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The hoarder hangover is actually good. It means the hoarder is experiencing honest emotions and is taking the process seriously. I personally believe it’s a mental cleansing of all the negative feelings, just as the physical cleaning got rid of excess possessions. It’s the beginning of a new phase of the hoarder’s life. The hoarder phase was characterized by depression through years of living in chaos. The cleanup gave a brief high. The post-cleaning phase will hopefully be a steady rise toward a lifelong high of being clutter-free. But it will be a slow process as the hoarder deals with relinquishing bad habits, replacing behaviors, going through therapy, working with an organizer, and learning how to keep the home clean.

The hangover can last a few hours or a few days. With support and encouragement, the hoarder can usually come back to reality and keep working. I warn hoarders to expect the hangover, and tell them not to cancel any plans for the future when they are feeling anxious or low. I focus on the good that the hoarder has done.

The Emotional Roller Coaster of Hoarding

▶ Old Habits Die Hard

Even hoarders who really want to stay clean, like Nika, sometimes have trouble breaking old habits. Once her house was clean and her closets reorganized, Nika was thrilled to have so much space. But she wasn’t used to it. To Nika, the de-cluttered rooms looked pretty empty compared to what she was used to. Within a few weeks, she found herself ordering some clothes from a home shopping network. She figured that a few new boxes of clothes coming in wouldn’t matter because now she had room for them. She told herself it didn’t mean she was starting to hoard again.

But she was hoarding again. Hoarding isn’t about how much stuff someone has, it’s about how they process those things. Nika’s hoarding was caused by her not putting limits on herself about clothes shopping, and even though she was now only ordering a few things, her behavior could quickly escalate and clutter her house up again.

It’s like a former two-pack-a-day smoker saying that he or she will only have a few cigarettes on the weekend. That looks harmless compared to the huge amounts the smoker was smoking before, but of course those few cigarettes quickly escalate until the smoker is right back to the old levels. Hoarders, like addicts, need to shut down that behavior immediately if it resurfaces. A little indulgence feels so good, and so familiar, that it will quickly grow to hoarder proportions.

For Nika, this meant following the rules, without exception. Her professional organizer had a copy of Nika’s rules and was checking in with her once a week. When the organizer asked about the delivery boxes in a corner, Nika said she felt that it wasn’t a big deal. The organizer reminded Nika of the “in = out” rule, and that Nika had accepted that rule during the cleanup because she wanted to reach her goal of having a better relationship with her husband. Even though a couple of boxes seemed minor, they were pointing Nika toward a path that she herself admitted she didn’t want to be on again.

▶ Triggers

Whatever pushed a person to start hoarding has the potential to do it again, especially if the hoarder isn’t in therapy. Aimee’s divorce from an abusive man had been one of her triggers, and she did seek therapy to explore that. After a year of counseling, and carefully following the rules, Aimee was a hoarder success story. She was still clean, she had a good network of girlfriends, and she had internalized a lot of new, better habits. She was happy and involved in the outside world.

Then Aimee reconnected with an old boyfriend. At first seeing this man seemed like a positive thing for her, because it meant that she was open to relationships again. Unfortunately, this boyfriend had also been abusive, and he hadn’t stopped. For Aimee, this trigger prompted her to go back into her comfort behavior.

A hoarder’s family and close friends are the best ones to spot a trigger.