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Three days into the cleanup, Jackson had repeated his new sorting process so many times that it had become his new habit. Without any prompting he was making quick, confident, and accurate decisions about items—whether to keep, sell, donate, or throw away. Because he was so highly motivated, Jackson was able to work independently. We decided that he could finish the last two rooms by himself, and so my crew and I packed up and left Jackson and Mike with the confidence that this was a success story.

STAGE 3: RICK

Rick, the retired professor/information hoarder in the suburbs of Washington, DC, whose house was too far gone for him to even consider cleaning it alone, had an additional complication for the cleanup on top of the volume of paper. Physically, there were high levels of mold in the house, and mentally there were signs of dementia. The damage to his house was so extensive that Rick needed a large team that included building inspectors and construction workers, specialists to deal with the mold, a document disposal company with an industrial shredder, and a cleanup crew equipped with respirators and protective clothing. Rick’s deeply ingrained hoarder habits and dementia indicated a slower and potentially more expensive cleaning.

Layers of paper—old newspapers and junk mail—carpeted the stairs in Rick’s Stage 3 home.

Rick’s stairway after the cleanup.

Rick and his sister, who had actually instigated the cleanup, met my cleaning crew at 9:00 a.m. on the agreedupon start date. Rick hadn’t wanted the neighbors to know that a hoarding cleanup company was at his house, so we arrived in an unmarked truck after the neighbors had all left for work.

Rick’s house was filled with old mail, files, and magazines. There was a two-foot-high paper “carpet” in the living room. In the kitchen, paperwork covered the countertops and flowed off onto the floor. The dishwasher didn’t work, and the oven was filled with books and stock certificates. A mattress was propped up in the hallway, also covered with paperwork. The bedrooms weren’t as full of paper, but clothing and trash littered the floors, and Rick’s mattress smelled like it had been soiled.

The cleaning crew started in the living room, picking up papers a handful at a time, and sorting through them to put some in boxes to keep and the rest in heavy-duty trash bags to be dumped. They were looking for the items that Rick wanted to save, including the deed to his house, some retirement checks, and family photographs. He wanted those and his academic papers packed into boxes for him to sort through later.

Rick sat on a stool in the kitchen, picked through boxes of paperwork, and answered questions about what to do with other items the crew found as they worked their way deeper into the house, like the mattress (keep), a second microwave (donate), an exercise machine (donate), and dirty clothing (wash and donate). Just as I did with Jackson, I helped Rick when he got stuck on wanting to keep an old magazine or a piece of junk mail. I reminded him that he had decided that he wanted to sell his house and move in with his sister, and this was the path toward his goal.

After two hours, Rick was exhausted and overwhelmed. His sister took him out for coffee to give him a change of scenery. With Rick’s permission, the crew kept working. While he was gone, we put aside anything that we felt would require a decision from him.

Rick, his sister, and the cleaning team worked through the house for three days, taking frequent breaks. The crew made ten trips to the county recycling station to dispose of twentyfour tons of paper. The building inspectors dropped by every other day, checking to make sure we hadn’t uncovered more mold and that the floors and walls were in safe condition.

During the cleanup Rick was forgetful, often asking what had happened with an item that he had just made a decision on. On the third day, Rick called me in a panic, worried that we had lost the letter from his department head, congratulating