to others property.
You hate the concept of private property so much that you did not actually read the OP?

 

[Noomi]

Doesn't matter. The mess is inside the house, and still a fire hazard.

 

[arKangel]

Doesn't matter. The mess is inside the house, and still a fire hazard.

It does matter, your point is now admittedly moot.


You have now admitted that you hate the concept of private property.
Why do you hate privacy? Are you some kind of psychotic voyeur?

 

[Circe]

If the mess spreads to outside, it devalues the properties around it. Its a firehazard, not only to that house, but the homes around it, and lets not mention the smell.

Strong cultural opinions about privacy and property rights are presumably why communities do nothing about even the worst hoarding situations. It is an interesting issue about whether and when the community should get involved --- after all, the hoarders LIKE to live the way they do and strongly resist cleanups or recreate the mess afterward. it IS their stuff; it is their home.

Anytime you get regular defaecation in non-toilet areas of the house, that's a sign of psychosis and/or severe senility and that means it's time for the nursing home for the unfortunate there, who probably has severe personality disintegration by then and plainly can no longer cope with independent living. At some point it's not hoarding: it's somebody badly needing help because their minds are gone. Even when the community and family lets them hoard much of their lives, when the person gets to be in their 80s or 90s, they do tend to get moved into the rest home, like it or not.

People setting fires because they try to cook with papers and boxes all over the stove; people who have have frequent health emergencies but emergency services can't get in -- these tend to bring official demands for clean-ups or else. The house so degraded that roofs are falling in or beams cracking lead to threats of the county condemning the house and demolishing it. This is common, because the house structure has to carry the weight of too much junk, and is never repaired.

Another common reason for the county to get involved is animal hoarding. Neighbors WILL call officials if animals are straying all over or seem malnourished. That nice-looking guy who supervises the 1-800-GOT-JUNK crews on Hoarders says he has long categorized his client houses by how many dead cats they find in the house. Like, a three-cat house.

Another reason for the law to get involved is children. A lot of hoarders on the shows are there to get clean-ups because the county is threatening to take away their children because it's a manifestly unsafe and unsanitary environment.

 

[FA_Q2]

Since getting home today, I've been watching the program, Hoarders, Buried Alive. I had never seen it before and decided to watch it because I visited a hoarder today. I had been told it was bad before I got there but I was absolutely stunned at what I saw.

A long time, widowed woman and her 30-some son live in this very nice bi-level house. They're both very heavy smokers so breathing is pretty much impossible. Just inside the front door, you can look up to the top level but there are boxes and stuff right to the edge of the steps so going up there is not possible.

She invited us down to the lower level where we walked past a little alcove where there was a TV playing and her son sitting at the end of a couch that was piled high with stuff.There were boxes, VCR tapes and overflowing ashtrays.

The next room was a kitchen where there was a table with her computer on it, two chairs besides the one where she sits and a refrigerator. The stove was piled high but it looked like they use a microwave. More ashtrays and filth everywhere.

Both are overweight and diabetic. She sort of served coffee, key lime pie and brownies. The coffee was instant, heated in the microwave and the desserts were store bought. As we sat there, she ate most of the key lime pie while her son ate most of the brownies.

I once knew another hoarder where you had to shimmy inside sideways and you literally stepped up onto the filth. This person seemed to be clueless or maybe just uncaring but she invited me in as though she lived in a castle. Inside, she took me in to the bathroom to see kittens so I walked through the living room, down a hallway, past a bedroom and into the bathroom. In that walk, there was no place to sit, no toilet or shower. The tub was piled high with clothes, empty cat food cans and empty TV dinners and soda cans and just trash. Seeing that was years ago and I was really unprepared for what I saw today.

So, I've been asked for help in dealing with this situation. Both are unhappy with this awful mess but I didn't see or hear any thing that indicated they wanted to make a change. I feel like there's a huge wall and no way past it.

MY opinion is that nothing can be done or should be done until and unless they want it. And, they're going to have to want it really bad because, out of a 4 bedroom house, they are actually living in two very tiny rooms. (I have no idea where they sleep.) Moreover, I feel like I (my friends) don't have the right to go in and tell these people how to live.

A major factor here is that the son has no way to make a living when his mother dies. As it is now, they're living on family wealth passed down to them. The house is paid for.

Has anyone ever seen this before and have any thoughts?

BTW, I've dealt with animal hoarders but never anything like this.

Thanks for reading this long post.

