The Secret Lives of Hoarders_ True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter - Matt Paxton [28]
When Not to Clean
SOMETIMES AN ASSESSMENT points toward not cleaning at all. If there is no pressure to clean coming from outside sources, like building inspectors or social workers, and the hoarder doesn’t want to change, then it’s often not worth the battle. Cleaning is a huge upheaval, and part of the assessment should be to decide whether or not it’s worth it.
For example, Mario’s daughter called me about her father’s expanding car collection. Mario had been collecting antique, vintage, and junked cars for decades. He had easily a hundred old El Caminos, Thunderbirds, and other, mostly American models. The cars were piling up in the yard, and parts and paperwork were cluttering up the house where Mario lived with his wife.
Mario was eighty years old, and that car collection was his life’s work. He was an old-school, macho “king of the castle” type guy, who was focused on being in control of his world. For Mario, his self-worth was deeply connected with his collection. Even after his daughter and wife talked to him about it, Mario had absolutely no desire to change.
The house itself was cluttered, but it didn’t present any immediate danger. The piles were low, so they weren’t threatening to topple over on anybody.The pathways were wide enough for emergency services to get in if they needed to, and all of the rooms were accessible.The major systems in the house worked—plumbing, heating, and cooling. Despite the clutter, the neighbors hadn’t complained, and the county wasn’t targeting Mario for a cleanup.There were no children in the house, and although Mario’s wife was frustrated by the mess, she felt that a cleanup would be too stressful for her husband.
After meeting with Mario and his family, I advised them not to clean up. A hoarder cleanup is exhausting for even a healthy, younger hoarder. A family could push its relationships to the limit, rely heavily on favors from friends, and likely spend a lot of money on a cleanup and therapy. In Mario’s case, the stress would have been too much, going through his cars one by one, and the clutter in his house piece by piece.
With no outside pressure to clean, family members decided they would rather have Mario alive and hoarding than risk that the stress of the cleanup would do him in. They decided to let him live out his days with his collection, and plan instead for cleaning up after he was gone. I encouraged Mario’s wife and daughter to continue to put gentle pressure on him to keep the shared space in the house clutter-free. But at eighty years old, Mario wasn’t likely to change his ways. His wife, who loved Mario very much, decided to accept that he wasn’t willing to change that one thing about himself.
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WHERE TO BEGIN
THE COLLABORATION: A STORY WITH A SOMEWHAT HAPPY ENDING
Roger’s two sisters were extremely patient while they figured out how to handle his hoarding issues. They spent more than two years assessing Roger’s condition and exploring how to help him. During that time they went through what most hoarders’ families experience. They were frustrated, confused, angry, and sad. They felt alone and ashamed. Despite that, they managed to stay positive during the process and focus on what was best for him.
Roger had been living at home in rural Georgia with his aging parents. With short-cropped hair and a full uncut beard that showed evidence of what he’d eaten on any given day, the forty-four-year-old was a tall, thin man with few social skills or contacts but an obsession for documenting his life—what he ate, where he went, what he wore—with the camera that he carried with him always. He even photocopied every single dollar bill before he spent it, notating the serial numbers and what he purchased. After his parents died, he withdrew from society even further, talking