1st, you prefaced this whole anecdote with a TV show(?), which means you are admitting that you are clearly biased.
You appear to be very simply justifying your own anti-privacy bias.

Your anecdote has a lot of holes in it...
Why were you there in the first place?
Was you assessment in any way tainted by your clear prejudice?
Do you feel better now that you have denigrated some people on a who apparently welcomed you into their home on an obscure message board?

There is one massive hole in that reasoning though. He never intones that it is not the right of those to do what they were doing.

The idea is with intervention. The OP comes off as though this is a mutual acquaintance through a friend and not a loved no so it does not apply in this specific case to him (at least AFAIK) so that is why I did not post it earlier but there are times when intervention is not only called for but the only moral choice that you can make. There is nothing wrong with stepping up to a loved one and attempting to pull them back from self-destructive lifestyle. A good parallel is drug use. There are times when an individual is simply lost and cannot claw themselves out from the inside of their own situation. In those cases, the person in question might not even ask, intone or even realize that they need help but they need it all the same. Sometimes what it takes for them to reach that admission is for a loved one that they care dearly about to smack them in the face and force them to see the situation. After that, it is the person’s choice to take the help or reject it. In the end it is always their choice but in the beginning it is the loved ones RESPONSIBILITY to help insofar as they can.

 

[midcan5]

Speaking of alternative lifestyles, now watching "sister wives", which I also have never seen before.

How do these people afford these brand new houses and nice new cars?

American TV is amazing today, next watch 'Breaking Amish,' 'Honey boo boo,' and finish with the polygamy show in which the women select a husband married or not married. Then there are the Housewives shows and don't forget the 'Kardashians.' As the world turns, no need to watch soaps, they have come alive in a bizarre fashion. A past brother in law was a hoarder, he was always strange, but till he died no one realized all the stuff he had accumulated. We had a few hoarders in Philly recently and you should see the dumpster loads. Unreal. The funny thing about humans is, we are all alike in so many ways, yet some take those ways to the farthest extremes. We all save the useless for all sorts of reasons.

 

[Circe]

The idea is with intervention. The OP comes off as though this is a mutual acquaintance through a friend and not a loved no so it does not apply in this specific case to him (at least AFAIK) so that is why I did not post it earlier but there are times when intervention is not only called for but the only moral choice that you can make. There is nothing wrong with stepping up to a loved one and attempting to pull them back from self-destructive lifestyle. A good parallel is drug use. There are times when an individual is simply lost and cannot claw themselves out from the inside of their own situation. In those cases, the person in question might not even ask, intone or even realize that they need help but they need it all the same. Sometimes what it takes for them to reach that admission is for a loved one that they care dearly about to smack them in the face and force them to see the situation. After that, it is the person’s choice to take the help or reject it. In the end it is always their choice but in the beginning it is the loved ones RESPONSIBILITY to help insofar as they can.

There IS a case to be made for freedom, however, and that is why people leave it alone for so long -------- well, the hoarder usually hides what s/he is doing, of course, because they don't want to clean up and throw out. I think in many cases, the best thing to do is wait till the person dies, then clean up. Hire it done or let the county do it. The situation Luddly saw is more complex because there is a younger son who also hoards.

I don't think the "eyesore" reason is a good one for the law requiring cleanup. Sure, the hoarder depreciates property values all around. But s/he's been there a LONG time, maybe that's fair. Luddly is looking around now and seeing a lot of messy yards and realizing that if they are like that outside, what are they like inside? Worse, probably. There's a lot more hoarding that people used to realize. But we're learning now.

The vermin problem is one I don't know the answer to. Hoarders have appalling vermin issues and neighbors usually complain about that, but is that reasonable if it's a free-standing house? I'm not sure it is. If they want to live with mice and ants and roaches and bedbugs in a free-standing house and there are no children there -------- shouldn't they be free to do so? Opinion?

 

[Noomi]

^if there are houses next to them, they need to clean it up. People shouldn't have a house devalued because of the filth next door. If its a house in the middle of nowhere, do what you like, but not in a regular neighborhood.

 

[Circe]

^if there are houses next to them, they need to clean it up. People shouldn't have a house devalued because of the filth next door. If its a house in the middle of nowhere, do what you like, but not in a regular neighborhood.

I just realized from your post that hoarding and storing the overflow outside as some (not all) hoarders do is one reason subdivisions often have restrictive covenants about what you can and can't have on your visible property: they are trying to protect property values.

I live in the country so I didn't think about close-set neighborhoods. In the country you can see a lot of homes with a lot of squalor piled around.

 

[Noomi]

Just down the road from us is a home that was up for sale. It was for sale for 12 months before the owners gave up because they had no choice but to stay there.
They live on a corner, and there are two houses either side of theirs.
House one is falling down, and should be demolished. The grass is overgrown, the front veranda is a shambles. The 'garage' is ready to save in, and the entire house needs a good paint. In summer, the grass grows to knee heightm but they still head outside to peg the washing on the line. They have spent thousands on solar panels, but nothing on cleaning up the outside of the house.

House number two has a couple of feral Aborigines in it. Bedsheets for curtains, overgrown grass, rusty cars in the front yard, broken windows etc.

The house with the For Sale sign out the front never did sell, and it won't - unless the owners want to accept a price well under that of the true value of the house, all because of the properties next door.

Now, the owners of the two homes are not hoarders, but it gives you an idea of how people can be affected by one person's choices.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Since getting home today, I've been watching the program, Hoarders, Buried Alive. I had never seen it before and decided to watch it because I visited a hoarder today. I had been told it was bad before I got there but I was absolutely stunned at what I saw.

A long time, widowed woman and her 30-some son live in this very nice bi-level house. They're both very heavy smokers so breathing is pretty much impossible. Just inside the front door, you can look up to the top level but there are boxes and stuff right to the edge of the steps so going up there is not possible.

She invited us down to the lower level where we walked past a little alcove where there was a TV playing and her son sitting at the end of a couch that was piled high with stuff.There were boxes, VCR tapes and overflowing ashtrays.

The next room was a kitchen where there was a table with her computer on it, two chairs besides the one where she sits and a refrigerator. The stove was piled high but it looked like they use a microwave. More ashtrays and filth everywhere.

Both are overweight and diabetic. She sort of served coffee, key lime pie and brownies. The coffee was instant, heated in the microwave and the desserts were store bought. As we sat there, she ate most of the key lime pie while her son ate most of the brownies.

I once knew another hoarder where you had to shimmy inside sideways and you literally stepped up onto the filth. This person seemed to be clueless or maybe just uncaring but she invited me in as though she lived in a castle. Inside, she took me in to the bathroom to see kittens so I walked through the living room, down a hallway, past a bedroom and into the bathroom. In that walk, there was no place to sit, no toilet or shower. The tub was piled high with clothes, empty cat food cans and empty TV dinners and soda cans and just trash. Seeing that was years ago and I was really unprepared for what I saw today.

So, I've been asked for help in dealing with this situation. Both are unhappy with this awful mess but I didn't see or hear any thing that indicated they wanted to make a change. I feel like there's a huge wall and no way past it.

MY opinion is that nothing can be done or should be done until and unless they want it. And, they're going to have to want it really bad because, out of a 4 bedroom house, they are actually living in two very tiny rooms. (I have no idea where they sleep.) Moreover, I feel like I (my friends) don't have the right to go in and tell these people how to live.

A major factor here is that the son has no way to make a living when his mother dies. As it is now, they're living on family wealth passed down to them. The house is paid for.

Has anyone ever seen this before and have any thoughts?

BTW, I've dealt with animal hoarders but never anything like this.

Thanks for reading this long post.

1st, you prefaced this whole anecdote with a TV show(?), which means you are admitting that you are clearly biased.
You appear to be very simply justifying your own anti-privacy bias.

Your anecdote has a lot of holes in it...
Why were you there in the first place?
Was you assessment in any way tainted by your clear prejudice?
Do you feel better now that you have denigrated some people on a who apparently welcomed you into their home on an obscure message board?

There is one massive hole in that reasoning though. He never intones that it is not the right of those to do what they were doing.

The idea is with intervention. The OP comes off as though this is a mutual acquaintance through a friend and not a loved no so it does not apply in this specific case to him (at least AFAIK) so that is why I did not post it earlier but there are times when intervention is not only called for but the only moral choice that you can make. There is nothing wrong with stepping up to a loved one and attempting to pull them back from self-destructive lifestyle. A good parallel is drug use. There are times when an individual is simply lost and cannot claw themselves out from the inside of their own situation. In those cases, the person in question might not even ask, intone or even realize that they need help but they need it all the same. Sometimes what it takes for them to reach that admission is for a loved one that they care dearly about to smack them in the face and force them to see the situation. After that, it is the person’s choice to take the help or reject it. In the end it is always their choice but in the beginning it is the loved ones RESPONSIBILITY to help insofar as they can.

These people didn't come across as lost although, apparently neither goes out except when they have to. Noomi makes a very good point about safety. Like the anecdote about the roaches and ticks in the house next to us in Tucson, these people surely don't live in a vacuum.

This has been very much on my mind but, like I've said before, I still can't quite see that its my place to be part of some sort of intervention. Maybe I'm just a coward but, just as I wrote in earlier posts, I think I just have to back away and mind my own business.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Speaking of alternative lifestyles, now watching "sister wives", which I also have never seen before.

How do these people afford these brand new houses and nice new cars?

American TV is amazing today, next watch 'Breaking Amish,' 'Honey boo boo,' and finish with the polygamy show in which the women select a husband married or not married. Then there are the Housewives shows and don't forget the 'Kardashians.' As the world turns, no need to watch soaps, they have come alive in a bizarre fashion. A past brother in law was a hoarder, he was always strange, but till he died no one realized all the stuff he had accumulated. We had a few hoarders in Philly recently and you should see the dumpster loads. Unreal. The funny thing about humans is, we are all alike in so many ways, yet some take those ways to the farthest extremes. We all save the useless for all sorts of reasons.

Actually, we did watch a bit of Honey boo boo last night. Ugh. Best to turn off that crap for fear of one's brain rotting and falling out through one's ears.

Something else about hoarding - I've said we're selling books on Amazon and Alibris and other sited, and some other stuff on ebay. And, I think I mentioned that the son of the woman we visited will not have an income when she dies.

From what I saw, he pretty much just sits in front of the TV but I would think he could do well if he worked to sell stuff on line.

To each there own, but I couldn't live like that - the hoarding OR Honey boo boo.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Since getting home today, I've been watching the program, Hoarders, Buried Alive. I had never seen it before and decided to watch it because I visited a hoarder today. I had been told it was bad before I got there but I was absolutely stunned at what I saw.

A long time, widowed woman and her 30-some son live in this very nice bi-level house. They're both very heavy smokers so breathing is pretty much impossible. Just inside the front door, you can look up to the top level but there are boxes and stuff right to the edge of the steps so going up there is not possible.

She invited us down to the lower level where we walked past a little alcove where there was a TV playing and her son sitting at the end of a couch that was piled high with stuff.There were boxes, VCR tapes and overflowing ashtrays.

The next room was a kitchen where there was a table with her computer on it, two chairs besides the one where she sits and a refrigerator. The stove was piled high but it looked like they use a microwave. More ashtrays and filth everywhere.

Both are overweight and diabetic. She sort of served coffee, key lime pie and brownies. The coffee was instant, heated in the microwave and the desserts were store bought. As we sat there, she ate most of the key lime pie while her son ate most of the brownies.

I once knew another hoarder where you had to shimmy inside sideways and you literally stepped up onto the filth. This person seemed to be clueless or maybe just uncaring but she invited me in as though she lived in a castle. Inside, she took me in to the bathroom to see kittens so I walked through the living room, down a hallway, past a bedroom and into the bathroom. In that walk, there was no place to sit, no toilet or shower. The tub was piled high with clothes, empty cat food cans and empty TV dinners and soda cans and just trash. Seeing that was years ago and I was really unprepared for what I saw today.

So, I've been asked for help in dealing with this situation. Both are unhappy with this awful mess but I didn't see or hear any thing that indicated they wanted to make a change. I feel like there's a huge wall and no way past it.

MY opinion is that nothing can be done or should be done until and unless they want it. And, they're going to have to want it really bad because, out of a 4 bedroom house, they are actually living in two very tiny rooms. (I have no idea where they sleep.) Moreover, I feel like I (my friends) don't have the right to go in and tell these people how to live.

A major factor here is that the son has no way to make a living when his mother dies. As it is now, they're living on family wealth passed down to them. The house is paid for.

Has anyone ever seen this before and have any thoughts?

BTW, I've dealt with animal hoarders but never anything like this.

Thanks for reading this long post.

1st, you prefaced this whole anecdote with a TV show(?), which means you are admitting that you are clearly biased.
You appear to be very simply justifying your own anti-privacy bias.

Your anecdote has a lot of holes in it...
Why were you there in the first place?
Was you assessment in any way tainted by your clear prejudice?
Do you feel better now that you have denigrated some people on a who apparently welcomed you into their home on an obscure message board?

Perhaps you would like to actually read what was written before judging.

Or, perhaps not.

Either is fine with me.